The teenage cultural landscape

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Making decisions with your teen in mind
Of course, teen culture isn't always easy to take. Parents who can grit their teeth through a particular hip-hop music track may react against the misogynist lyrics. They want to reduce or eliminate the violence not only in music for teens but also in TV programs, movies and computer games. Should they worry? It's an ongoing debate. Some psychologists fear that exposure to violence desensitizes young people so that they more readily accept violence as part of the normal world. Many sociologists counter that there's little solid evidence linking exposure to violence in entertainment to violence among teens themselves.

Your decisions about the type of entertainment you allow your teens to watch will depend on their ages and their temperaments. Many adolescents in their early to mid teens are highly impressionable and very susceptible to the potential negative effects of some materials available in the different media. Even if they aren't likely to copy the acts of a movie character, they may be disturbed by the violence in so-called entertainment. By the mid to late teens, an adolescent is likely no more susceptible to potential negative effects than an adult. Your personal and family values influence your decisions. If you're uncomfortable about a certain kind of entertainment and don't want your teen exposed to it, tell him your decision and why you made it.

Teen friendships
As they move away from their families to establish their own separate identities, teens create new support systems for themselves. Few interests in the life of many teens are as important to them as friends. Teens believe that only someone going through the same thing at the same time can completely understand how they feel. They want close friends with whom they can share their fears, their hopes and dreams and their secrets. They need friends who won't betray their confidences, who will provide encouragement and reassure them when they fail, and who will stand by them against any personal attacks or vicious gossip. Loyalty is an essential element of teen friendship. As with every other age group, teens are initially drawn together in friendship by shared interests, but the concept of loyalty dominates their interactions in ways that it didn't in childhood and won't in adult life.

While teens value a close circle of friends, they're also a gregarious lot. Large, loosely structured groups of adolescents enjoy hanging out together at school, in shopping malls or in parks. Sociologists began studying large groups of teens in the 1920s, so it's not a new phenomenon. Although the settings may have changed, the dynamics are the same.

Gathering in large groups creates a comfortable teen-only atmosphere that lets kids feel free of the watchful adult world, so they can loosen up and be themselves. It's not unusual for these large groups to include members of both sexes. The large group provides a safer environment for boys and girls to test out their charms on each other without having to face the pressure of a one-on-one encounter. The atmosphere is such that any teen can express interest in someone else. Sometimes it's a real expression of real interest. Sometimes its just a test.

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