Doomed youth

This post follows on from History of Youth I, and incorporates much of John Savage's research from his book Teenage. The wars truly shaped what adolescence was to become. Three million adolescents were slaughtered during the first World War. By the end of the 'Great War', young survivors were no longer willing to automatically obey their elders. They felt they had earned the right to dictate their own course. They instead offered their sacrifice to a new youth class: ‘the generation that in their millions had fought each other, suffered together, and who would always be bound by that terrible experience.’
   
The insistence on the vitality of youth was central to the Fascist programme. Mussolini expounded the impetuousness and faith of youth. Hitler came to power by invoking youth in a similar fashion. He created the Hitler Youth, endowing German adolescents with a purpose and power against their parents. The Hitler Youth abided by the idea that youth is always right. The cornerstone of the Hitler youth was its organisation: it was run almost entirely by youth leaders in their twenties. Indeed, an SS publication contained the passage: ‘in every year of history one law has invariably proved its unchanging truth: youth will always triumph over age.’
   
In America, youth as a generation was becoming aware of its social power. Attention from media advertisers increased the generation gap between the mature and the young. G. Stanley Hall followed up his massively popular book with an essay titled, ‘Can the Masses Rule the World?’ in which ‘he felt that the one cause for hope in the mass society was an almost worldwide youth movement that was striving toward a new religion…’ Certainly American youth began to feel that they should be involved in society to a greater degree. However, Savage makes the point that youth were confusing their status as vanguard consumers with real political power. This assumption, he says, was based on a fragile prosperity. When the Depression hit, it hit American adolescents hard.
   
Youth became an important part of the American political agenda when, in 1934, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt made the social group her specific concern by sponsoring the formation of the American Youth Congress. Mrs. Roosevelt was, according to Savage, highly aware that America’s provisions for youth were far too limited. She said she was terrified that America might be losing a generation. ‘We have got to bring these people into the active life of the community and make them feel that they are necessary,’ she wrote. Due in part to her contribution, American youth acquired a new value.
   
Adolescence remained a very ambiguous state. Savage quotes one girl of sixteen who complained that she had to lead a sort of Alice in Wonderland type of life - feeling ten inches tall at one moment and more than nine feet tall the next. ‘You are grown up at fourteen if you want a railway ticket, sixteen if you want to get into an ‘A’ film. At home you are a child if it is convenient for them but the moment that they want to put something on you they saw that you are grown up.’ Contributing to their ambiguous status was confusion over their role in society; the end of the war left a generation of youth that had been forced to grow up too quickly for a war they did not start.
   
It was at this time that a magazine launched which pulled together youth identity with democracy, marketing and consumerism. Seventeen magazine celebrated the economic importance of young women. This magazine acted effectively as a guide telling youth exactly what they were supposed to be and how they were supposed to act - it gave them the direction they had been severely lacking, and solidified the existence of a youth or ‘Teenage’ state. In fact, Savage quotes the New York Times, which published an article in June 1945 entitled ‘Teen-Agers are an American Invention,’ which read: ‘Defining young people as “teen-agers”, that is, not ready for the serious matters of adulthood, invites their absorption in the frivolous matters of “teenage culture”, and the leisure and the unprecedented affluence of teenagers predispose them to accept the invitation.’
   
Savage concludes that the many possible interpretations of youth had been boiled down to just one: the adolescent consumer. The teenager was ‘living in the now, pleasure-seeking, product-hungry, embodying the new global society where social inclusion was to be granted through purchasing power.’
   
Savage’s extensive account of the creation of the teenager provides significant support for the argument that youth identity has been constructed to be distanced from politics. Savage shows that from the very start, when the transitory phase between childhood and adulthood became complicated by worldwide events, to the present, youth identity has been and will continue to be a social construct. Indeed, his point about marketing and media having a massive effect on the moulding of youth identity does much to explain why youth have attained the image they have in today’s industrial societies as pleasure-driven consumers, too concerned with their own lives to worry about the political happenings around them. My issue with Savage’s argument is not in what he says but in what he does not say. Savage implies that a global youth culture has emerged. I would agree with this, however, he neglects to include examples from non-industrial cultures. His account is incredibly West-centric, ignoring how youth in cultures around the world were affected by the wars, and how changes in the global economy would have affected their existence and status within their own countries. It seems that Savage is implying that youth as a status was formed predominantly in America and Western Europe and then possibly exported around the world. Research into international youth studies falsifies this implication. Youth, it seems, is a highly researched biological state that is common to human beings around the world.

We will look at these biological implications in a later post.

        

Even Japan, which excels at many things (though politics is not one of them), cannot engage its youth in politics.

According to an article in Friday's Japan Times, voter turnout among Japanese 20-somethings in the 2007 election was a mere 34 percent, compared to the 59 percent overall turnout. This is still better than many countries for youth voter turnout, but the Japanese are perfectionists, so let them be.

A crazy fact - in Japan's 1962 Lower House election, turnout was 67 percent among 20-29 year-olds!

A professor's view of Japanese youth disengagement

The article quotes a professor from Tokyo's Keio University, Takeshi Kohno, who says that youth apathy is a vicious cycle (told you). "Young people are playing into politicians' hands because indifference equals no resistance to whatever lawmakers have up their sleeves," says Kohno, noting that youth disengagement from politics could lead to taxes being raised without young people even realising. Kohno explains that this may be due to the "lifestyle effect" (something we will go into more in future posts) - which basically says that as people age, they become more involved in politics, yet he worries that this generation may not evolve into political beings as their parents' generation did.

How to engage young Japanese

The Internet is suggested as a tool to engage young people (surprise, surprise). In fact, Japan's Prime Minister has his own channel on Japan's version of YouTube. However, oddly, Japanese election law does not allow politicians to utilise the internet for promotion during campaigns, and thus politicians are not allowed to update their official websites when the need for new information is most crucial.

Thus politicians have been exploring other means: Prime Minister Aso is reportedly a big fan of manga - so much so that manga stocks soared upon his inauguration. Manga is hugely popular among Japanese youth, and thus brings him closer to their generation. Similarly, TV stars have become politicians in Japan. But some warn that if these trends continue, young people may not take politics seriously in the future.

Kohno recommends lowering the voting age, which is currently a high 20-year-old cut-off, down to 18.

My thoughts on Japanese youth voter apathy

What surprised me most about this article was that politicians can't engage with the internet during political campaigns. This strikes me as very strange. This was one of the biggest factors in the massive youth turnout during the recent US elections. Youth were able to engage with the politicians online - something that has never before been possible to such an extent.

I, myself, spent a year in rural Japan. And I mean rural Japan. And I remember asking my students how many of them had internet at home. Keep in mind most of these students were the children of farmers. Almost all of them put their hands up.

With so many young people online, and Japan being at the forefront of technological advances, this is surely something that ought to be addressed in order to increase youth voter interest, and thus youth voter turnout.

Oh and uh...leave the manga out of it.

        

The Industrial Revolution shaped youth culture

Youth have played significant roles in historical events. One famous example is the Children’s Crusade of 1212, which saw 50,000 French and German children set out to capture Jerusalem. Though their mission was unsuccessful, the enthusiasm their endeavour sparked encouraged Pope Innocent III to summon the fifth Crusade.

However, the term teenage did not exist in ancient history. Until the late 19th century, the transitory phase from childhood to adulthood was smooth. There was little change between generations in labor and lifestyles, so youth could learn skills directly from their parents. This meant there was no need for a separate place of training.
   
It was after a series of criminal cases involving youth in the late 1800s that societies began to understand that adulthood did not immediately follow childhood. Something existed in between. The Industrial Revolution provoked the beginnings of adolescent culture as a separate stage of life from childhood and adulthood. In his recent book surveying the creation of the teenager, John Savage (2008) gives a relatively thorough account of the emergence of this transitory phase in his book, Teenage (see a Guardian review of this excellent book). I will summarize his findings as I believe it is necessary to understand the history of youth identity in order to understand it at present.
   
Once the Industrial Revolution laid the groundwork for this newly recognised phase, it was the World Wars that solidified it. A trained military leader observed that it was the time from 18 to 24 that was best suited for military service, explaining that during this time, the body is vigorous enough to endure hardships, yet the soldier’s mind remains relatively free and unfettered. He hailed the ‘grain of heedlessness’ peculiar to youth as being an excellent quality in military endeavours. During this time, many began to stress that the strength of a nation lay in its youth. This charged youth with a new importance.
   
In late 19th century America, youth had organised themselves into barely controllable gangs. Savage observes that there seemed to have formed a separate, autonomous world of youth. Juvenile delinquency was reaching an extreme. Education of youth became a priority. However, family survival came before education and therefore youth often took jobs. This meant youth were earning money, and this was the beginning of the young consumer. It did not take long for youth to be targeted by advertisers trying to attract them and their disposable incomes. This was Gilded Age America, and salvation was to be found through consumption. With this in mind, advertisers began to take new psychological ideas a step further - they began to actually shape conscious and unconscious desires. ‘Underlying this ethos was an attitude to identity that reflected the experience of many Americans, cut off from the past: that identity was not simple and fixed but fluid and socially constructed - a personal as well as a national becoming.’ The court system, the military system and advertisers targeting and afflicting their consumer desires were shaping the social construction of youth identity.
   
In the early 20th century, America’s most famous youth expert, G. Stanley Hall, published the result of his five years of research on the topic of adolescence. He called this transitory stage a new birth. His breakthrough was to realise that the adolescent state was not just biologically determined but socially constructed. Youth, he thought, is a volatile condition, an age of natural inebriation without the need of intoxicants, referencing Plato’s definition of youth as ‘spiritual drunkenness’. It was Hall who really began to stir the pot of adolescence, and engage not only Americans but people around the world in conversations and debates about the characteristics, behaviours and definitions of youth.
   
Around the same time, Europe was seeing a reaction to the increase of militarism and industrialism. The result was new youth movements that reverted to the paganism of nature worship. During this period, nature obsession was paramount, and abstinence the norm. The young were clamouring to have their own voice, and youth became a sort of religion. They were frustrated living in a world run by elders, where they could clearly see all that was wrong but were powerless to change it. Savage recounts military leaders channeling youth’s frustration in order to energise them for conflict ‘so that they would willingly participate in the sacrifice that was necessary for the twentieth-century world to begin’. It worked: youth of northern Europe enlisted enthusiastically. Where previous wars had been fought by a small percentage of the youth population, in these wars, they formed the masses. Savage refers to the world wars as a ‘generational holocaust’ that would have unforeseen and long-lasting consequences.
   
Meanwhile in America, the movies found their first market among adolescents. Here emerged another form of consumer-based social control. American youth began to associate independence with spending. Around the time of the new movie-craze, animal dances became the new expression of youth. The bunny hug, the grizzly bear, the kangaroo dip - the animal dances were ‘tailor-made for their psyche’ since as Hall noted, adolescence is the golden period of nascency for rhythm. ‘They voted with their feet. The popularity of the animal dances illustrated the fact that, during the first two decades of the twentieth century, adolescents were beginning to find their own culture in gregarious, exuberant urban entertainments.’ ...

In the next post, we'll look at how the wars drastically influenced the development of youth culture.

        

At the British library the other day, I found some very interesting statistics on young people, and how older generations view them.

The study was done by the Economist Intelligence Unit, for a report sponsored by Genesys called "Maturing with the Millenials". It was conducted over the months of May and June 2008.

The study group is referred to as "Millenials," which is another term for "Generation Y".

Here are the results:

Most distinctive characteristics of millenials according to executives worldwide, (% of respondents)

Ease with technology - 74%
Willingness to challenge convention and standard business practices - 38%
Innovation and fresh ideas - 32%
Interest in building relationships, teams, and networks - 30%
Represents a large and growing market - 28%
Comfort communicating feedback - 20%
High levels of disposable income - 16%
Reliable work ethic - 3%

This study demonstrates a few things. First, it is disappointing that we Gen Ys got such a low "reliable work ethic" score, but I reckon that has to do with our much talked about short attention spans - not our fault, but the result of the fast-paced, sound-byte culture we grew up in. Our ease with technology is no surprise - we've practically grown up with the internet. Just wait until Gen Z enters the work force. They'll practically be half-machine. The coolest thing to come out of this survey was the very high score Gen Ys received on "willingness to challenge convention and standard business practices". This was the second highest cited distinctive characteristic of our generation as stated by executives worldwide.

This is exactly what I am trying to get across. For any real change to happen in politics, young people need to become more involved, because it is us that will change conventions, not the Boomers.

It could have to do with the fact that we are not used to these said "conventions" and thus don't have a need to stick with them, or is it that our generation is actually more progressive?

It's something to think about...

If you are so lucky to have a subscription to eMarketer, you can find the study here. Otherwise, get thee to the British Library!

        

Terms that can imply a variety of meanings will be used throughout this blog. So, we need some definitions!!

First, and most importantly, lets set out the parameters for the subject of this blog– youth. Youth is definitely an elastic category that will be defined according to culture, however for the purposes of study, it is necessary to set out limitations by which it can be analysed. The period of transition from a child to an adult will hereby be referred to as ‘youth’, ‘young persons’, and ‘adolescents’.

The term adolescence is derived from the Latin word adolescere, which means a period of growth and maturity. Therefore, in order to narrow down the ages of adolescence, the time of this growth and maturity must be established. Most indicators point to the time after the age of 15 and before the age of 24. United Nations youth data limits its parameters to these age brackets, as do other studies.

The reasons for the selection of these particular limitations are not without reason. As far back as 1925, G. Stanley Hall, often referred to as the Father of Adolescence, marked the phase as beginning from fourteen and ending at twenty-four. The limitation of the phase to one year later is due to more recent empirical data beginning the phase at 15 years of age.

Another term I'll use often in this blog iis depoliticisation, also referred to as disengagement. These terms are defined as a lack of involvement and interest in formal politics.

By formal politics, it is meant politics that are run by or have a close affiliation with the state. Voting behaviour is an excellent indicator of involvement and interest in formal politics, as it represents one part of a democratic system in which all citizens can take part; in addition, it requires that citizens exhibit some sort of interest in their government’s politics in order to reach a decision on how they will vote. Formal political involvement can be represented in many different capacities, from writing a letter to a state official to running for office. This blog questions the relative absence of young people from the formal political scene.
   
You'll also see the term identity a lot in this blog. The simple definition for this term is one’s sense of self. However, identity is a multidimensional concept. Social scientists distinguish three categories of identity: social, personal, and collective. Social is one’s identification in terms of membership in a social category. Personal is a self-definition, which includes aspects of one’s biography and life experiences that add up to a distinct personal whole. Finally, collective is a sense of being a member of a group, often in contrast to one or more perceived sets of others. It is the first category upon which the identity referred to in this blog will be based.

        

Though it can be little contested that youth identity varies widely across cultures, there is the possibility of youth being united by their unique age-constrained situation in the same way that women are united by their societal limitations such as the ‘glass ceiling’ and the ‘public-private’ divide (also socially constructed). Norman Kiell wrote, as far back as 1969, in The Universal Experience of Adolescence, that ‘the great internal turmoil and external disorder of adolescence are universal and only moderately affected by cultural determinants.’

He argued that adolescence is a psychological state, and that while cultures differ in their traditions and rules, sources of friction affecting youth such as family, marriage, money, jobs, religion, etc., are universal. Kiell accepts that the intensity of the adolescent experience is dependent on a variety of factors that form the general societal attitude towards adolescence, but contends that the human adolescence everywhere is in a socially recognized period of transitional status,

‘Transitional periods by their very nature share many properties in common and generate characteristic constellations of psychological problems that inevitably arise when individuals are confronted by radical changes in their biological status,' he writes.

In addition to being united by their common transitional status, youth are finding themselves connected by evolutions in new media, notably the internet, which allow them to communicate and share information and resources like never before. The increasingly integrated global economy facilitates trade between cultures and further fells borders. Though the idea of globalisation is a debate that this essay will not undertake, there can be little doubt that youth are able to connect on a global scale much more easily than in the past.

Authors Bradford Brown, Reed W. Larson and  T.S. Saraswathi in their book The World’s Youth: Adolescence in Eight Regions of the Globe, use the image of a kaleidescope to describe their conception of the term adolescence. “We spin together the related but distinctive features of life for youth around the world and discern a common image of their movement from childhood into adulthood. At a superficial level the pictures coalesce to give the impression that young people worldwide share the same challenges, interests and concerns.” Here they are referring to the emergence of a global youth culture ‘in which young people - at least in the middle class - wear the same clothing and hair styles, listen to some of the same music, and adopt similar slang expressions…We emphasize the commonality of experience among youth as opposing ideologies falter and economic systems begin to meld.’

Upon comparing cultures of youth across the world in a modern era, it would appear that there is an interesting phenomenon taking place. Youth are connected as never before – not only through the internet, but through their shared desires: materialistic and often professionally. Many youth want to take their lives to the next level. If their parents had little means of providing for them, they often have aspirations to have affluent and successful families. They are all exposed to similar advertising, and the newest innovations in technology often top most young people’s wish lists. They are able to connect over the internet or over telephone or just through the increased ubiquity and ease of traveling. They see that they are different from their parents’ generation and identify with those their own age, who grew up facing similar international affairs and climates.

However, this shared international youth culture has its limits. There also seems to be a very strong nationalism that rears its prominent head in the youth movement. For example, in India, there is a very strong desire to identify with a global youth culture (they are particularly fond of American materialism), combined with an overlying desire to maintain a strong sense of ‘Indianness’. This is referred to by Salman Rushdie as the “chutnification” of identity. It exists not only in India, but in many cultures.

Therefore, it can be argued that there is a common youth culture forming, and it is two-tiered. The first is the connection with youth on a global level – an understanding that the new generations have strong ties across cultures. The second is a youth connection on the national level – one that is perhaps a closer-knit connection for more values, and common identity are shared within the same borders.

        

This post looks at the adolescent demographic, and then explains some theories on the importance of youth to be fully integrated into civil society, and, indeed, the benefits that such involvement could bring.

In 2005, our world held 1,111,762,000 youth aged 15-24. It is predicted that this number will rise to 1,149,180,000 by 2015. The majority of these young people (85 percent) are located in less developed nations. China, India, and the US are the three countries with the largest youth populations, respectively. Life expectancy for the world’s youth for both sexes is 57.5 years. See this presentation to verify these numbers and more.

Adolescents (15-24) make up over a sixth of the world’s population. In addition, the majority of these youth are located in what are arguably the three most powerful countries in the world. Youth being such a massive portion of our species, their political participation is critical for society on many fronts. John Helgerson, a former deputy director of intelligence for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, has claimed that ‘the inability of states to adequately integrate youth populations is likely to perpetuate the cycle of political instability, ethnic wars, revolutions, and antigovernment activities that already affect many countries.’

While Mr. Helgerson's remarks were referring mainly to the fact that bulges in youth population can increase the likelihood that a country will experience armed conflict, his statement can be applied to a broader evaluation of society’s construction of youth identity and how this shapes their attitudes and behaviours throughout their lives, thus shifting the balance of citizen participation which could result in the effects Mr. Helgerson describes, as well as other less dramatic, but possibly equally destructive, effects.
   
Young people need to have the chance to influence the structure of society. Hartmann and Trnka, in their book Democratic Youth Participation in Society: A concept revised, argue that by postponing the possibility of young people’s participation in the relevant structures of society, ‘there is the danger of a negative feedback loop which limits societal development to the historically approved codex of past generations, whereas the ideas and beliefs of the young as a reaction to the needs of the present society are hidden in educational institutions at the margin of society.’
  
In other words, societal innovation and advancement is limited in the absence of youth involvement.
   
Indeed, the inexperience of youth has the potential to add much needed vitality and innovation to political systems. Karl Mannheim, in his classic essay ‘The Problem of Generations,’ argued that youth had a ‘fresh contact’ with their social order, seeing it from new perspectives. He argued that youth are less likely to have responsibilities like marriage, children and permanent careers, and feel less bound to social responsibilities and roles than do their elders. Therefore, he said, they are freer to explore ideas, values, and political views.

        

In this post, we'll look at evidence of youth depoliticising across cultures.

The vast majority of reading on youth participation in politics shows that there has been a steady decline in youth participation and interest in politics worldwide. A Hartmann and Trnka report in Democratic Youth Participation in Society (1985) shows that many young people in Germany, Hungary, and Portugal claim to have no interest in politics or show a pronounced distrust in the activities of politicians.

Youth sections of political parties in Belgium have lost nearly two-thirds of their membership since the 1980s. Swedish youth organizations have a quarter the membership they did in 1972.

A BBC report shows that in the UK, only 39 percent of eligible voters under 24 actually vote. In an attempt to encourage voter participation, it was suggested that allowing young people to vote through text messages could make elections more accessible, but the youth surveyed were not convinced that it would be worth the 10p it would cost to vote.

The World Values Survey shows that, taken as an average across all European cultures, only one-third of young people are interested in politics, and three-quarters said they did not think politics was important for their lives. Only a minority of young people actually engaged in politics - 28 percent had signed a petition, 22 percent had attended a demonstration, and nine percent had joined boycotts. Only six percent belonged either to a political party, a trade union, an environmental organization, or a professional association.

But it is not just in Europe that this phenomenon exists.  Young people in Sierra Leone, where elders often use the term ‘youth’ with disdain, participate in politics significantly less than their elders.

In addition, only 22 percent of 18-20 year-old Canadians voted in their country’s 2000 election.

A 1996 survey showed that 60 percent of young Filipinos were ‘not interested in politics,’ and only 14 percent had ever participated in government-sponsored youth programs.

Even the aforementioned World Bank document, which highlights the increasing numbers of youth politicization in certain areas of the world, admits that, ‘overall, young people are voting at lower rates than they did in previous generations.’

There is little doubt as to what is happening. Plenty more evidence exists to this effect, and we will get more in to detail as the year goes on. We will also look at the very important question of how to deal with this unfortunate phenomenon.

        

The issue of youth rights is evolving into a major debate on a similar scale to that of women’s rights. Youth as a social category separate from children and adults is a relatively recent phenomenon. Unlike women, who are biologically different from men, the youth category is one that has been created to fit what was formerly an ambiguous space of time where a child grew into an adult.

Philosophers, scientists, and writers alike have been speculating about the meaning, motivation and consequences of youth for centuries. There have been certain qualities constantly attributed to youth such as passion, aggression, and impetuousness, which have been viewed in both negative and positive lights.

The adolescent is not yet fully understood. Speculation about the young adult brain has led to debate about whether adolescents are biologically ready to make tough decisions. For this reason there is much debate about the role of youth in society. Experts are in disagreement as to whether the qualities of youth can be beneficial for politics, or detrimental.

Significant political events caused youth to rally together and fight for their own rights and beliefs, discounting any theories about their inability to process complex political matters. Indeed, youth have effected significant change in world politics. However, their real participation in decision-making continues to be denied. They are accorded a kind of superficial version of rights and responsibilities that essentially amounts to tokenism.

Youth are often stereotyped as being lazy and self-absorbed. This adultism that pervades politics distances them from the decision-making sphere and can drive them to take on the stereotypes they are accorded. The cycle is self-perpetuating. This has the effect of decreasing youth political participation. This blog will look at the extent to which youth are disengaged from the formal political arena and the reasons why the gap is widening.

I hope to make the phase of adolescence seem clearer and more defined, for it is only through this understanding that we can begin true discourse on the topic.

        

Hello everyone,

I am very excited about this blog.

I have just completed a Masters degree and wrote my dissertation on the topic of youth and politics. It was called The Disengaged Generation.

Basically, it was about youth across the globe becoming increasingly distanced from politics.

It was fascinating stuff. There is actually loads of information out there on the topic, but it would appear that not many people have actually taken the time to aggregate the information into a comprehensive format. So that is what this blog is going to attempt to do.

If you don't know anything about the topic of youth (ie. generation X, Y, Z, adultism, the creation of the Teen Ager, etc.), don't fret. I am going to make it my mission to make this a survey of the entire topic, so that anyone following it will leave with a fantastic grasp on the situation at hand.

Here is a survey of some of the topics I will be exploring:

• The Obama Factor - what difference has it made in youth participation?
  
• Youth and the Internet - how has the internet changed youth identity?
  
• New Generations - X, Z and sometimes Y
• Global Youth Culture - does it exist?
• History of the Adolescent - When and how did the "Teen Ager" become a separate stage of life?
• Theories of Youth Disengagement - I'm a constructivist at heart but will give the other theories their fair say
• Young Leaders - Gandhi, Buddha; what made them so special?
• Youth Identity - What is it? How is it changing?
• Influential Youth Thinkers - From G. Stanley Hall to Hitler
• Past Generations - The Boomers, the Silent Generation and the "Greatest" Generation (their words, not mine)
• Major Youth-led Events - The ones that changed the world: Tiananmen, India's Independence, the pullout of Vietnam

And (as they say on TV) much MUCH more!!

Stay tuned