OT: The Kids Are All Right
Related Topics
shayter ...@aol.com (SHayter370)
or better than portrayed in the media, according to this: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10904 The Culture War Against Kids Mike Males, AlterNet May 22, 2001 In 1988, R.J. Reynolds introduced its Joe Camel cartoon icon designed to market Camel cigarettes. Everyone from Ralph Nader and anti-tobacco groups to the Centers for Disease Control to conservative tobacco-state lawmakers insisted cigarette ads, especially Joe Camel, lure teens to smoke. Yet, none mentioned the startling fact that in the four years after Joe's advent, every survey showed teenage smoking declined -- down 19 percent among high schoolers from 1988 to 1992, twice as fast as the drop among adults.
Further, the biggest decline came among the youngest group (12-13). It wasn't until 1993, when cigarette ad spending fell and market analysts agreed Joe Camel was old hat, that teenage smoking went up.
Surprisingly, over the last 25 years, teen smoking and smoking initiation rates are negatively ***ociated with cigarette advertising and promotion spending --
that is, the more companies spend, the less teens smoke, and vice-versa. That fact doesn't fit the needs of the "culture war." Researchers and officials expend strenuous effort (including one dubious study that branded nearly all teens as smokers and denied family and peers have any influence) but have never produced evidence that ads make kids smoke.
Or take the Center for Science in the Public Interests' claim that the marketing of sweet-alcohol beverages, like Budweiser's famous bullfrogs, stimulate teenage drinking. So what? Since these alcohol promos appeared in the early 1990s, high schoolers' drunken driving crashes, binge drinking, and alcohol overdoses plummeted. Under today's simplistic "correlation equals causation" ***umption (that is, cultural expression A must be the cause of proximate behavior B), Joe Camel and alcohol ads should be praised for reducing teen smoking and drinking.
"In rising panic, culture warriors left to right indict explicit video games, television, gangsta rap music, R-rated movies, Internet images, and 'toxic culture' for causing teenage violent crime, drug abuse, sex, and unhealthy behavior." But reality doesn't matter to America's raging "culture war," where wild exaggeration and just making things up overwhelm sound social-problem analysis.
Leftist warriors sound like their rightist counterparts.
"Teenage women today are engaging in far riskier health behavior than any prior generation," teenage binge drinking "is at record levels" and smoking is "soaring," as ads foment a rebellious "national peer pressure" to defy parents' values, declares progressive media critic Jean Kilbourne (just like right-wing virtuist William Bennett).
"The profound transformation over the last thirty years in the way children look and act ... seem connected to some of our most troubling and prominent social problems," echoed the conservative Manhattan Institutes Kay Hymowitz, blaming "anticultural forces." Suburban chronicler Patricia Hersch brands the entire younger generation "an insidious...tribe apart." The media's newest youth-violence expert, psychologist James Garbarino, warns the "epidemic ... of lethal youth violence ... has spread throughout American society ... We have twice as many kids who are seriously troubled as we did 25, 30 years ago and those kids have access to a wide range of dark images, on the Internet, through the videos, video games." Clinicians William Pollack and Mary Bray Pipher label today's youth "lonely, troubled, depressed, confused." What's the evidence for these frightening claims? Little more than anecdote and ***ertion. In rising panic, culture warriors left to right indict explicit video games, television, gangsta rap music, R-rated movies, Internet images, and "toxic culture" for causing teenage violent crime, drug abuse, sex, and unhealthy behavior. From 1990 to 2000, rap sales soared 70 percent, four million teen and pre-teen boys took up violent video games (as 1992's Nintendo Mortal Kombat evolved to 1994's bloody Sega version and sequels), and youth patronage of movie videos and Net sites exploded.
As "toxic culture" dysfluences spread, did Lord of the Flies ensue? To the contrary. Perhaps no period in history has witnessed such rapid improvements in adolescent conduct. From 1990 through 1999, teenage violence and other malaise plunged: homicide rates (down 62 percent), rape (down 27 percent), violent crime (down 22 percent), school violence (down 20 percent), property offenses (down 33 percent), births (down 17 percent), abortions (down 15 percent), sexually transmitted diseases (down 50 percent), violent deaths (down 20 percent), suicide (down 16 percent), and drunken driving fatalities (down 35 percent).
Unhealthy youth indexes have fallen to three-decade lows while good ones --
school graduation, college enrollment, community volunteerism -- are up.
Pointedly, the only teenage misbehaviors to increase since 1992, smoking (monthly rates up 13 percent) and drug abuse (overdose deaths up 11 percent, but still low), are the two most subjected to the "culture war's" zero-tolerance interventions. Overall, 80 percent to 90 percent of today's supposedly "depressed, lonely, alienated, confused" younger generation consistently tell surveyors they're happy, self-confident, and like their parents.
These aren't just recent trends; teens as a generation have improving for several decades. Teenage girls, far from being messed up as Kilbourne and Pipher insist, are far safer today from most major risks (violent death, sexually transmitted disease, pregnancy, homicide arrest, suicide-related deaths, traffic deaths, fatal accidents, drug abuse, heavy drinking, smoking, school dropout, etc.) than girls of 20-30 years ago. Teenage binge drinking has dropped 25 percent since the 1970s, smoking declined 20 percent to 50 percent depending on the measure, and drunken driving deaths are down 40 percent --
especially among girls. California, which keeps more precise statistics by race and type of death than other states, records phenomenal declines in teenage suicide, drug abuse, felony crime, and other serious problems over the last 25 years.
The few bad youth trends were related to socioeconomic disadvantage, not culture. The temporary increase in homicide and other violent crime in the late 1980s was not a general youth trend; it was confined to the poorest young men involved in gang conflicts. In 2000, the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention found that law enforcement "policy changes" rather than a real violent crime increase might have sparked more arrests. Contrary to Garbarino and others, murder and other violence by youth is not spreading but becoming more concentrated. Today, America's poorest youths are 40 times more likely to die by homicide and gunfire than the wealthiest, and five-sixths of California's teenage gun deaths occur in just one-tenth of its populated zipcodes. While the mega-threats clarioned by the culture war should have killed every American teenager five times over by now, teens today actually display the lowest violent death rate in 50 years!
NONE of culture warriors' dire claims of epidemics of depressed, alienated, self-destructive, murderous youth are even remotely verifiable -- and younger, pre-teen kids are safer still. No matter. Culture critics aren't concerned with reality, but with sin: blood-spewing video games, bikini-team beer ads, and other repulsive cultural manifestations must be causing damage. Culture warriors' phoniness is revealed by their indifference when real-life killers cite unexpected media triggers: the stalker who shotgunned actress Rebecca Schaeffer worshipped the anthemic Irish band U2, Oklahoma's 15 year-old school shooter idolized the PG movie "Patton," and numerous m***-killers quote the Bible.
The culture war is not just phony, but reactionary. It commodifies powerless groups to project a fearsome image of constantly escalating menace, suppresses discussion of real social inequalities, and promotes repressive government solutions. Youth are the most convenient population upon which to project damage, keeping the debate safely away from questioning adult values and pleasures that form the real influences on youths. In short, the culture war is not about changing genuine American social ills such as high rates of child poverty, domestic violence, and family disarray, but fomenting an endless series of moral panics that obstruct social change.
Political movements to strip youth rights and institutional youth-fixers have proliferated to profit from fear, generating more scary "studies" proclaiming ever "new," "alarming," and "rising" youth crises that are then recycled by culture warriors as if special-interest self-promotion equaled science. The Carnegie Corporation recasts the healthiest, safest generation of young teens age 10-14 ever as a m*** of "grim statistics" and "tragic consequences." (In truth, violent fatality rates among today's younger teens are an astounding 48 percent lower than in the supposedly pastoral 1950s Carnegie extolled).
Carnegie deplored the "freedom, autonomy and choice" among teens for unprecedented "threats to their well-being." Healthier Western nations recognize it's normal for an adolescent to experience depression, anger, lust, body image confusion, anxiety, sexy music, cathartic games, evil media messages, corporate pitches, dangerous temptations, free time with peers, consumer interests, all those untoward growing-up influences about which Americas kiddie-savers spread apocalyptic terror. Even if some kids get into trouble, modern remedies like curfews, Prozac, zero-tolerance, and m*** lockup only make things worse.
American youth do suffer real threats (as opposed to fictional booze marketing and R-rated movies). Fourteen million kids grow up in abject poverty, ...
"WareWolf" dus...@nc.rr.com
Thanks for that, Sparkle. This info will dovetail nicely into an upcoming column, tentatively titled "everything you know is wrong." Dusty
--
This week's Column: See You At The Movies http://www.booksnbytes.com/dustyrhoades/columns/2001/2001_0528.html
toobizz ...@aol.comnospam (TooBizzy42)
I am not sure kids are all right. I am the parent of 2 teenagers. We live in a small town north of Pittsburgh. There is nothing to do here. A typical friday night during the school year is going to the football game and then to a local restaurant for French Fries. It is a nice place to raise kids, or so we thought.
Last week, my 17 yr old daughter conducted an intervention towards best friend.
She was concerned about her friend's heroin use. Yeah. I had noticed the two girls weren't seeing each other or tying up the phone for 2 hours nightly, and when I asked her why, she evaded answering. The drug and alcohol use in our school district is overwhelming. Last week, a boy died from a gunshot wound. He was playing Russian roulette while tripping on acid. Kids from 'nice' families are using heroin. It is easy to find, cheap (for twenty bucks you can buy a 'stamper', a postage stamp size bag of heroin). Kids are using oxy's and ecstacy as well as pot and alcohol....
I feel like the kids aren't all right. In my community anyway.
Ellen 1
Charlie cha...@flash.net
"Mommies all right, Daddies all right...
They just seem a little weird!" Sparkle, why aren't you writing for Adbusters? It's a natural fit!
--
--Charlie.
(( /\ /\)) >o~o< LIFE: embrace the chaos!
(") (")
-- http://www.flash.net/~chally/ --
ell ...@webtv.net
<<Thus, I have always been sceptical o f people suing tobacco companies for damages based on the companies' alleged failure to warn of the dangers of smoking. Whether the companies did or did not warn, the information has always been out there - even in the wilds of Papua New Guinea where I lived and worked for 4 of those years. If primitive natives could rail against the health and other dangers of smoking, I simply don't believe that people in Western nations could possibly have remained in ignorance.) But common sense never did overcome both the 'p***ive' and 'active' peer-group pressure that all young people have to deal with.>> Absolutely right! Is there ANYONE over the age of 5 who doesn't know that smoking is unhealthy?
<<I tend to agree with those who claim that cigarette advertising has little if anything to do with people taking up smoking, but is principally designed to lure existing smokers from one brand to another.
If this is true, it would certainly be ironic because it would go to prove (what seems to me to be self-evident) that cigarette manufacturers tell no more and no worse lies than the anti-smoking fascists.>> Absolutely right! Millions poured into anti-smoking "education" (and drug "education" for that matter, not to mention criminal penalties and interdiction) have accomplished what?
I started smoking because my friends were doing it and it was cool and sophisticated, and because I enjoyed it. TV ads, print ads and billboards had zero influence on what brands I used. Sampling what my friends were smoking did.
And, warning kids about the hideous dangers of marijuana, and the virtually inevitable road to degradation and death to which one puff would lead, (thank you, "Partnership for a Drug Free America") is a prime example of the sort of obvious lying that makes kids distrustf ALL such warnings.
As for banning Joe Camel--a ridiculous approach to curtailing youthful smoking. As absurd as thinking that the wearing of black trenchcoats leads to school shootings, or that a Bugs Bunny tee shirt will persuade kids to eat carrots.
But, like campaigning for school prayer, or posting the 10 Commandments in public institutions, or eliminating sex education, or mandatory reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance, or trying to oust the children of foreign aliens from public schools, these are phony tactics to profess concern for youth without spending any real money on addressing their real problems.
Ellen 2 (mad as heck)
Charlie cha...@flash.net
I really really really really really really really HATE that I feel this way, but two words: Natural Selection!
Make sure your OWN kids are communicating and understanding the real deal out there, so they won't make the same stupid choices available to them and every kid.
It's a real stupid world out there and the easy routes quite often get them killed.
--
--Charlie.
(( /\ /\)) >o~o< LIFE: embrace the chaos!
(") (")
-- http://www.flash.net/~chally/ --
ell ...@webtv.net
<<I am not sure kids are all right. I am the parent of 2 teenagers. We live in a small town north of Pittsburgh. There is nothing to do here. A typical friday night during the school year is going to the football game and then to a local restaurant for French Fries.>> But that sounds like a very nice, very traditional, Andy Hardy kind of Friday night! <<The drug and alcohol use in our school district is overwhelming. Last week, a boy died from a gunshot wound. He was playing Russian roulette while tripping on acid.
Kids from 'nice' families are using heroin. It is easy to find, cheap (for twenty bucks you can buy a 'stamper', a postage stamp size bag of heroin).
Kids are using oxy's and ecstacy as well as pot and alcohol....
? ? ? ? I feel like the kids aren't all right. In my community anyway. >> But, as a therapist, do you have a theory as to why this is going on?
Do you think repeated anti drug messages have the slightest effect on kids, other than teaching them to recite same to anyone who asks them if drugs are dangerous?
"There's nothing to do here" is a powerful reason for kids with rampaging hormones and energy to look for recreation and excitement. Is your community willing to spend money on providing something to do? Or is it focused on inflicting stricter and stricter penalties on the miscreants?
And, do most of the parents both have to work full time to achieve a decent standard of living? Leaving the kids unsupervised sometimes, and with little family interaction many times?
Finally, teenagers always took drugs. The drug of choice, formerly was alcohol. (A legal product for those of age.) Governmental--or any other--attempts to control human appetites for sex, smoking, drugs, alcohol and gambling have been pretty futile. The thing is, now we have surveys, studies, sociologists, pollsters, and worldwide communication resources to report on who's doing--or taking--what.
I don't know if "it's worse." Or if we've just become aware of the way it always was.
Talk is cheap. Finding causes and solutions costs money. The federal government, and many state and local governments, apparently prefer to talk.
Ellen 2 (Have soapbox, will rant)
toobizz ...@aol.comnospam (TooBizzy42)
I totally agree with you, Charlie...I have worked very hard (and my husband, too) to have the communication pathways open and available to the kids. But! I know that kids will always hold their secrets, as they should. I am relieved my daughter has 'gone through' some experimenting and has found this avenue to be dumb and not what she is looking for.
I am not sure if brains have much to do with addiction, though. Too many smart people get addicted to things.
Ellen 1
toobizz ...@aol.comnospam (TooBizzy42)
Hi, Ellen2.....I have spoken with other therapists in town and this heroin thing is taking a lot of the therapy community by surprise. It sort of snuck in. One year ago it was unheard of, more or less. This year, it is almost a commonplace discussion with teenaged clients. Next week I am getting a new case, a teen with a history of experimenting with heroin. (if she is still entrenched, I will refer to a d&a specialist...drugs and alcohol are far beyond my expertise).
I agree with what you have said, and the community is frustrated by the lack of response from the planners. Spend money? I don't think that will happen.
I don't think the cause is from parents working full time. I think it is more from parents being blind and too much into their own sh*t to notice. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
This community is boring to me! I think that is why I read so much and spend time on the internet and exercise often.(healthier choices than using drugs) We plan to leave the area when our family responsiblities to our parents and children are no longer required, but for now we are sort obligated to be responsible.
Ellen 1
Ian spammapsglenzirmapsspamm...@spamerozlsspammaps.invalid
Why is the writer ***uming that causality flows only from advertising to teen cigarette consumption? Isn't it more likely that in times of declining teen smoking tobacco companies would increase spending on advertising? Perhaps the decline would have been more severe if they had not been taking counter-measures - who can say?
I think the writer may be as guilty as those he attacks of showing off selected factoids that tend to help his arguments. Reality is seldom that neat.
Ian ...
shayter ...@aol.com (SHayter370)
I too am a long-term, off-and-on smoker, who started at age 12, despite my dad being Mr. Anti-Smoking in my town (and this was in the 1960s and 70s when smoking was still wildly popular and people smoked in supermarkets and on buses). I bought into that smokin' rebel thing too.
I'm going to try to quit this summer though, with a combination of zyban, leather restraints, and a pair of pajamas I had specially made out of nicotine patches. You still smoking?
As the French say, Tu de lieu sparkle hayter
shayter ...@aol.com (SHayter370)
I love Adbusters. Do you know about No Logo, the Naomi Klein site?
shayter ...@aol.com (SHayter370)
Could be. I think his point is that there are data that dispute the conventional wisdom. None of it is definitive, but it does give a different point of view, and some refreshing points.
I don't know that kids are better or worse off now than before -- haven't had time to run all possible data through the Univac. In some ways, western kids are obviously better off now. They are less likely to die from TB, polio, bubonic plague, etc., more likely to get a high school education, less likely to be racist, sexist and homophobic. On the other hand, they definitely smoke more pot and drink more than their 19th century counterparts who worked in the textile mills before child labor laws were changed. They're more likely to take a weapon to school and use it than kids of previous generations, but less likely to be drafted to go off to war. It could be a draw.
Charlie cha...@flash.net
Oh wow! I was peripherally aware of the book, but hadn't checked it out! Thanks for the heads out!
When people come over they either know what Adbusters is already or they spend 20 minutes silently glued to it!
--
--Charlie.
(( /\ /\)) >o~o< LIFE: embrace the chaos!
(") (")
-- http://www.flash.net/~chally/ --
"Hurricane7" hurrica...@home.com
Mike you are so right in the wanting to business but you also have to be serious about wanting to! Planning and cutting down to a lower tar/nicotine cig is also a good way. I think I probably did it in the same way you did.
I cut down, psyched myself up, and set a realistic day/month and tried to plan (hahaha!) for a stress free time. Was it hard? oh yes baby it was the hardest thing I have done.
Patricia smoke free almost 10 years ...
Jim Barker jbsc11...@pop.cableinet.co.uk
Got any tips on how to lose weight?
Jim
Mary Askew jas...@javanet.com
Caveat lector.
(long rant warning) This piece read like a long advertisement for the author's book and I am not at all sure that he has his facts straight.
I want to see some numbers to back up the ***ertions that rates of teenage smoking and particularly teenage _binge_ drinking are declining.
" From 1990 through 1999, teenage violence and other malaise plunged..." (aside from the problem I have with exactly malaise might be measured), among the questionable numbers he provides without source he maintains that sexually transmitted diseases were down fifty per cent.
That's a cheering number _if true_ but what I want to know is whether the number of incidents of reported sexually transmitted diseases is down 50% or the rate of _increase_ in sexually transmitted diseases is down 50%.
There has been a major decrease in the number of cases of syphllis is this country since 1996 and that could cook the numbers.
And, I would love to know whether Males thinks that because it may be possible to wipe out syphllis in the US in the next decade, we should not pay much attention to the kids involved in the 1996 outbreak in Georgia? ( "Frontline" did a documentary titled "The Lost Children of Rockdale County"- it is worth going to http:// www.pbs.org. and reviewing the report.
If he is going to lay claim to "sound social- problem analysis" he's going to have to do better with his numbers and he's going to have to come to grips with some numbers which dispute his claim that advertising and marketing has no effect on kids.
If that were true, sales of particular brands of soda would not rise during and after big marketing pushes; the number of CD's sold would have no relation to the number of times a given video is shown on MTV; and advertising time-slots for "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" would be lots lower.
And, it would be evidence that American teenagers had developed an immunity to advertising and marketing virtually unheard among adults who have made the most advertised prescription medicines the most widely _prescribed_ medicines and most _profitable_ ever manufactured.
By the way, Patricia Hersh never "brands the entire younger generation as 'insidious...tribe apart.' " as Males claims with coy ellipses. What she describes are kids left essentially on their own to bring themselves and each other up and becoming "a tribe apart" because of adult neglect.
Finally, Male maintains "Healthier Western nations recognize that it's normal for adolescents to experience depression, anger, lust , body image confusion, anxiety, sexy musicm, cathartic games, evil media messages, corporate pitches,dangerous temptations, free time with peers, consumer interests, all those untoward growing up influences about which American kiddie-savers spread apocalyptic terror." That's about as grandiose a statement about other western nations as I've read in a long time. Other western nations do a better job of sex education and in limiting the amount of violent images in media than we do, for starters. And, they sure do a better job of limiting access to guns. In other western nations, the school day is longer than in the US: kids have less "free time" in those countries and parents have far more public support for parenting than in the USA.
That Males is correct that indulging in moral crusades will not address the problems of poverty nor keep guns out of kids' hands, does not mean that he is correct that "Odious cultural influences can't be shown to warp kids..." . It's comforting but it's not factual.
Ideas have power as the 20th century so vividly demonstrated. An odious cultural influence- anti-semitism- combined with the clever marketing of nonsensical ideas about racial purity resulted in a rather large enrollment in Hitler youth organizations and an entire nation joining together to exterminate the Jews. Are we to think that American are somehow immune from odious ideas but other nations are more susceptible?
I'm all for adults accepting fundamental responsibility for kids and I am certainly in favor of facing the real problems of poverty and injustice and guns in this country but to dismiss the effect of cultural influences, aka _ideas_ upon kids or to claim that kids in this country are in good shape seems way off to me.
Compared to what and to whom are kids all right?
cheers, Mary
"William Bradway" brickw...@mindspring.com
-- I think it's not only the amount of free time kids have, but the portion of that time that is unsupervised, and the fact that even with unsupervised time back in the day (I was a "latchkey kid") we didn't have access to 100 channels, cable, videos, MTV, the internet. If you have that now, and there is no adult around to say "Turn that TV (computer, video, CD player) off" then the kids' minds are owned by whatever media they can freely access. As far as public support for parenting, I think that the denigration of the stay-at-home mom has been a significant factor in juvenile problems. I think it generates a fundamental lack of respect for women that is then deplored by women who realize they're not respected.
I think a lot of junk science statisticians operate on PC - conforming the statistics to suit the agenda, rather than objectively looking at the statistics and drawing whatever conclusion they offer. Given time, I can probably find a study somewhere, or patch one together from several sources to "prove" whatever I want to "prove".
Jane Rubino http://www.rujane.com
blind ...@aol.com (BLIND 321)
<< I think that the denigration of the stay-at-home mom has been a significant factor in juvenile problems. >> By your own admission, you were a "latchkey kid," which would by definition mean you did not have a stay-at-home mom. It seems to me that you did not turn into a juvenile delinquent because of this.
I don't think it's whether or not the parent stays home (and let's not just blame the mothers here, but the fathers as well) but whether the parent chooses to parent.
That's the crux of the "youth problem"--parents who do not parent.
KS
mystmo ...@aol.com (Mystmoush)
And sometimes there are just plain ol' rotten kids that grow up to be rotten adults, despite the best parenting in the world. Eileeeen "No One Answer For Anything" from OH
"Melissa Cooper" mmcoo...@alumni.utexas.nospam.net
I totally agree with you here, KS. I see kids day in and day out whose parents do not parent. They may be stay-at-home moms, freelancing dads working from home, doctors, lawyers, pizza delivery drivers, whoever. Rather than pinning it on parents who work, let's put the focus on parents who don't do their other jobs--parent.
Melissa
razz r...@idx.com.au
Leave the Kids alone! God, if I was young now I'd be into so many interesting things and probably most of them would be illegal. Have you lost the ability to remember what is like to be young and immortal?
The baby boomers have turned into a more conservative and hypocritical generation than the one they rebelled against.
Razz
"J K" jean...@nc.rr.com
When you grow up in a small town, 1 x 3 miles, you can't get away with too much. And if you go to the neighboring towns you couldn't win either because of extended families ..... The local police were very effective with: 'does your father know what you're doing/did, etc. ?' I could never breathe.
jeanne ...
Bud Beckman budb...@uswest.net
Seems like everybody has a theory, ***umption or hypothesis. Who knows?
Humans are social animals and tend to gravitate to the group they are comfortable with and suits their interest. Bad, good or indifferent, kids will all end up somewhere and sometimes it may not be the norm; nor the bounds set by what is considered the 'norm'. Let us give them the benefit of the doubt and help when we are able, any kid, even if he does not ask.
Bud
--
"Most problems have simple solutions, and usually they are wrong." --H L Mencken
Carol Dickinson dd...@alaska.net
As a person who spent 15 years in Toughlove, I can tell you that the "normal" teenage peer group of today is radically different, much more violent, dangerous is just about every possible way and harder to cope with even for good kids,. The current teeneage peer group is just plain screwy.
Carol D.
| To Top |