Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Lack of Sex Attracts Teen Girls to Twilight Series

Vampires aside, it's really just a simple love story.

The reason teenage girls have fallen hard for the Twilight book and film series has to do with its portrayal of a traditional, romantic relationship, new research from the University of Missouri shows.

In the series, vampire Edward Cullen doesn't want to harm or bite his teen love interest Bella Swan, which means they can't have sex.

"With teens, we actually found that they appreciated the messages of abstinence," said Melissa Click, an assistant professor of communication who surveyed 4,000 Twilight fans, aged 11 to 70.

Click and her co-authors' research primarily addresses the reasons behind the teenage-madness for Twilight, a four-book series with two films so far.

The Missouri research found that many teen girls — who make up the core of Twilight's audience, along with a few moms — are drawn to the story about love beyond the physical.

"The media environment is saturated with teens in sexual relationships," said Click, who plans to publish the findings next spring in a collaborative book Bitten by Twilight: Youth culture, media and the vampire franchise.

"(Twilight) does provide something different for girls. I've had girls say to me, 'I'm going to wait for my Edward.' And they think that's really cool."

Source: Vancouver Sun
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Lack+attracts+teen+girls+Twilight+series+study/2238456/story.html

Study Finds Peer Pressure Helpful for Teens

Those of us involved in youth ministry have long stressed to kids the negative influence of peer pressure. We've given kids lots of advice on how to avoid giving in to the pressures to conform and have urged them to step up to be a positive influence in the lives of their friends.

All well and good. Yet, a newly released study reveals (in the book Escaping the Endless Adolescence by Joe Allen) that peer pressure is actually good for kids. In the end, it appears, the more peer pressure kids face, the better off they are as adults. Who knew?!

According to Allen, kids who face a lot of peer pressure learn skills that are important to success in adult relationships, such as empathy, negotiation, accommodation, and the ability to agree to disagree while preserving friendship. These kids had better academic scores, healthier romantic relationships, and were less likely to have problems with drugs or alcohol.

Conversely, kids who do not experience much peer pressure, or who easily say no to peer pressure, did not fare as well in the long run in terms of developing relational skills. Academically, their GPAs were almost a full point lower than kids who felt more peer pressure.

And what about the stereotypical peer pressure to smoke, drink alcohol or take drugs? Allen says that this type of pressure occurs less than people think, and is more about peer selection than peer pressure, with kids about to engage in these at-risk behaviors selecting friends who are in a similar spot.

So, perhaps its time that we youth workers and parents ratchet down the rhetoric about peer pressure, while encouraging kids to actively engage in their friendships (so kids can hone their relational skills) and expend more energy in talking about the importance of selecting good friends.

According to every pop theory of adolescence, peer pressure is peril. Being able to resist it should be considered a sign of character strength. But a funny thing happened as Joe Allen, a professor at the University of Virginia, studied kids and peer pressure over a period of 10 years: the kids who felt more peer pressure when they were 12 or 13 were turning out better.

Notably, they had much higher-quality relationships with friends, parents, and romantic partners. Their need to fit in, in the early teens, later manifested itself as a willingness to accommodate ─ a necessary component of all reciprocal relationships. The self-conscious kid who spent seventh grade convinced that everyone was watching her learned to be attuned to subtle changes in others’ moods. Years down the road, that heightened sensitivity lead to empathy and social adeptness.

Meanwhile, those kids who did not feel much peer pressure to smoke, drink, and shoplift in seventh grade didn’t turn out to be the independent-minded stars we’d imagine. Instead, what was notable about them was that within five years they had a much lower GPA ─ almost a full grade lower. The kid who could say no to his peers turned out to be less engaged, all around, socially and academically. Basically, if he was so detached that he didn’t care what his peers thought, he probably wasn’t motivated by what his parents or society expected of him, either.

Source: Newsweek
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/09/23/teens-who-feel-more-peer-pressure-turn-out-better-not-worse.aspx

The Importance of Family Dinners

The latest research from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) once again confirms the importance of regular family dinner times in reducing teen at-risk behaviors, and improving relationships, communication and academics. Teens who have a family dinner 5 to 7 times per week see the greatest benefits in all areas.

Interestingly, according to the study, family dinners only last 35 minutes on average, which strikes me as not a huge investment of time (okay, I know there's dinner preparation and cleanup time too) for some terrific benefits!

Read the study results clicking on the source link below.

Source: CASA
http://www.casacolumbia.org/absolutenm/articlefiles/380-Importance%20of%20Family%20Dinners%20V.pdf

Study: Beers With Friends May Help Teen Girls (?!)

I've been doing some thinking about how to comment on this post. It's regarding a news excerpt that I'd really rather not post at all. But, I feel obligated to post about research that points out both current dangers and positive trends, and studies that fit my convictions as well as those that do not. This is one of those times.

As you can easily decipher by the post title, research done by Purdue University has found that there is some benefit to high school girls who sneak out for some beer occasionally with their friends. My first response is to reject the notion for a whole host of reasons, some of which I'll note below. Still, often research doesn't deal with morality and values, just behavior and effect. So, taken at face value, I can see how the study reached its conclusion.

According to the excerpt below, it seems the study focused on the outcome of high school girls who occasionally sneak a few beers with friends. Researchers found that the girls who do this are less depressed due to the ability to "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers."

Okay, again on face value, teen drinking is typically includes a social aspect. Not many occasional teen drinkers are going to be found pounding beers by themselves.

So, couldn't another legitimate conclusion have been reached had the study not focused on beer drinking, but rather the outcomes of teen social interaction, or even other behaviors that foster teen social interaction? In other words, I would argue that teens who get together "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers" are likely to see the same benefits regardless of what they do when they are together.

Perhaps someone will come up with a better analogy, but this is simply what I thought of first. What if the focus of the behavior that resulted in the beneficial teen social interaction had been texting while driving. Teens text a lot today. They are known to text while driving on occasion. If doing so allows them to "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers," would it be a good idea even if the result was that teens who text while driving are found to be less depressed? I don't think anyone will do research into this, for the obvious dangers of texting while driving outweigh any potential benefit!

I would argue the same for high school girls sneaking out to have some beers with friends. First, doing so is against the law (generally -- unless there are some very old high school girls.) Call me old fashioned, but this in itself, makes the behavior wrong, no matter what the potential benefit there might be socially. Further, there have been studies which have shown that teen drinking can lead to dangerous consequences, such as driving while drinking, and making it more likely that occasional drinking can lead to heavier drinking, drunkenness, alcoholism, and other at-risk behaviors.

Consequently, in the end, I've concluded in my own mind that the potential dangers of teen drinking far outweigh any potential benefits.

My advice to parents: stay the course in setting clear expectations with your teens regarding drinking. There's a good possibility that your kids will experiment with alcohol before they graduate from high school, but hang in there. Doing what you can to help prevent your kids from drinking is the best course of action.Help your kids find alternative, safer ways to "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers." There's no doubt in my mind that kids benefit from healthy social interaction with their peers -- and with a little homework and communication with your teens, you can find better options than drinking beer!

Sneaking an occasional beer with friends could actually be a good thing for teens -- especially girls --according to new research that upends typically negative views on teens and alcohol.

Timothy Owens, a sociology professor at Purdue University in Indiana, found that high school girls who drank once or twice with their friends in the past month were less likely to feel depressed than those who didn't.

"The realistic explanation is that teens drink for a lot of reasons, and one of them is to blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers," Owens says.

"Getting out with their friends and maybe having a few beers can actually have a positive effect on some, especially girls. It can loosen them up, but even more important, it gets them interacting with their peers.

"And because girls especially value building and maintaining social relationships, it seems to have a positive effect on how they feel," he adds.

"We forget a lot of that in our research because most research is oriented toward addressing a problem, rather than looking at the normal experiences of teenagers," Owens says.

"We wanted to look at it open-mindedly."

The research included more than 1,000 high school students, and the results are published in the Journal of Adolescence.

Source: Ottawa Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Beers+with+friends+help+teen+girls/1972965/story.html

Chatting Online Boosts Lonely Teens' Confidence

Hours spent chatting online by the glow of the computer screen doesn't make lonely teens more isolated and unhappy, new research suggests - in fact, it may boost their confidence and self-esteem.

The study flies in the face of previous research and popular notions that a lot of Internet time breeds emotional and social problems, and the results surprised even the researchers.

Maarten Selfhout-van Zalk, a researcher with the youth and society research group at Orebro University in Sweden, says that for teens with few friends and weak friendships, more time spent online is a good thing.

"We found if they chat more, with strangers specifically, they increase in their well-being over time," he says. "They gain positive feelings from that; they actually experience better self-esteem."

He said they expected Internet usage to have detrimental effects on lonely teens who were investing more time in online friendships than real ones. Instead, their research suggests the Internet acts as a social training ground, where such teens can meet people, create support networks and build their confidence and social skills for real-world interactions.

The study is published in the Journal of Adolescence.

Source: Canada.com
http://www.canada.com/health/Chatting+online+boosts+lonely+teens+confidence+study/1968364/story.html

Most Adolescents Say They Have A Good Relationship With Their Parents

A new survey reports that most tween/teens say while they have a good relationship with their parents, they rely on peers more for advice and often hide key information from their parents. (So, it sounds like today's adolescents are very similar to previous generations!)

Pangea Media, a leader in online quizzes and quiz technology, has released the results of its latest "Pangea Pulse," which tracked the attitudes and preferences of more than 3,100 of its tween/teen users regarding how they communicate with their parents.

The recent survey on Quibblo found that teens are most likely to hide their online activities from their parents (44 percent) versus the time they spend with their boyfriend/girlfriend (21 percent) or how they are doing in school (15 percent). Most tweens/teens (56 percent) said their parents do not know that they have a boyfriend or girlfriend and 34 percent said they've snuck out of the house without their parents knowing.

The survey also found that tweens/teens are more likely to turn to friends if they have a problem with their boyfriend/girlfriend (81 percent) and for advice about bullying (51 percent). Most (71 percent) tweens/teens would not take advice from a parent about fitting in at school; likewise 54 percent wouldn't take their parents' advice on a relationship. In fact, 45 percent of tweens/teens say relationships are the hardest thing to talk to their parents about.

When asked which parent they are most likely to talk to, 68 percent of tweens/teens said they were more likely to share with their mother than their father (17 percent were more likely to share with their father). The majority (72 percent) of respondents said that they've talked with their parents about drugs and alcohol. However, only 53 percent have talked with their parents about sex.

Overall, 36 percent of teens stated that they believe their parents try harder than they do to build a relationship; only 13 percent said they believe that they try harder; meanwhile 33 percent believe that both they and their parents try equally hard to build a relationship; while 18 percent said they believe neither they nor their parents try. Ultimately, most (77 percent) believe they have a good relationship with their parents.

Source: PRWeb
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/05/prweb2454934.htm

For Teenagers, Hello Means ‘How About a Hug?’

Confused about all of the hugging you see going on in your teen's world? Relax. According to a new article in the New York Times, it's just this generation of teens way of saying hello.

Girls embracing girls, girls embracing boys, boys embracing each other — the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days. Teachers joke about “one hour” and “six hour” hugs, saying that students hug one another all day as if they were separated for the entire summer.

A measure of how rapidly the ritual is spreading is that some students complain of peer pressure to hug to fit in. And schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule.

Parents, who grew up in a generation more likely to use the handshake, the low-five or the high-five, are often baffled by the close physical contact.

For teenagers, though, hugging is hip. And not hugging?

“If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar,” said Gabrielle Brown, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in Manhattan.

Comforting as the hug may be, principals across the country have clamped down. “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” said Noreen Hajinlian, the principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., who banned hugging two years ago. “It was needless hugging — they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day.”

Schools that have limited hugging invoked longstanding rules against public displays of affection, meant to maintain an atmosphere of academic seriousness and prevent unwanted touching, or even groping.

But pro-hugging students say it is not a romantic or sexual gesture, simply the “hello” of their generation. “We like to get cozy,” said Katie Dea, an eighth grader at Claire Lilienthal Alternative School in San Francisco. “The high-five is, like, boring.”

Source: New York TImes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/style/28hugs.html

Boy-Girl Bullying in Middle Grades More Common Than Previously Thought

Philip C. Rodkin, a professor of child development at the University of Illinois' College of Education, said that while most bullies are boys, their victims, counter to popular conception, are not just other boys.

"We found that a lot of male bullies between fourth and sixth grade are bullying girls – more than people would have anticipated – and a substantial amount of that boy-girl, cross-gender bullying goes unreported," he said.

Rodkin, who along with Christian Berger, a professor at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile, published the paper "Who Bullies Whom? Social Status Asymmetries by Victim Gender" in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Behavioral Development, said cross-gender bullying hasn't been fully explored because of the ways researchers have thought about the social status dynamic of bullying in the past.

"Bullies are generally more popular than their victims, and have more power over their victim, whether it's physical strength or psychological power," Rodkin said. "Researchers have taken it for granted that a bully will also have a higher social status than their victims. Based on our research, that's not necessarily the case."

"In those cases where it was a boy picking on a girl, the bullies were regarded by their classmates as being quite unpopular," Rodkin said. "They were not alpha males, and they were probably more reactive in their aggression compared to the classic bully."

Source: Physorg.com
http://www.physorg.com/news148065117.html

Networked Families

A new study released by Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals that families are taking advantage of technology to stay connected with each other.

Technology is enabling new forms of family connectedness that revolve around remote cell phone interactions and communal internet experiences.

Although some commentators have expressed fears that technology pulls families apart, this survey finds that couples use their phones to connect and coordinate their lives, especially if they have children at home. American spouses often go their separate ways during the day, but remain connected by cell phones and to some extent by internet communications. When they return home, they often have shared moments of exploration and entertainment on the internet.

This new connectedness via cell phone and screen-sharing is correlated with some benefits for family life. For example, those with the most technology are more likely to share moments with family members while they are online and to exchange some kinds of family communications such as checking in with other family members and coordinating activities.

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Networked_Family.pdf

For Young Adults, Relationship Violence Peaks in High School

Another study (unrelated to the one I posted about on 7/9/08) shows that teens are experiencing violence in relationships...

More than four in 10 college students have been the victim of relationship violence by a partner, friend, or acquaintance, according to a new study.

"All forms of relationship violence are prevalent among male and female college students; almost half of the students had experienced relationship violence at some point in their lives, more than one-third had experienced violence before college and one-quarter had experienced violence during college," write researcher Christine M. Forke, MSN, CRNP, of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and colleagues in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The results showed 42% had been the victim of relationship violence by a partner, friend, or acquaintance either before or during college, and 17% had been the perpetrator. Rates of relationship violence were higher before college than during college.

Emotional violence was the most common type of relationship violence reported before college (21%), while sexual and emotional violence were equally common during college (12%).

Source: CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/08/health/webmd/main4242422.shtml