Sunday, February 5, 2012

Today's Youth Are Not As Troubled As Perceived

This article discusses the misconception that today's youth is one of the most troubled in history. According to most adults, our generation has become more and more rebellious and liberal than ever before. However, you'll be surprised to find out, it's actually the opposite.

I was actually very surprised to see the statistics this survey brought up. I also thought of our generation as being more defiant than those before us; more underage drinking, premarital sex, and drug use, when in fact, these things have declined over the last 30 years.

The article points out that the media is responsible for a lot of the misconception with TV shows such as "Teen Mom" and "Gossip Girl". Why do you think the media portrays our generation in such a negative light? Were you also surprised to see these statistics? Why do you think our generation is becoming more conservative?

Here's the link to the article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/the-kids-are-more-than-all-right/?ref=health.

14 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed this article because I am so frequently frustrated with the controlling reins many parents use to control their kids. The idea that today's young adults are wilder than ever, is a perception, like any other truth. I agree with the article when it says that every generation of teens freak out their parents, but lately the trouble that some teens stir up are magnified by the media.

    I think that the media always tries to grab on to what is going to be popular and successful, as they must to make money, and conservative kids probably don't sell. No one wants to sit at home and watch a tv show about high schoolers at home doing homework. This gives youngsters a bad rap, but since when should we believe what the media tells us anyway?

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  2. This article is well written and creative. I really liked the graphs to show you the decline within the years. The images were creative and the writing style was as well. Although it was well written, the writer didn't have much to back up his statistics and information. Yes, they read through surveys, but many kids during their high school age are frightened to really say if they have drank alcohol or tried marijuana. The writer needed to go out and speak to some teenagers.

    I am not surprised by the statistics though. In my personal experience, I do not have an uptight mother but I know certain people my age are under many restrictions from their parents. I think this is because parents know what they were doing at our age and assume we are doing the same. I think what they don't realize is, we know so much more now about tobacco, alcohol and sex than we did in the 80's.

    People didn't realize that tobacco is detrimental to your health and sleeping around, you were capable of catching an STD. Scientists have discovered a lot more about these substances. I also think part of it now too is that kids these days don't have much time on their hands to experiment with these things.

    Television shows are always known to stretch the truth of reality to catch an audiences attention.

    I really enjoyed this article. I liked the quotes and images. The piece was a good length and written for many to follow.

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  3. This article was definitely relevant, piggy-backing off of Cathryn, I cannot begin to describe the annoyance and aggravation that has developed in me because of our generation's tarnished reputation. It's unfair to say that teenagers today are causing more ruckus than our parents which is why the statistics the writer incorporated with the article was an excellent strategy to balance the facts with the generation issue.

    Media focus is generally negative I think because of the independence that has branched out from our parent's day. Despite drug and alcohol consumption, older generations pretty much succumbed to the new laws today because of the shenanigans that took place before technology today. No parent wants their child to have as much freedom as they had when they were our age since they know how less strict the government was back then compared to today. Because of the government's reign over the public's safety with laws and bans on certain productions, our generation is forced to retreat into a conservative state even though it is still viewed as "bad".

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  4. I enjoyed this article. I too, was surprised to see that our generation is more well behaved than pervious ones. I thought the author did a great job incorporating, and elaborating on the statistics. To me, the statistics really made the story. This story must have been easy to write after gathering all those difficult stats.

    I believe that adults view our generation as more careless than theirs simply because the evolution of media. Facebook probably plays a huge role. Back in the day, when our parents were getting down, there were no status posts to inform others, or pictures of them with beer cans in their hands.

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  5. The information in this article shocked me. It was definitely reassuring to hear such decreased percentages. I really enjoyed reading the article because I am extremely tired of hearing older people say bad things about our generation.

    The reporter did an excellent job incorporating a lot of numerical data into a few paragraphs. It is sometimes difficult to maintain the reader's attention when so many percentages have to be thrown into an article.

    The article really makes me think differently about our generation. Even here at Ohio University, the so-called "number one party school in the nation," I have not met nearly the amount of students that drink alcohol, use drugs, or regularly have sex as I had expected I would.

    So why did I think our generation was so bad? Absolutely because of popular television shows like "Teen Mom" and "Gossip Girl." I think the media portrays us in that way because sadly enough, that is what the viewers want to see. For example, a majority of Jersey Shore fans only watch it because it's entertaining, not because it accurately portrays us as a generation.

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  6. This article is fantastic. Clever headline, "The Kids Are More Than Alright," hooked me in very quickly. I'm not a "numbers person", so I really appreciated the graphs that went along with the statistics.

    I know our generation has a bad reputation. I despise shows like Teen Mom because I think they are a bad reflection on our society. I am not surprised that the number of drug and alcohol use has decreased.

    The article was a good length and I thought that all of the information was relevant. I think our generation as a whole is more educated and informed when making decisions pertaining to drug and alcohol use.

    It would have been interesting to get quotes from a parent and kid about their personal use and experiences to make it more personal.

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  7. I liked how the story was very straightforward with the information. Although I normally like articles with a more narrative approach, the plain facts stood very strong on their own.

    The graphs were also a great addition and probably brought in more readers that a visual learners, like myself. The pictures helped bring the statistics to life.

    Because there are so many different forms of media in today's society, one story can be expanded by media into a larger issue than it actually is. I can recall news reports from the past ten years that have told of scandalous teenage behavior trends that were based on rumors and not actual facts. The media just looks for the juicy story which only fuels the misconceptions they start.

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  8. I really did enjoy reading this article. I watch shows including Teen Mom and Gossip Girl, and although I do enjoy them at times, the characters can sometimes be annoying. At times I wonder, "do teenagers really do behave this way, or does the media truly hype it up?" This article certainly answered my question.

    I was shocked when I saw the statistics, especially the one about teenagers nowadays being far less likely to have sex than during their parents' generation. Between the years 1988 and 2010, the percentage of boys engaging in sex dropped from 50% to 28%. That's a good thing.

    I liked this article, because it changed my perspective on teenagers. The title of the article was clever too. I agree with Katie, and I think that the article should have had more quotes from parents and kids about their experiences as teenagers, but it was decent otherwise.

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  9. I think that we see this decrease in issues of drug use, underage drinking, and teen sex because we now talk about the dangers that go along with all of them. For example, in our parent's and grandparent's generation, nobody cared or discussed what could happen if you smoked all of the time. Now it is put into our heads at a very young age that smoking is bad.

    I really liked this article. I liked how it addressed an issue that is often discussed in the media and took a different twist to it. I haven't read an article like this, and I believe that is difficult with the, almost cliche, topic.

    I enjoyed all of the little graphs that went along with the story. It was a creative way to help the reader visualize the numbers being compared.

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  10. To be honest I wasn't surprised with these statistics at all. It's obvious kids today are not nearly as crazed as teens in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

    It's funny to put the blame on our future profession, but it's true, it's the media not just television shows that put our youth in a negative light.

    It's because the media puts it into a bigger perspective then it did twenty, thirty, forty years ago.

    Adults and parents need to read this article, kids and teens today are smarter than they give us credit for and they need to start realizing before they push us into the crazed teen they were twenty years ago.

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  11. I liked this article a lot. I also thought the graphics were really well done as well.

    I think most of us could argue with our parents for days over these statistics. But when it comes down to it, they had to have been worse than us, it was easier for them to do.

    If they grew up in the days when a your school could give you detention for something that you put on the internet at your house, like say, pictures of you at a party drinking, they wouldn't have done it.

    These days everything is on the internet, and our parents were lucky enough to be born before it so they could have more fun.

    The youth is suffering.

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  12. I also really enjoyed this article and feel the information was both accurate and interesting.


    It does seem to me, however, that despite what generation currently makes up "America's youth" they are always facing criticism. They youth just never seem to be "what they used to be." That is probably brought on by both a change in times, and technology that is brought on by societal advancement. It's fueled by a sense of nostalgia held by an older generation, but because it repeats so often I do find the topic a bit cliche.

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  13. I also really enjoyed this article and feel the information was both accurate and interesting.


    It does seem to me, however, that despite what generation currently makes up "America's youth" they are always facing criticism. They youth just never seem to be "what they used to be." That is probably brought on by both a change in times, and technology that is brought on by societal advancement. It's fueled by a sense of nostalgia held by an older generation, but because it repeats so often I do find the topic a bit cliche.

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  14. Sorry this is late, I fell asleep and just woke up:

    But I also enjoyed the article, however I agree with Callie. There's always this notion that the current youth is somewhere doing something wrong. Either we're too rebellious, too lazy, too violent, etc. I think that stems from the whole process of the old hating the young. Which I don't think is necessarily too far off. I know from my life--if I'm going to be able to use high school as a metaphor here--when I was in, say, sophomore year, I thought the freshman class was just a bunch of idiots, immature kids who acted cool all the time, and it made me mad. I wasn't like that, I thought. But I probably was the same way. It's tough to really gauge what a generation is and means to the future. I know I'm concerned myself with how little we read. A lot of my friends say they haven't read a book in years, not even the ones assigned for school. And that's a shame. But still, I think it's too early to judge this generation. We may be less rebellious than the previous generation. We may be more rebellious. Especially with regard to a statistic gained from a survey, I don't know if I take it to heart. But that's just me

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