Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

92% of College Students Have Lied on Résumés

If you want a more accurate picture of a job candidate’s experience, take a gander at his or her LinkedIn page. According to researchers at Cornell University, people are less likely to lie about their past experience on the social network than they are in a traditional résumé.

But lying is still common among job seekers, with 92 percent of respondents saying they’ve lied at least once on a résumé. The study, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, followed 119 college students ages 18 to 22.

The study says that websites such as LinkedIn can lead to greater honesty when it comes to résumé claims such as experience and responsibilities. That’s because claims are more easily verified in a public, online setting, so liars are more likely to get caught.

Source: PRDaily
http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/11143.aspx

Eight in Ten Teens Lie to Parents

In a survey released by the Josephson Institute of Ethics on the values and ethical actions of more than 40,000 high school students, the gap between what students believe and their actions does not bode well for future generations.

Survey highlights: While 89 percent of students believe that being a good person is more important than being rich, almost one in three boys and one in four girls admitted stealing from a store within the past year. Moreover, 21 percent admitted they stole something from a parent or other relative, and 18 percent admitted stealing from a friend.

On lying, more than two in five said they sometimes lie to save money (48 percent of males and 35 percent of females). While 92 percent of students believe their parents want them to do the right thing, more than eight in ten confessed they lied to a parent about something significant.

Rampant cheating in school continues. A majority of students (59 percent) admitted cheating on a test during the last year, with 34 percent doing it more than two times. One in three admitted they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment.

Michael Josephson, president of the Institute and a national leader in ethics training, said the results of this survey, conducted in 2010, are slightly better than those of the 2008 survey.

Source: Josephson Institute
http://charactercounts.org/programs/reportcard/2010/installment02_report-card_honesty-integrity.html
 

Trashy MTV Reality Shows Primarily Use Women to Trash Women

Think most of the misogyny on MTV comes from men? Guess again, says a new study of the network’s shows, which finds women engage in a whopping 88 percent of the shows’ sexual dialogue, insult each other much more than the men, and offer themselves up in positive portrayals only when they’re talking about physical appearance and their ability to bounce back from getting ridiculed.

Television watchdog group The Parents Television Council (PTC) released its jaw-dropping report “Reality of MTV: Gender Portrayals on Reality TV” and the findings aren't pretty.

-- Only 24 percent  of what females said about themselves was positive across all shows combined.

-- Positive dialogue between females focused on their appearance, sense of accomplishment and emotional resilience.

-- While terms men used for each other were often viewed as complimentary (e.g., big man, dawg, superhero, McGyver, winner), women used far more degrading language when talking about other females (e.g., rodent, skank, trash bag, trick, ho and much worse).

-- Females talked about sex acts more than men, talked about sex more graphically than men, mentioned sexual body parts more than men, and talked about intercourse and foreplay more than men.

-- Although 88 percent of the sexual dialogue between females and males across all shows focused on intercourse and preliminary activities leading to intercourse, the topics of virginity (0.2 percent), contraceptives (1.4 percent) and STDs (2 percent) were only mentioned 4 percent of the time.

-- “Jersey Shore” made up 47 percent of the disparaging remarks (mostly coming from cast members Ronnie and Sammi) and 59 percent of the sexual references across all four shows.

“The most shocking finding – or at least the most disturbing – was the way the two genders spoke of themselves. The women were overwhelmingly more disparaging when speaking of themselves. With so much being invested and so much at stake in empowering one’s self, especially for girls, the overwhelming message from reality television targeted at teen girls is to be overly negative to yourself,” said PTC President Tim Winter. “After so many years of pursuing equality for women, our study suggests a glamorized, but grossly distorted view, of what it means to be feminine.”

Source: Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/12/07/study-trashy-mtv-reality-shows-even-trashier-with-women/

Teens Ambivalent About Sex Before Marriage

A new survey shows that 61 percent of American teens want to be virgins at marriage, yet 34 percent have little problem with sex before marriage.

Even among those who valued virginity, 20 percent had tried "sexual touching" and 15 percent said they'd already had sex, says the national survey by OneHope, a Pompano Beach, Fla.,-based Christian mission organization.

"My reading is, 'Being a virgin until marriage is right for me, but it may not be right for everyone,'" OneHope's Chad Causey said. "It's the categorical rightness that has gone."

That gibes with another finding: 65 percent of teens said truth is relative.

Teens showed ambivalence toward traditional families as well: 82 percent believe God intended marriage to last a lifetime, yet 76 approve divorce when children are involved. Half consider an unmarried man and woman a family.

The survey is part of a larger study of teens in 46 countries, meant to measure not only moral beliefs but attitudes toward families and influences on teens' lives, such as parents and the Internet. The full study is due out by August or September.

Source: Kansascity.com
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/16/2660443/report-teens-ambivalent-about.html

2010 Update: Cheat and Steal: High School Ethics Surveyed

The latest survey findings on the ethics of high school students from the Ethics of American Youth Survey by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, a non-profit based in Los Angeles have been released. The Institute has surveyed teens on conduct and behavior every two years since 1992. This year's study surveyed 43,321 teens ages 15 to 18, from 78 public and 22 private schools.

The findings:
•60% of students said they had "cheated on a test," and 34% did so twice or more. Students at non-religious private schools cited the lowest percentage (33%) while 56% at religious schools said they cheated.

•27% of students said they "stole something from a store.

The results demonstrate a modest improvement over the 2008 study findings, where 64% of students admitted to cheating on a test, and 30% admitted to stealing from a store. Of those students who admitted cheating on tests twice or more, the figure was unchanged from 2008.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/parenting-family/teen-ya/2010-10-26-bullyingONLINE26_ST_N.htm

American Dream Is Elusive for New Generation

An interesting read the other day in the New York Times, "American Dream is Elusive for New Generation"... The gist of the article is that finding a job or career of choice is difficult for recently college graduated Millennials - which puts a damper on their pursuit of the American Dream.

The article chronicles the experience of a 24-year-old recent college graduate, who turned down a job with a $40K annual salary because, the article notes, "Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder."

The article leaves me with lingering questions: Is pursuit of the American Dream too small as the driving force of one's life purpose? Is this young man's journey representative of his generation or does it just reflect one segment of Millennials (and perhaps a minority segment, at that)? Have his parents and grandparents behaviors equipped him with a skewed sense of entitlement (his parents are paying $2,000 a month for his apartment rent, and his grandparents paid for his college)? Are the notions of personal responsibility and character building no longer meaningful today?

I'm not sure there are clear-cut answers, but the article does provide some food for thought...

After breakfast, his parents left for their jobs, and Scott Nicholson, alone in the house in this comfortable suburb west of Boston, went to his laptop in the living room. He had placed it on a small table that his mother had used for a vase of flowers until her unemployed son found himself reluctantly stuck at home.

The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.

Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.

Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder.

“The conversation I’m going to have with my parents now that I’ve turned down this job is more of a concern to me than turning down the job,” he said.

Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/business/economy/07generation.html

MTV Movie Awards Review: Pushing the Limits

Our ministry colleague Jonathan McKee at The Source for Youth Ministry has posted a review of the MTV Movie Awards: "Pushing the Limits". As uncomfortable as it might make you, it's worth the read.

Source: The Source for Youth Ministry
http://www.thesource4ym.com/youthculturewindow/article.asp?id=144

Seeds of Adult Dishonesty are Sown in Youth

People who cheated on exams in high school are considerably more likely to be dishonest later in life, according to a report by the Josephson Institute of Ethics.

The study, which surveyed nearly 7,000 people in various age groups nationwide, offers a sobering assessment of today's youth as cynics who are aware that their behavior crosses boundaries but believe it is necessary to succeed.

And the findings suggest that habits formed in childhood persist: Those who cheated in high school are more likely as adults to lie to a customer, inflate an insurance or expense claim, cheat on taxes and lie to their spouses.

"When you see that teens are five times more likely than adults to think it's OK to cheat to get ahead, we have a problem," said Rich Jarc, executive director of the Los Angeles-based institute. "Just think if five times the number of people in business, politics and banking hold those beliefs. That's alarming."

The institute issues biennial reports on the ethics of American high school students that have charted a steady increase in those admitting to cheating, lying and stealing. The new study is the first to connect teen behavior to dishonest activities in adulthood.

Among the findings: Teens 17 and younger are five times more likely than those older than 50 to believe that lying and cheating are necessary to succeed (51% vs. 10%), those in the 17 and younger group are nearly four times as likely to deceive their boss (31% vs. 8%) and three times more likely to keep change mistakenly given to them (49% vs. 15%).

More young adults ages 18 to 24 reported lying to a spouse or partner than did the 41- to 50-year-old members of their parents' generation (48% vs. 22%), more made an unauthorized copy of music or a video (69% vs. 27%) and they were more likely to have misrepresented or omitted a fact in a job interview (14% vs. 4%).

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dishonest29-2009oct29,0,25349.story

Lying To Kids Isn't So Rare

I doubt many will be surprised to find the result of a new study indicates that parents often lie to their kids. It's a good reminder that parents hold primary influence when it comes to the development of morals and values in their kids' lives. And so, the saying is often true: "The nut doesn't fall far from the tree."

Mom and Dad may say honesty is the best policy, but it is not a policy they always follow, according to a study in The Journal of Moral Education.

Parents strongly discourage their children from lying, but they often lie to influence the behavior and emotions of their kids, write authors Gail Heyman and Diem Luu of the University of California-San Diego and Kan Lee of the University of Toronto.

The researchers surveyed undergraduate students and parents of children age 2 or older. Both groups were presented with different scenarios in which a mother tells a child something she does not believe, like the police will come if he cries in the grocery store or that a rainbow appeared just for the child. The students then reported on a scale of 1 (definitely no) to 7 (definitely yes) if they had been told a similar lie as children, and the parents reported if they had told a similar lie to their kids.

Though 88% of students answered 5 or higher for at least one of the lies, 79% reported being taught that lying is unacceptable; 74% of parents reported teaching lying is unacceptable, while 75% answered 5 or higher to one or more scenarios.

Parents often lie to control behavior, avoid upsetting the child or make the child happy. "There are a lot of situations where a simple lie could get the child to behave and make your life a lot easier or make your child happy," Heyman says.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-10-12-lying-parents_N.htm