Teen fashion is like all other parts of teen culture: constantly evolving. Because of this, teen targeted fashion retailers must always be 2 seasons ahead of the current wave of fads in order to anticipate what young people will want to wear in the future. So what happens to teen fashion when the economy isn’t doing so hot?  Historically, it’s been believed that teen targeted clothing chains would fair better than other retailers but new numbers released from GAP and Abercrombie & Fitch show that that isn’t true this time around.  Brands that have been historically seen as the red badge of coolness in high schools around America are now seeing lower sales and less popular brands like Aeropostale are seeing big jumps in their sales.   

As teens begin to spend more money on food and fuel and less on things like clothes I think we’re going to see a big change in what is in and what’s out in terms of fashion.  I believe that as hipster culture rises and teens become not only more economically but also environmentally conscious, we are going to see more teens going to thrift stores to purchase clothing.  If you ask me this is a great development in teen fashion because not only are young people seeing the value of the dollar more and choosing to be thrifty.  But by buying clothes at the local Goodwill or Salvation Army, teens are breaking away from the tendency of dressing like the mannequins in storefronts and are developing their own sense of style.  This is a great way for teens to explore identity and individualism.  For more about how the economy is affecting teen trends visit this link. 

Its Labor Day weekend which of course means the kids have gone back to school and fall is about to kick summer, and it’s warmth, out the door. As the weather gets colder and night falls earlier, it looks like we’ll all need a new TV show or three to watch this fall. Y Pulse has released this summary of the TV shows that will be beginning their seasons this week. It struck me as helpful because it offers parents and other adults an idea of what TV shows young people are likely to start talking about and how to know what’ good, what’s bad, and how to handle it. Below I have outlined some of the shows that caught my eye:

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While researching teen culture I often stumble upon books, blogs and magazine articles that claim that today’s young people are an illiterate generation of tech junkies who squander their time and mental ability text messaging, watching MTV and playing video games. While there seems to be a large body of evidence to back this up, I still have a hard time believing that my generation is “The Dumbest Generation.”

However, Mark Bauerlein, of Emory College, thinks we’re in some serious trouble and he wrote a book about it called “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future”. Those that share Bauerlein’s view contend that the decline in adult literacy over the years, and the growing lack of geographic, historic, and literary knowledge of the current generation are all evidence that today’s teens are less intelligent than previous generations. This has people worried because if this is the case, the consequences will be catastrophic. In a few short years today’s uneducated young people will become intellectually deficient adults that control every corporation, government, and educational institution in the world.

While I find it disturbing that in 2001, 52% of my peers identified Germany, Japan or Italy, and not the Soviet Union, as America’s World War II ally, I don’t think that today’s teens are any less intelligent than previous generations. If anything they are actually more intelligent as is evidenced by the fact that IQ scores worldwide have continued to rise since the 1930’s. What I do worry about, however, is how today’s young people acquire and retain knowledge.

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I’m not a gamer. This is painfully evident everytime I sit down to  an Xbox to play Halo 3 and within the first 5 minutes of play the other players call me a “noob”.  Sure gaming is a nerdy pursuit , and I’m prone to delighting in nerdy pursuits, but I never really got into the whole video game thing.  Maybe it’s because I have poor coordination or maybe it’s because I’ve never been very competitive. Either way, I think I’d rather watch a documentary about video games rather than play one myself.  

Even though I don’t count myself among these armies of “Couch Commandos” that daily strive to save planets and princesses, I do think they are a bit misunderstood by the rest of the world.  For example, I don’t believe that every young person that plays a violent video game on a regular basis is going to stockpile weapons and try to recreate this game in real life.  I also don’t think that video games make teens more violent.  I believe that if someone is set off by playing a video game, then there was likely something going  on in that person’s life long before he or she picked up a controller. I also think that some video games are actually making people smarter.  To read more about this I suggest you pick up Stephen Johnson’s “Everything Bad is Good For You.” 

Anyway, I understand that there needs to be a scapegoat for the world’s problems and that things that are misunderstood are often the ones that get blamed.  I mean TV was supposed to be the downfall of our civilization and it seems like the majority of people have learned how to balance that pretty well.  In the same way that adults in the past didn’t understand TV, many adults today simply don’t get why teens love video games so much.  

As a result, the majority of the public view video games as something that primarily male children play and that cause them to be aggressive, violent, socially isolated, desensitized, and is an all around waste of time.  But according to MIT professor Henry Jenkins, the public is wrong.  To walk you through each of these misconceptions he has posted an article debunking the myths about video games.  It can be found here. Meanwhile, I’m going to go play Tetris.

Sometimes I read news stories that just sound crazy.  Today that news story comes from The Dallas Morning News  and is about Abercrombie & Fitch’s practice of discriminating against employees based on their level of attractiveness.  In the article, several employees of the teen targeted retailer report being pulled from sales positions and placed in the stockroom because managers determined they weren’t beautiful enough to talk to customers.  To me this just sounds crazy and I would imagine that it is somewhat illegal.  However, it would only be illegal if employees were discriminated based on race or gender, not ugliness. The danger in all of this is that it communicates to young employees that their worth to their employer and the rest of the world is based solely on their appearance and not on their ability to do a job well.  There’s a lot more to say about this subject, but it might be best if you just read the article here. Comment with your take on this issue and I’ll keep you updated as this story develops.

Here’s a quick series of stories about teen girls and their search for identity in the media saturated world we live in.  A story talking about the effect of teen magazines like Seventeen, Cosmo Girl!, Teen, and Teen Vogue on girls can be found here.  It’s a good read and I suggest you check it out.  And to find out what your teen daughter is reading this month in those magazines, head on over to Ypulse and check out their summary.

After you finish reading those articles, you can head on over to Australian paper, The Age, and read an interesting article by Celia Walden about identity cannibalism among teen girls.  To explain that peculiar term for you a little bit, here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Focusing entirely on those whose personality or physical attributes she covets, there is a new breed of woman who longs to be someone she isn’t, as if it were as easy as creating an avatar in some paradise-like cyber-universe. By definition, these identities cannot be acquired; but that does not stop the covetous from trying, and young women are ending the first decade of this century in a black hole of impossible desires. They are Identity Cannibals — or Cannibelles — desperate to be anyone but themselves, willing to steal another’s clothes, look and lifestyle to create a new “me”.”

As we approach a new school year and a new set of expectations and pressures from teen boys and girls alike to conform and fit in, this is an article all parents, educators, and youth ministers should read.

This year’s Horatio Alger State of our Nation’s Youth survey results were released recently and as it turns out America’s young people are collectively not very optimistic, but individually they believe they have a bright future. These results are based on a phone survey of 1,006 students between the ages of 13 and 19.

One point about the survey that stuck out to me is that in the past 5 years, young people’s optimism about the future of America has declined 22 points! Yikes! Another thing that I noticed was that the 2 things that teens said would make their education better were more up to date technology and better job training. The tech part is pretty obvious because all students want to be cruising the Internet and typing up reports on the hottest new computer on the market. But I also think there is something to the need for better job training in schools. As I talk to teens about going back to school, the things I always here are that they need more teachers that make earning fun and that they wish teachers would show them how to use what they learn. Teens are cynical and if they don’t think geometry of U.S. History is going to benefit them in the real world, they will tune you out and doodle on their notebooks. I think this in part due to the fact that many teens see celebrity, fortune and fame as much more attainable now.

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One of the greatest threats that face the development and success of our current generation of teens is Affluenza.  Many of today’s teens suffer from Affluenza and full blown cases of entitlement.  Of course they didn’t just wake up one day thinking the world owed them something and that their self-worth was tied to the amount of possessions they could amass.  This was taught to them in large part by parents.  It is this behavior that a couple writers at the New York Times have written about in the past week or so.  

The first article, written by Tina Kelley, follows a group of affluent parents and kids as they head off to summer camp.  To me, the way these adults act is pretty absurd.  It’s hard to even know where to start so I suggest you just read the article. In response to this article, Judith Warner wrote an opinion piece in the Times where she dissects the idea of Affluenza and goes ahead and places blame in some justified places.   

She says of affluenza:

“…what mental health professionals are now calling “affluenza,” a social pathology that, they say, is rampant at a time when getting and spending — a lot — have become our nation’s most cherished activities, and when purchasing power has become, to an unprecedented extent, almost the sole source of many people’s status and identity. 

In our society, you don’t have to be wealthy to suffer from affluenza. Its symptoms — “debt, overwork, waste, and harm to the environment, leading to psychological disorders, alienation, and distress,” in adults; “lack of motivation … apathy, laziness, or failure to commit to and achieve goals … overindulgence and attitudes of entitlement” in children,

according to the New York University Child Study Center, are pervasive — and no one is immune.

For affluenza is not just a constellation of symptoms. It is an ethic, a play-the-system, lie-and-cheat-your-way-to-what-you-want, don’t-let-the-peons-stand-in-your-way ethic of amorality. You rock, kid, parents teach. And you — alone — rule.”

I suggest you check out both of these articles and think about what it means for our nation’s future to have the next generation of leaders raised with this mindset.  

Someone once called me a hipster.  I tried to deny it but they pointed out that I was wearing black rimmed glasses (even though they do carry a hefty prescription…I mean, if my eyes are afflicted I may as well look a bit cool, right?).  I am also infatuated with taking pictures with my Diana+ analogue camera.  I just think its a heck of a lot of fun but it also adheres to another trendy stereotype.  I have been known to enjoy obscure indie music and wear v-neck shirts.  In the colder parts of the year I wear sweater vests and my jeans are always on the mildly tight side.  I really like riding my bike.  I enjoy doing all of these things but they are all also commonly associated with the currently burgeoning hipster sub culture, yet I would not necessarily call myself a hipster.  Ironically enough, this sort of denial also seems to be a common trait among today’s true hipsters.  Ouch.

Adbusters Magazine recently wrote an article that offers the following definition of “hipsterdom”:

“An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.”

A somewhat intense and scathing tone is maintained throughout the entire article (in fact I would definitely like to offer words of caution to those interested in reading the article as it contains language and content that readers might find offensive).  This apparently stems from a genuine fear that hipster culture is leading many young people away from standing up for substantial values and towards a lifestyle that revolves around following only that which is cool and fashionable but ultimately superficial and void of any real meaning.  The things that many hipsters find cool are those which no one else really knows about.  Sadly, as soon as these things gather more and more popularity they are looked down upon with disdain and abandoned, leaving hipsters stuck in a cycle of searching for the next cool fad that will inevitably expire for the same reasons.  This happens a lot as marketers are quick to pick up on hipster trends and commercially exploit them.  Instead of looking beyond this and sticking to doing what they do for the sheer enjoyment of it, an act that carries more substance than some might imagine, the hipsters obsession with cool and an unobtainable status of originality seems only to lead to a fruitless scavenger hunt of a life with no real rewards.

In light of all of this my advice to young people is to allow a pursuit of positivity and enjoyment motivate them to do the things they do, as opposed to a shallow craving to be the next coolest thing.  I would also encourage young people to think about finding worth in something more meaningful than image. 

 

 

This past May research reported that 50% of people who watch television shows online consider it a replacement for regular television viewing.  This is bad news for networks who have insisted that the option of watching TV shows online is additive and not a replacement for viewers tuning in to shows on actual TV’s. From personal experience I can say that I watched most of last season’s LOST and the Office episodes on my computer and not on TV.  The reason for it is that many times I was unable or unwillling to dedicate my Thursday evenings to sitting in front of a TV. 

This convenience can be both a good and bad thing.  For instance, if there is a show you’d like to watch with your teen but your schedules don’t exactly allow that to happen, now the two of you can enjoy watching it together at a time that is convenient for both of you.  Or maybe you’d like to hang out with your teen some night and play a game or go out to eat but your invitation is met with, “I can’t.  My show comes on at 7 and I can’t miss it.”  (I know that happened more than once when I was a teen and the latest developments on Dawson’s Creek, The O.C. and Friends seemed to take precedence over any other event that might be occurring during the show’s time slot.)  Well now, thanks to online viewing, your teen can catch the episode the next day online. 

Of course, the bad part about all this is that if there is a show that you don’t want your teen to be watching, it might not be as simple as keeping the TV off of a certain channel at a certain time.  An easy way for them to circumvent the watchful eye of mom and dad is to just watch episodes online when you’re at work or after you go to bed. 

In that case it’s really hard to prevent them from watching it.  However, I tend to think that what’s better than trying to constantly block your teen’s access to bad things is to help them understand why you object to them.  If your teen understands that you want what’s best for them and they are honest with you and respectful of your wishes then maybe you won’t have to worry if their catching episodes of Gossip GIrl online while you’re not home.

But in the end, whatever your teen sees on TV, hears in music or watches in a movie is no match for the influence of a caring and involved adult.