Teens
For insight into contemporary high schoolers, see: Murray
Milner,
Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of
Consumption. With permission granted by the author
to restructure his standard paragraphing into smaller units, and to add spacing
and some bold font for easier online reading, I have reprinted some of
the relevant passages of Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids within
this site. I recommend readers get the book to see the whole context.
Teenagers( and their parents) may be more interested in Milner's
chapters filled with richly detailed description, analysis and examples of "Fitting
In, Standing Out, and Keep Up" (about Jocks, Preps, Rockers, Nerds,
Geeks, Gangstas -- and their clothes, language, music, rituals, and territory
concerns); or in "Steering Clear, Hanging Out, and Hooking Up"
(involving friends, dating , clubs, and partying); or their status behaviors
(put-downs, gossip, and "small cruelties"); Educators may be more
concerned with the variations found in different types of schools (large, small,
urban, suburban, private) and the author's conclusions and recommendations;
but, my interest relates to the relation of advertising and commercialism
in the schools.
For some realistic straight talk, and some helpful prescriptive
advice, about time and money and many other things, see Marshall
Brain, The
Teenager's Guide to the Real World . Over 20 chapters from the book are
available free online. Below is the opening chapter from
the book:
Chapter 0: You Get to Design Your Life
How many times have you heard the question, "What do you want to be when
you grow up?" As a teenager you tend to hear this question a lot, but you
have probably heard it since you were five years old. It is often connected to
questions like, "Where do you want to go to college?" and "What
will be your major?" and "What are you good at?"
You may also be asking yourself the same questions. You may find that you are
sitting around one day minding your own business when the question, "What
am I going to do with my life?" flits through your brain. And that is a good
thing. You are in a position of incredible power when you ask yourself questions
like, "Who am I?" and "Who do I want to become?" You are the
only person who can answer these questions. You, and only you, get to choose exactly
who you will become in the future.
Think about that for a minute. The power of these questions lies in the fact that
you can choose to become anything you want! Imagine becoming anything. Think about
the freedom that gives you. The great thing about being a teenager is that you
are a blank slate. You can pick almost any answer to the question, "Who do
I want to become?" at this point in your life, and you are in a unique position
to make it happen. You can, to a large extent, design your life completely from
scratch. You get to make thousands of choices that will determine exactly who
you will become as an adult. Choices like these:
* What will I choose for my career?
* How much money will I make, and why?
* Who will I marry?
* How many children will I have?
* How will I dress?
* Where will I live?
* What kind of car will I drive?
* Will I go to college, and if so which one will I attend?
* What will be my major in college?
* What will be my attitude toward life?
* What will be my values?
* Will I smoke? Will I take drugs?
* What sports do I want to play?
* And so on...
As you can see, the answers to all of these questions are wide open for any teenager.
You could decide today, "By age 25 I will be an architect in Hawaii, and
I will drive a red Corvette." And you could make that happen. There is absolutely
nothing to stop you. You could decide on just about any course and make it happen
in just the same way. At no other point in your life do you have the absolute
freedom of choice that you have as a teenager. That is not to say that you cannot
change your mind later. You can completely redesign your life from scratch at
age 30 or 40 if you find that to be appropriate. It simply is a fact that as a
teenager all of these questions are wide open and you get to select the initial
answers for all of them from an infinite pool. That is a lot of freedom.
The average teenager often faces three significant problems in making all of these
choices:
* Most teenagers never realize that they have total control of their lives.
The questions "Who am I?" and "Who do I want to become?" never
quite make it up into the average teenager’s conscious mind, so life just
sort of bumbles along letting things happen randomly. These teenagers miss a great
opportunity because they miss the possibility of becoming anything they want.
Your range of options is wide open as a teenager. Much of this book is devoted
to helping you understand your options and showing you how to make the most of
the freedom you have as a teenager.
* Most teenagers do not understand the realities of the world into which they
are about to enter. American society is an exciting but tough environment.
It requires quite a bit of knowledge to become successful in this environment.
As a teenager you are fairly naïve about the real world (see Chapter 2).
Most teenagers also live in a protected dreamland created by their parents (see
Chapter 1). That is probably hard (or impossible) for you to imagine, but it is
definitely the case. It is easy for you to make mistakes that can affect you negatively
for the rest of your life. Therefore, the first part of this book shows you the
fundamental facts of life that you must use as your base of reality. The rest
of the book shows you what you need to know in order to succeed in American society,
and in life.
* Most teenagers do not believe in themselves, nor do they believe that there
is any way to improve their odds of success. No matter what path you choose
to follow in your life, you have to be confident and believe in yourself in order
to succeed. You also need to learn key facts and techniques that will improve
your odds of succeeding. One of the best ways to get started is to simply ask
the people around you for their thoughts and ideas. Another is to experiment,
and your time as a teenager is a great time for that sort of experimentation.
As a teenager you can explore a whole set of options to learn more about yourself
and the world around you. You can pick something you really want to do well and
you can go do it right now. You don’t have to amorphously think, "Acting
might be fun…" Instead say, "I am going to be an actor!" and
then pursue it. You can audition for acting parts. You can find some friends and
do plays together. You can write and film your own movies (see Chapter 6 for details).
One of the great things about being a teenager is that you can pursue many things
at once. You can also afford to fail, and you don’t have to worry about it
if you do. Head in a direction and see what you find there. That is one of the
most important messages in this book.
Much of this book discusses concepts and techniques that you can use to become
informed, confident and successful more quickly. You can also use it to make better
and more effective choices. The book is divided into seven sections that help
you to understand the fundamental facts of life and the world around you. Sections
in this book include:
* Part 1—The Hard Facts. These are the basic facts of life that you
must understand before you can do anything else. Most of these are hard because
they will force you to break down fundamental assumptions that you may have about
yourself and your world right now. Start with them.
* Part 2—Facts About Jobs and Careers. You will have a job—that
is a fact of life. By planning ahead you can get a job that is both high-paying
and enjoyable.
* Part 3—Facts About Love and Marriage. You might have noticed that,
as a teenager, your brain and body seem to be obsessed with members of the opposite
sex. This section explains "the facts of life" and what they mean to
you both now and in the future.
* Part 4—Facts About Your Attitude and Values. You are in total control
of your attitude and your values. You can choose to be happy or sad, optimistic
or pessimistic, shy or boisterous, honest or dishonest, or anything in between.
The only person who has any control over your attitude and values is you. This
section will show you some of the possibilities.
* Part 5—Facts About Success. There are a number of things you can
do to help yourself become successful. This section explores some of the most
important facts of life.
* Part 6—Facts About Money. Money is incredibly important in American
society. You become homeless if you don’t have enough. If you have more than
you need, you can afford to do things that enrich your life or the lives of others.
Money management can be fairly complicated, however, and it is easy to make mistakes.
This section shows you the fundamental facts of money management so you learn
the basic vocabulary and concepts.
* Part 7—Other Facts of Life. There is a wide variety of other things
that will be useful to you as you work your way toward becoming a successful adult.
This section lists a number of other important facts of life.
After reading these sections you will understand a great deal more about yourself
and the world around you than you do right now. You will be able to explore
and think about your choices with a new clarity and understanding. You will be
able to plan a path to success. Have fun!
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From the book The Teenager's Guide to the Real World, For more information:
BYG Publishing, Inc. (888) 294-7820 - P.O. Box 40492 - Raleigh, NC 27629 -
http://www.bygpub.com Questions or comments,
email: questions@bygpub.com
See also: Allisa Quart,
Branded:
The Buying and Selling of Teenagers
Review, from Publishers Weekly:
"For the readers still waiting for a substantive follow-up to Naomi Klein's
No Logo, this is the book. Quart, a former media columnist for the
Independent, follows the bread-crumb trail from the Fourth Annual Advertising
and Promotion to Kids conference (no joke, unfortunately) to the mechanics of
"peer-to-peer marketing," product placement in video games and the
ever-escalating parties of the "bar mitzvah showcase."
She hones in on teens' delicate self-fashioning and how it's manipulated for
profit by adult "teen trendspotters" who insinuate themselves into
the lives of "Influencer" teens in order to cop "youth buzz."
Quart is brilliant on the world in which teens "obsessed with brand names
feel they have a lack that only superbranding will cover over."
She gets great quotes in her first-person encounters with her mostly female
subjects, giving the book real voice. And Quart's analyses-of teen movies, SAT
tutoring (to improve scores and pose college choices as brands), teen SUV ownership
and the role of parents-are sharp and funny.
Her exploration of how teens internalize and express market logic-through a
process of "self-branding" that can include teen boob jobs and kid-produced
anorexia Weblogs-is original and striking. The book lacks a broad cultural perspective:
most interviewees are white, middle class and female, so it's difficult for
Quart to generalize about how American teens and tweens as a whole use money
and products to define themselves. Nevertheless, by the end, readers should
be able to spot certain youth demographics and deconstruct their branded worlds
instantaneously-and with empathy and anger."