Framing Youth



In her article titled, Framing Youth, Bogad explores the socially constructed concepts surrounding adolescents today. Due to the history surrounding the social construction of teenage hood and  main stream media today, youth are often considered to be hormone driven, risk takers, and immature. The chapter describes that when the term Adolescents was accepted as scientific category by experts, youth were characterized as “...awkward, vulnerable creatures, innocent victims of raging hormones, rampant insecurity, and fervent idealism (which often bordered on arrogance), characterizations that were apparently linked to puberty and a lack of experience” Palladino (1996). The problem with this characterization is that it provides no distinction of any of the teenagers it categorizes. Youth are lumped into one big group and viewed as less capable, intelligent, and mature. They are effectively outcast-ed, with no hope of redemption until the day of the eighteenth birthday or in some cases their twenty first. All of this has been normalized to such a degree that it can viewed as the "common sense" surrounding youth. However this framework prevents youth from building leadership skills, obtaining guidance, and gaining the skills necessary to become independent sooner. Rather than trying to teach youth the skills of a "mature" adult such as banking, paying bills, cooking etc., many adults assume that they do not want to learn these skills and that they are only concerned with sex, drugs and other activities. Hine (1999) supports this with his theory of the artificial concept of the teenager. He describes this further in the text;"The artificial concept of the teenager” and the problems of the age-based category of youth. All of these dominant discursive frameworks help to shape what we (think we) know about youth today, and thus influence both policy and practice in schools, families and youth spaces. As a youth development professionals we must be aware of all the stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding youth, and realize the full impact it has on not only their personal well being but their academic development. Watch the video above for some examples of how every teenager is different, and that is okay.
 

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 13, 2017 at 5:49 PM

    Great read Daysha:) I liked that you talked about how these frameworks influence policy in YDEV spaces. That is something I hadn't really thought about, but you're absolutely right. The assumptions we have of youth and teenagers is definitely going to affect the types of programs we are going to make for them.

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  2. UnknownSeptember 14, 2017 at 7:11 AM

    I am in agreement with you on the fact that "youth are lumped into one big group and viewed as less capable, intelligent, and mature." Society fails to realize that looking at youth as a whole does not give the full descriptions of who youths are individually.

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