Tag: youth

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Seniors like how they look

From Gallup.org: “Though many may pine for the physical appearance they had in their younger years, America’s seniors are the most confident in their looks. Two-thirds (66%) of Americans aged 65 and older “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that they always feel good about their physical appearance, compared with 61% of 18- to 34-year-olds. Middle-aged Americans (54%) are the least likely to report feeling good about their appearance.images-1

“For both men and women, confidence in their physical appearance is lower in middle age than in young adulthood, yet gets higher during their senior years.

“At nearly every age level, men are more likely than women to feel good about their appearance, though this margin narrows among older age groups. More than two in three men aged 18-24 (69%) say they feel good about their physical appearance, compared with the 57% of women in the same age group — a 12-percentage-point gap. But by retirement age, the gap shrinks to a four-point difference: 64% of men feel good about their looks compared with 60% of women.

“This analysis is based on more than 80,000 interviews with U.S. adults from Jan. 1-June 23, 2014, as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Specifically, Americans are asked to rate their level of agreement with the statement, “I always feel good about my physical appearance,” on a five-point scale where five means strongly agree and one means strongly disagree. Overall, more than half of Americans, 58%, agreed that they always feel good about their looks, answering with a four or five. Far fewer disagreed that they always feel good about their appearance, with 15% answering with a one or two. About one in four Americans (27%) neither agreed nor disagreed, responding with a three. Continue reading “Seniors like how they look”

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Millennials reject gender

More than two-thirds of millennial say gender doesn’t matter as it once did. Now conventional gender roles = conformity.images-1

As USA Today reports, “They’re young. They like things their way. They don’t like stereotypes and steer clear of conformity. Because young people ages 34 and younger are legions larger than the dominant-until-now-Baby Boom generation, their likes and dislikes command lots of attention. High on their list is gender identity — a concept they’re increasingly resisting.

“Gender stereotypes are conformity,” says Jamie Gutfreund, chief strategy officer of The Intelligence Group, a consumer insights and strategy group based in Los Angeles whose summer/fall 2013 report about gender paints a vivid portrait of younger generations’ attitudes.

“The survey reveals that “gender is less of a definer of identity today than it was for prior generations. Rather than adhering to traditional gender roles, young people are interpreting what gender means to them personally.”As a result, gender rules and traditional stereotypes are fading. From college housing to clothing, language and parenting, gender-neutral increasingly is the preferred position. Generation Y alone is estimated at 80-90 million in the USA (compared with 75 million Baby Boomers) and 2 billion worldwide. It’s growing because of immigration. And because they think and behave the same globally, experts say these young people will change society in profound ways.The online survey measured opinions of a nationally representative sample of 900 people ages 14-34, two-thirds of them 18-24 (termed Generation Y or Millennials), and the remainder 14-17 (often termed Generation Z).

“Among the findings:

• More than two-thirds agree that gender does not define a person the way it once did.

• 60% think that gender lines have been blurred;

• Nearly two-thirds say their generation is pushing the boundaries of what it means to be feminine and masculine. As a result, 42% feel that gender roles today are confusing.

“You can be one thing one day and another the next,” Gutfreund says. “In previous generations, there was no going back and forth. Now, there’s incredible fluidity to everything.”

“Fluidity” is exactly how generational expert Bruce Tulgan, founder of a management, research and training company in New Haven, Conn., describes what he’s observed.

“They would say not just men and women; it’s everyone along the spectrum. Everybody has his or her own gender story,” he says. Continue reading “Millennials reject gender”

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The internship treadmill

Like other 20-somethings seeking a career foothold, Andrew Lang, a graduate of Penn State, took an internship at an upstart Beverly Hills production company at age 29 as a way of breaking into movie production. It didn’t pay, but he hoped the exposure would open doors.

“When that internship proved to be a dead end, Mr. Lang went to work at a

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 second production company, again as an unpaid intern, reports the New York Times “When that went nowhere, he left for another, doing whatever was asked, like delivering bottles of wine to 27 offices before Christmas. But that company, too, could not afford to hire him, even part time.

“A year later, Mr. Lang is on his fourth internship, this time for a company that produces reality TV shows. While this internship at least pays him (he makes $10 an hour, with few perks), Mr. Lang feels no closer to a real job and worries about being an intern forever. “No one hires interns,” said Mr. Lang, who sees himself as part of a “revolving class of people” who can’t break free of the intern cycle. “Is this any way to live?”

“The intern glass ceiling isn’t limited to Hollywood. Tenneh Ogbemudia, 23, who aspires to be a record executive, has had four internships at various New York media companies, including Source magazine and Universal Music Group.

“In any given month, I’d say I apply to at least 300 full-time jobs,” she said, noting these attempts were to no avail. “On the other hand, I can apply to one or two internship positions a month and get a call back from both.”Call them members of the permanent intern underclass: educated members of the millennial generation who are locked out of the traditional career ladder and are having to settle for two, three and sometimes more internships after graduating college, all with no end in sight. Like an army of worker ants, they are a subculture with a distinct identity, banding together in Occupy Wall Street-inspired groups and, lately, creating their own blogs, YouTube channels, networking groups and even a magazine that captures life inside the so-called Intern Nation. It is a young, rudderless community that is still trying to define itself. “I’m just wondering at what point how many internships is too many,” said Lea, who received a master’s degree from Parsons, the New School for Design two years ago and aspires to work as a magazine art director. (She was allowed to use only her first name to avoid jeopardizing a current job application.) So far, her résumé has been limited to three internships — planning events for teenagers at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, compiling news clippings for a public relations agency in New York, and being the “fetch-the-coffee girl” at an art gallery.While feeling trapped inside what she calls a “never-ending intern life,” Lea satisfies her creative impulses by editing a food and drinks column at a lifestyle blog, selling coral fan necklaces on Etsy, and starting a charity to teach children about “responsible” street art. She wonders if she should surrender to a fourth internship or settle for an office job outside her chosen field. Continue reading “The internship treadmill”

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Why youth obsession is bad for business

“Why does the TV business hate people over 50?” That’s one of the most common questions I get asked by viewers.images

This is not an idle query, writes Scott Collins in the Los Angeles Times

“The TV industry, like much of corporate America, chases youth. That pursuit has a major impact on programming. It helps explain why a low-rated show such as NBC’s “Community” can keep going (and going, and going …) while older-skewing shows are usually toast. Even if they have more total viewers.

“So now you know why “Harry’s Law,” the legal drama with sexagenarian Kathy Bates, is no longer on the air. NBC executives said as much when they canceled the show.

“Most TV networks are chasing viewers in the “demo,” or the demographic ages 18 to 49 as measured by Nielsen. But how and why did that happen? And is that even rational?

“The first question is easier to answer. During the early years of commercial TV, Nielsen estimated total audiences. It sounds ridiculous in our tech-savvy world, but back then Nielsen’s measurements depended largely on written diaries that members of each household in the survey were obligated to fill out. That’s how we know, for example, that 73-million people watched The Beatles on Ed Sullivan’s show in February 1964. It’s also why network TV aimed for mass audiences and maintained conventions such as a “family hour,” when parents and kids could sit down together to watch shows. This led critics to charge that executives were programming a “lowest common denominator” medium — a “vast wasteland,” in the timeless phrase of former FCC chief Newton Minow — that weeded out minority views and tastes. But it was how TV worked for 40 years. Continue reading “Why youth obsession is bad for business”

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10% of young adults experience sexual violence

A report published today in JAMA Pediatrics reveals that nearly one in 10 teenagers and young adults has coerced or forced a peer to engage in some form of sexual activity. As summarized in WebMD,

“The study of more than 1,000 young people aged 14 to 21 found that 9 percent reported forcing or pressuring a peer to engage in sexual activity. They admitted to coercive sex, sexual assault and rape, most often involving a romantic partner.

“Perpetrators were five times more likely to have been exposed to X-rated media that showed a person being physically hurt during sex, the study found.

“From a public health perspective, the violent pornography is something we need to be concerned about in terms of our young people,” said study co-author Michele Ybarra, president and research director of the Center for Innovative Public Health Research in San Clemente, Calif.

 “The young people also recounted a disturbing lack of consequences for their actions.“Two out of three of our perpetrators said no one found out, so they didn’t get in trouble,” Ybarra said.

“Further, nearly nine out of 10 perpetrators said they felt the victim bore full or partial responsibility. The study involved a national sample of nearly 1,100 young people and focused specifically on perpetration of coercive and forced sexual behavior.”We know a bit about youth who are victims of sexual violence, but we don’t know much at all about youth as perpetrators,” Ybarra said. “It’s important we know more if we’re going to reduce the sexual-violence rate.”

 

More at: http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20131007/1-in-10-young-adults-admits-to-sexual-violence?src=RSS_PUBLIC

 

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The New San Francisco

It’s not just the 22 construction cranes dotting the San Francisco skyline and 5,000 pricey condos and apartments under construction, AlterNet reports.

“Nor is it the fleet of private buses ferrying 14,000 tech workers to Silicon Valley, or the explosion of restaurants and boutiques, or rents doubling, or the spike in evictions, or home sales now averaging $1 million. imgres

What’s happening to San Francisco goes beyond the accelerating gentrification in multicultural districts like the Mission or Mayor Ed Lee minimizing affordable housing woes. The city that’s been a magnet for free spirits and immigrants and working-class people for decades seems to be losing its famous heart. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that its heart is being replaced by a software update.

The best encapsulation of this sea change, which is driven by a booming tech sector that’s generated 13,000 jobs since early 2012, might be this blog from former San Francisco Bay Guardian editor Tim Redmond, who begged the techie beneficiaries to stop treating the city he loves like a “rich kid’s playground.”

“When a 1990s tech-startup guy who admits he was part of the last generation of gentrification is now so fed up with the new arrival of high-paid techies that he’s ready to leave, it’s pretty serious,” he wrote in a piece titled, “The Mission ‘douchebags.’” He ended, “I know, I’m an old fart who is not rich and never will be… But if you’re lucky enough to be rich in your 20s, show some respect.”

“All economic booms bring dislocations, but what San Francisco is undergoing seems deeper because unlike past decades, when hippies arrived in the 1960s and gays came a decade later, locals were not displaced. That distinction has also been noted by longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte and by author Rebecca Solnit, another longtime resident, who recently wrote, “The problem is that we understand Silicon Valley’s values all too well, and a lot of us don’t like them.” Continue reading “The New San Francisco”

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The kids may not be all right

Despite recent gains against substance abuse by American teens, hundreds of thousands of them use marijuana and alcohol on a given day, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.images

On a typical day, WebMD reports, “an estimated 881,684 kids aged 12 to 17 smoke cigarettes, 646,707 use marijuana and 457,672 drink alcohol, according to a report by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

“The number of teens smoking pot on a given day could almost fill the 250,000-seat Indianapolis Speedway two and a half times, the report pointed out.

“This data about adolescents sheds new light on how deeply substance use pervades the lives of many young people and their families,” SAMHSA administrator Pamela Hyde said in an agency news release. “While other studies indicate that significant progress has been made in lowering the levels of some forms of substance use among adolescents in the past decade, this report shows that far too many young people are still at risk.”

“The report also said that on an average day:

  • 7,639 kids aged 12 to 17 drink alcohol for the first time,
  • 4,594 use an illicit drug for the first time,
  • 4,000 use marijuana for the first time,
  • 3,701 smoke cigarettes for the first time,
  • 2,151 misuse prescription pain relievers for the first time. Continue reading “The kids may not be all right”
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Wayward white youth

A frightening and violent mob swept through the normally quiet seaside community of Huntington Beach last night following a surfing competition in the area. Businesses were vandalized and looted, portable toilets overturned, and brutal fistfights waged right out in the open. It was an ugly display and a sad day for California. But more than that, it was a reminder that we must begin to seriously consider the values of our thuggish white youth.

Many people don’t want to hear this kind of tough love, of course. They’d like to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that all white children are as sweet and harmless as Taylor Swift. But the reality is that the statistics tell a different story. For instance, according to research from the Department of Justice, 84 percent of white murder victims are killed by other white people. Similarly, white rape victims tend to be raped by other whites . White-on-white violence is a menace to white communities across the country, and yet you never hear white leaders like Pastor Joel Osteen, Bill O’Reilly, or Hillary Clinton take a firm stance against the scourge.

More important than white politicians are the white parents. I’d like to ask the caregivers of the children in these videos what they’ve been doing. When did so many white parents fall asleep at the wheel? You can complain about poor schools all you’d like, but the fact of the matter is that it’s the parents of these children who are letting them leave the house looking like slobs in their baggy board shorts and Hollister t-shirts. It’s the parents of these kids who are letting them listen to violent, self-destructive trash like “Anarchy in the UK” or “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”—performed loudly by noted conservative rocker Johnny Ramone. Continue reading “Wayward white youth”

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Young and downwardly mobile

Young working-class men and women are trying to figure out what it means to be an adult in a world of disappearing jobs, soaring education costs and shrinking social support networks. Today, only 20 percent of men and women between 18 and 29 are married. They live at home longer, spend more years in college, change jobs more frequently and start families later.

Before reading any further, a spoiler alert: today’s New York Times carries no few than four articles about the poor prospects for young people, the skyrocketing costs of education, the uselessness of a college degree. That said:

“For more affluent young adults, this may look a lot like freedom. But for the hundred-some working-class 20- and 30-somethings I interviewed between 2008 and 2010 in Lowell and Richmond, Va., at gas stations, fast-food chains, community colleges and temp agencies, the view is very different.

“Lowell and Richmond embody many of the structural forces, like deindustrialization and declining blue-collar jobs, that frame working-class young people’s attempts to come of age in America today. The economic hardships of these men and women, both white and black, have been well documented. But often overlooked are what the sociologists Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb in 1972 called their “hidden injuries” — the difficult-to-measure social costs borne by working-class youths as they struggle to forge stable and meaningful adult lives. Continue reading “Young and downwardly mobile”

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Giroux: The War on Youth

In his new book America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth?, Henry A. Giroux  exposes the apostles of education “reform” who mistake corporatizing the classroom for preparing young people for a robust, productive democracy.  Giroux is interviewed in TruthOut, as briefly excerpted below:imgres-1

Leslie Thatcher for Truthout: You have authored over 50 books, all of which deal with education in one form or another and most of which deal with the problems of youth; how would you define the specific focus of America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth?

The focus of this book is on the growing economic, political and cultural gap that has emerged in the United States between political leaders elected to govern and the citizenry whom they represent. It is also about the pernicious gap between ruling financial and corporate elites and the rest of society and how it has intensified the growth of a political and cultural landscape that is as anti-intellectual and devoid of a culture of questioning as it is authoritarian. I argue in this book that the deepening political, economic and moral deficit in America is inextricably connected to an education deficit, which is currently impacting young people most of all by starving them of both the economic resources and the formative educational experiences required to help them develop into knowledgeable and engaged citizens. The book begins with the premise that the crisis of schooling cannot be disconnected from the economic crisis – fueled by endless wars, a bloated military-industrial complex, and vast disparities in wealth and income. I argue throughout the book that as the United States proceeds headlong on a reckless course of civic illiteracy, which serves to legitimate and bolster a malignant gap in income, wealth and power, the end point is sure to entail the destruction of current and future possibilities for developing the educational institutions and formative culture that advance the imperatives of justice and democracy. Continue reading “Giroux: The War on Youth”

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“It gets better” study findings

imgresIt really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time, reports a story today in HuffPost.

“The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls. The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States. Continue reading ““It gets better” study findings”

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Life on the street

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By some estimates, LGBT youth account for as many as 40 percent of young people on the streets. Huff Post today featured a story on this matter, along with an accompanying documentary short of interviews and expert discussion. As it begins:

“Homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth may represent a disproportionate number of people living on the streets and in shelters –- but despite this fact, they are not alone.

“A number of advocates and young LGBT people who’ve experienced homelessness firsthand appeared on HuffPostLive to talk about the unique problems facing that segment of the community in particular.

“You have the classic situation where a young person comes out and gets kicked out,” said Kate Barnhart, director of New Alternatives, a homeless LGBT youth advocacy organization in New York. “But then you also have a fair number of young people who become homeless for socioeconomic reasons.”

 

See, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/homeless-lgbt-youth_n_2411884.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

 

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Youth in revolt

Young people made a critical difference in the recent U.S. election, turning out to in massive numbers to reject the misogynism, homophobia, and ethnocentrism of the Republican platform. Put another way, the recent election smashed the myth of a dysfunctional and alienated youth population.

Henry A. Giroux takes up the new spirit of activism and resistance in among teenagers and young adults in his new book Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future (Paradigm, 2012).   In the book Giroux describes how American youth have demonstrated en masse about a variety of issues ranging from economic injustice and massive inequality to drastic cuts in education and public services. Youth in Revolt chronicles the escalating backlash against dissent and peaceful protest Continue reading “Youth in revolt”