Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

U.S. Is Online, And How!

Nobody argues. Almost everybody is online. But what are they all doing?
Internet usage is becoming a daily habit in the US.

Although growth has slowed to the low single digits in recent years—projected to be just 3.1% in 2008—US Internet users can be counted in the hundreds of millions.

eMarketer projects that this year there will be 193.9 million US Internet users—about two-thirds of the population.

By 2012, eMarketer projects that 216.9 million Americans will be online.

eMarketer defines an Internet user as someone ages 3+ who accesses the Internet in the past 30 days from any location.

Source: eMarketer
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005984&src=article3_newsltr

No doubt about it, the Internet is part of the fabric of American culture!

10 Billion Video Views Online in December

A recently released comScore Video Metrix service report, revealed that U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during the month of December, 2007, representing the single heaviest month for online video consumption since comScore initiated its tracking service. Google Sites saw substantial growth and extended its video market share gains, now accounting for nearly one out of every three videos viewed online.

In total, nearly 141 million Americans viewed online video in December. Google Sites also captured the largest online video audience with 79 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 43.9 million and Yahoo! Sites with 38.2 million.

Other notable findings from December 2007 include:
77.6 million viewers watched 3.2 billion videos on YouTube.com (41.6 videos per viewer)
40.5 million viewers watched 334 million videos on MySpace.com (8.2 videos per viewer)
Online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours (203 minutes) of online video during the month, representing a 34-percent gain since the beginning of 2007
The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes
The average online video viewer consumed 72 videos

Source: Center for Media Research
http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1646

Parents, do you know what your kids are watching online?

Fewer Youths Jump Behind the Wheel at 16

For generations, driver’s licenses have been tickets to freedom for America’s 16-year-olds, prompting many to line up at motor vehicle offices the day they were eligible to apply.

No longer. In the last decade, the proportion of 16-year-olds nationwide who hold driver’s licenses has dropped from nearly half to less than one-third, according to statistics from the Federal Highway Administration.

Reasons vary, including tighter state laws governing when teenagers can drive, higher insurance costs and a shift from school-run driver education to expensive private driving academies.

To that mix, experts also add parents who are willing to chauffeur their children to activities, and pastimes like surfing the Web that keep them indoors and glued to computers.

Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/business/25drive.html?ex=1204693200&en=33e95021f17bfc33&ei=5070&emc=eta1

I saw the beginning of this trend firsthand as a youth pastor in the mid/late 1990s. It took me by surprise initially as teens scurrying to get their driver's license as soon as eligible had always been a key rite of passage. I think this is a positive trend, although it really extends the burden of parents-as-chauffeurs. But, as long as parents are willing to manage the transportation needs of their teens, the lower the overall risk will be of teen driver-related accidents. (If you aren't aware, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for persons aged 15 to 19 years old, and on average, a teenager is injured every 15 minutes in a motor vehicle crash in the United States.)

For more information on teen driving, click on the following article title:

Tips for Keeping Your Teen Driver Safe

Teens Losing Touch With Historical References

Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job.

Don't count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can't identify the books or historical events associated with them.

Twenty-five years after the federal report A Nation at Risk challenged U.S. public schools to raise the quality of education, the study finds high schoolers still lack important historical and cultural underpinnings of "a complete education." And, its authors fear, the nation's current focus on improving basic reading and math skills in elementary school might only make matters worse, giving short shrift to the humanities — even if children can read and do math.

Among 1,200 students surveyed:

•43% knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900.

•52% could identify the theme of 1984.

•51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.

In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover. For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II, and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

Fewer (77%) knew Uncle Tom's Cabin helped end slavery a century earlier.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-02-26-teens-history_N.htm

Survey: Americans Switching Faiths, Dropping Out

The U.S. religious marketplace is extremely volatile, with nearly half of American adults leaving the faith tradition of their upbringing to either switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether, a new survey finds.

The study released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is unusual for it sheer scope, relying on interviews with more than 35,000 adults to document a diverse and dynamic U.S. religious population.

More than one-quarter of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another religion or no religion at all, the survey found. Factoring in moves from one stream or denomination of Protestantism to another, the number rises to 44 percent.

One in four adults ages 18 to 29 claim no affiliation with a religious institution.

"In the past, certain religions had a real holding power, where people from one generation to the next would stay," said Penn State University sociologist Roger Finke, who consulted in the survey planning. "Right now, there is a dropping confidence in organized religion, especially in the traditional religious forms."

Source: CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/02/25/religion.survey.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

These findings underlie the importance of the results of the adolescent spirituality studies performed in recent years by the National Study of Youth and Religion. Specifically, the NSYR noted that the primary influence on adolescent spirituality resides with parents. So, if parents are switching faiths or dropping out of church altogether, it's likely that today's generation of young people will follow the example set by their parents. Further, the NSYR concluded that kids who are significantly involved in faith building through the example of parents and connection to a faith community are more likely to continue to nurture their faith as they enter into adulthood.

For more information on how to pass along faith to your kids, click on the following article title:

How to Pass Your Faith to Your Kids

Watch Your Mouth!

Adolescents and preteens are swearing more publicly than ever – especially at school, experts say.

It's conversational swearing – in the hallways and in the classroom – that is on the rise, says Timothy Jay, one of the leading scholars on cursing in the United States.

Teens are more likely to drop casual expletives, or "fillers," than the generation before them and have more trouble adjusting their conversation to fit their audience. That means adults – especially strangers who cannot sanction the teens – hear more of the same language that the teens' friends hear, says Jay, author of "Why We Curse" (John Benjamins, $35, 328 pages) and "Cursing in America" (John Benjamins, $66, 272 pages).

He estimates that the average adolescent uses roughly 80 to 90 swear words a day.

The solution, says Jay, is for parents to teach the etiquette of swearing.

"Kids should know about the power of language. Parents should remind them about how important words can be and when you should use them," agrees Leahy.

P.M. Forni, author of "Choosing Civility: The 25 Rules of Considerate Conduct" (St. Martin's Griffin, $12.95, 208 pages), sees the comfort teens have with cussing as a result of parents and teachers opting not to address the issue.

"Many parents have decided not to fight this battle, and one of the reasons is because they often swear themselves and hear it at the workplace," Forni says. "Parents should ban swearing in the household in the same way that they've banned smoking in the household."

Source: Sacramento Bee
http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/727392.html

Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter

The stereotype of the 16-year-old boy is that he has sex on the brain. But a fascinating new report suggests that boys are motivated more by love and a desire to form real relationships with the girls they date.

The report, published in this month’s Journal of Adolescence, paints a far different picture of teen boys than the stereotype of testosterone-fueled youth. Psychology researchers from the State University of New York at Oswego surveyed 105 10th-grade boys whose average age was about 16.

The boys were asked their reasons for dating and were allowed to mark more than one answer. Notably, being physically attracted to someone wasn’t the primary motivation they gave for dating. More than 80 percent of the boys noted “I really liked the person.'’ Physical attraction and wanting to get to know someone better were the second most popular answers.

“Let’s give boys more credit,'’ said study author Andrew Smiler, an assistant professor of psychology at the university. “Although some of them are just looking for sex, most boys are looking for a relationship. The kids we know mostly aren’t like this horrible stereotype. They are generally interested in dating and getting to know their partners.'’

Source: New York Times
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/inside-the-mind-of-the-boy-dating-your-daughter/

Fears of Internet Predators Unfounded, Study Finds

A lot of parental worries about Internet sex predators are unjustified, according to new research by a leading center that studies crimes against children.

"There's been some overreaction to the new technology, especially when it comes to the danger that strangers represent," said Janis Wolak, a sociologist at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

"Actually, Internet-related sex crimes are a pretty small proportion of sex crimes that adolescents suffer," Wolak added, based on three nationwide surveys conducted by the center.

Wolak and co-researchers examined several fears that they concluded are myths:

Internet predators are driving up child sex crime rates.
Finding: Sex assaults on teens fell 52 percent from 1993 to 2005, according to the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey, the best measure of U.S. crime trends. "The Internet may not be as risky as a lot of other things that parents do without concern, such as driving kids to the mall and leaving them there for two hours," Wolak said.

Internet predators trick or abduct their victims.
Finding: Most victims meet online offenders face-to-face and go to those meetings expecting to engage in sex. Nearly three-quarters have sex with partners they met on the Internet more than once.

Internet predators meet their victims by posing online as other teens.
Finding: Only 5 percent of predators did that, according to the survey of investigators.

Source: McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/28029.html

While it comes as a relief that the danger of Internet predators appears less than we might have imagined, parents should not lessen standards they've put in place for protecting their kids regarding Internet usage. What a tragedy it would be to lessen parental oversight and have your kids become one of the victims of an Internet predator. Just because the risk of being victimized is less than we thought, doesn't mean that predators aren't out there nor that your child cannot become a victim. The takeaway from these statistics are to be glad for a reduction in risk, but remain proactive in Internet protecting your kids.

For more information, click on the following article title:

Five Things You Can Do Today to Internet Protect Your Kids

Kids Learn to Lie... From Their Parents

In an interesting (and in-depth) article from the New York Times Magazine, the author, Po Bronson, shares results of a study on why kids lie.

Learning to Lie
The most disturbing reason children lie is that parents teach them to. According to  Dr. Victoria Talwar, an assistant professor at Montreal’s McGill University and a leading expert on children’s lying behavior, they learn it from us. “We don’t explicitly tell them to lie, but they see us do it. They see us tell the telemarketer, ‘I’m just a guest here.’ They see us boast and lie to smooth social relationships.”

Consider how we expect a child to act when he opens a gift he doesn’t like. We instruct him to swallow all his honest reactions and put on a polite smile. Talwar runs an experiment where children play games to win a present, but when they finally receive the present, it’s a lousy bar of soap. After giving the kids a moment to overcome the shock, a researcher asks them how they like it. About a quarter of preschoolers can lie that they like the gift—by elementary school, about half. Telling this lie makes them extremely uncomfortable, especially when pressed to offer a few reasons why they like the bar of soap. Kids who shouted with glee when they won the Peeking Game suddenly mumble quietly and fidget.

Meanwhile, the child’s parent usually cheers when the child comes up with the white lie. “Often, the parents are proud that their kids are ‘polite’—they don’t see it as lying,” Talwar remarks. She’s regularly amazed at parents’ seeming inability to recognize that white lies are still lies.

Encouraged to tell so many white lies and hearing so many others, children gradually get comfortable with being disingenuous. Insincerity becomes, literally, a daily occurrence. They learn that honesty only creates conflict, and dishonesty is an easy way to avoid conflict. And while they don’t confuse white-lie situations with lying to cover their misdeeds, they bring this emotional groundwork from one circumstance to the other. It becomes easier, psychologically, to lie to a parent.

Source: New York Times Magazine
http://nymag.com/news/features/43893/

Interesting stuff. This underlies the importance of honesty as a family value. And, the only way to pass the value of honesty along to your kids is by living it out in real life. Maybe it's a good time to do some self-evaluation and ask yourself "What example am I setting for my kids in the area of honesty?" For further information, click on the following article title:

"Why Integrity of Parents is Important to Kids"

Choking Game Victims: Mostly Boys, at Age 13

After it's first study on the extent of "Choking Game" deaths, the CDC announced it's findings on Thursday.

82 teens have died from the "Choking Game" during the period from 1995 to 2007, and the deaths were spread across 31 states.

90 percent of the deaths were boys, at an average age of 13.

The CDC estimates that as many as 20% of teens and preteens play the game.

In the game, children use dog leashes or bungee cords wrapped around their necks or other means to temporarily cut blood flow to their head. The goal is a dreamlike, floating-in-space feeling when blood rushes back into the brain. The game is often played in associated with masturbation.

CDC officials urged parents to be aware the fad exists, and to watch for possible warning signs like bloodshot eyes, marks on the neck, frequent and severe headaches, disorientation after spending time alone, and ropes, scarves or belts tied to bedroom furniture or doorknobs or found knotted on the floor.

Source: Mercury News / Associated Press
http://www.mercurynews.com/healthandscience/ci_8260804