The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

This chapter / article;e brought up a lot of key topics that surround teenagers. He mainly focused on how the media plays a dominate role in how our society views the teenage experience. It’s interesting in the article we read about teenagers having babies at such a young age. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that our school systems do not have good sex education courses but yet our society advertises sex on such a high level. Just look at where the largest porn industry is... Our own backyard; the USA! But yet we fail to properly educate our teens. I think this also has something to do with our country’s religious / Puritan history. Below are three videos that I see as more of a cycle in our country. 

The First is from Mean Girls. I know this is a funny representation but I find it to be accurate but on a comical scale. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpCvnBrjAhQ

17 Girls Trailer 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNK5gLFR8qQ

Here is a news article from TIMES , this is the real events that happend in 17 Girls. In the article it talks about this Massachusetts scandal and it was interesting to read about the sex education program the high school had. It states that ..."The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1816486,00.html#ixzz2LCzaZoR3

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1817272,00.html

I think that tv shows such as The Secret Life of the American Teenager are influencing young people. This particular tv show gives young people the view that motherhood is not that bad and be easily done. I remember it came out my Jr/ Sr year of high school and I wanted to secretly get pregnant at that age with my boyfriend at the time. This tv show showed me that it was possible and not as difficult as it really is. It's interesting because I went my whole academic career without attending any sex ed classes & I was sexually active at a much younger age than I should have been. I believe that sex education is the key. 

DOWNTON ABBY!!

So....I stayed in my dorm all weekend long due to the storm. Tried driving my car tonight...but that was a epic fail! Anyways, Friday morning I began watching season 1 of Downton Abby. It is Saturday night & I am already half way through Season 3.... Do I like it?....HELL YES!!!  <3

A Tangkle of Discourses

Quotes

"...you still have the time to change things, you know when you’re an
adult you don’t really have time. (Alannah)"

This struck me as very interesting due to the fact that its such a known statement in our society but yet most have not taken the time to really see it's true meaning and how deeply it effects our teenage culture in America. This quote is suggesting , as Raby explains in some detail, that adulthood means time is limited and of the essence while the teen years are suppose to be filled with luxuries and chance for mistakes. If this is so, then there is no wonder to why young people act out and/ or rebel the way they do. We have given our younger generations and perhaps some of our own, to act out of the norm. To say whether or not this is good or bad is not really what we should be asking but rather leaning from it and understanding who our teens are and why they act the way they do.


"Many commentators currently frame teenagers as a social problem for parents
and for the rest of society. Here teens are a risk to others, dif!cult, trouble
makers and potential disrupters of households and social peace."

This quote is a better example of what I was trying to explain with the previous one. As a society we do view teens to be difficult but that's not to say we didn't put that on ourselves. In music videos such as Keshas "We R Who We R"   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXvmSaE0JXA  we see this vision of crazy young people rebelling out. This is one artist among many who fuel the flame for young people to believe that young years are meant to be crazy, wild and full of "luxury".

 Youth today are courted as a high-consumer group, and are modelled in the
media as the ideal age, with teenagehood constituting the onset of ‘the best years
of your life’

This is very true!!! & it makes sense. These higher consumer industries work within a world where everything is connected and needs to work together in order to prosper. By targeting a younger group of people who generally have less responsibilities its easier to manipulate them into thinking they want something when they might not know they want it. For example we take a famous artist world wide like Rhianna and we can see that the consumer world uses her as a tool for marketing. Young girls look up to her and want to be likie her so companies will attach their products with her name and soon after money will flow in due to her fans.