By Jason Collum, AFA Journal staff writer
August 2001 – Yesterday, it was Elvis, The Beatles, and the Beach Boys. Today, it’s Eminem, Blink 182 and the Backstreet Boys. Yesterday it was I Love Lucy. Today, it’s The Real World.
Now, just as in the 1950s and ’60s, the entertainment world, along with peer pressure, influences teen and youth culture in every way, from clothing styles to lifestyles.
But as America’s moral slide continues, experts agree parents need to spend more time with their children, be involved in their lives, be aware of the messages their children are fed, and understand the pressures they face. Time has proven when young people don’t get this guidance and attention from parents, they find it elsewhere.
“People have a need for role models, and so they find them where they can,” says Candice Watters, co-creator and editor of Boundless.org, a website dedicated to issues important to teens and young adults. “Hollywood provides role models, major sports figures tend to become role models, and I think we’ve all seen a deterioration in that level of modeling. We’ve gone from Lou Gehrig to Dennis Rodman.”
Plugged In associate editor Steve Isaac agrees, saying he believes if parents were truly aware of the messages being marketed to their children, they would not want Hollywood serving in any kind of model capacity.
WHAT’S THE RAGE?
Al Menconi, of the Carlsbad, California-based Al Menconi Ministries, monitors the entertainment industry. Among musical genres, he says boy bands, including the Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync, and teen pop stars, including Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, are hottest among teens and young adults. Other groups, such as Blink 182 and Destiny’s Child also have huge followings.
And Menconi says parents should pay attention to the messages of the songs and videos their children are hearing and watching, because the overriding theme of today’s music is hopelessness.
“What does hopelessness spring from? It comes from not having a life or future in Jesus Christ,” Menconi says. “That’s not being legalistic or judgmental; that’s being factual.”
Music and television stars have been serving as role models for decades, but the message being sold today is dramatically more blunt. And because it’s a culture driven by money, don’t expect the industry to have a child’s best interest at heart.
“Elvis is brought up a lot in the music world,” says Isaac, whose youth-issues magazine is published by Focus on the Family. “People say, ‘Oh, the parents hated him, the kids loved him, it’s the same today.’
“It’s not the same today. Compare the things Elvis put out there – the hip-shaking thing that angered so many people – to Shaggy, an artist who had a number one song on the charts for a couple of months, ‘It Wasn’t Me.’ The entire song is about cheating on his girlfriend with another woman from next door and getting it on videotape; it’s about sexual misconduct in the most blatant terms.”
It doesn’t end there. The group Blink 182, whose songs have “some horrendous lyrics,” was recently voted the most popular band at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards. The awards are handed down based upon the votes of that network’s core audience, children age 6 to 15.
“Are we shaking our hips or advocating suicide?” Isaac asks. “Are we making a subtle innuendo about sex, as Elvis did in some of his songs, or are we talking about bestiality? There’s the difference.”
“One step at a time, one song at a time, one video at a time, one compromise at a time,” Menconi says of the process we’re experiencing. “When standards are eliminated, who sets the standards? Where are the standards when you can literally advocate the killing of police?”
The outrage surrounding rap music about killing police developed roughly a decade ago, and things have only gotten worse. While Marilyn Manson’s appeal appears to have faded slightly, another extremely violent artist both in his music and real life, Eminem, has blasted onto the scene. The Detroit-raised rapper has consistently shocked the nation with his violent, epithet- and profanity-ridden songs.
“He’s won awards for singing songs about killing his mother, killing his wife, and gang-raping his sister,” Menconi says of Eminem, who earlier this year won a Grammy award.
MONEY TALKS
It’s no mystery that what feeds the music-making machinery is money. And, compared to generations past, today’s youth are more affluent and likely to be working and making their own money. While it is good for teenagers to work and learn the responsibilities that come with having a job, there can be too much of a good thing, especially in time they spend away from parents.
“They have less supervision,” Watters says. “They’re growing up faster, but not necessarily with more maturity.”
“All kinds of things contribute to why parents aren’t involved in their kids’ lives,” Isaac says. “There’s an emotional disconnect. Because popular youth culture is so confusing and different from what parents like, they’d rather just stay in their own world. When a young person is at the computer playing [popular video games] Quake or Doom, the game looks stupid to the parent, so they tune it out rather than engaging in it.
“My constructive criticism to parents who are not involved in that way is to put aside some of their own likes and dislikes and get involved in their teen’s world, even if it’s unappealing at first. If their teen likes it, think, ‘There’s got to be something about this; let me figure it out.’ And if the parents get into the middle of it and it’s reprehensible or abhorrent, then they can engage their teen in conversation about that subject.”
Today’s youth are heavily influenced by “friends, peer groups, like-minded individuals,” he says. “We’ve drawn our peer groups now not so much on monetary structure or right-side-wrong-side-of-the-tracks that’s stereotypical of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, but more on entertainment likes. We’ve got the Korn crowd, the Limp Bizkit crowd, the Britney Spears crowd.”
Through the ages, peer pressure has consistently had a major impact on the lives of teens and young adults. And, with the continuing breakdown of America’s families, there may never have been a more crucial time for teens and young adults to have trusting, loving and wise leadership from parents.
Results from the 2000 U.S. Census show more households are made up of single parents and cohabiting couples than ever, and the presence of the nuclear family has dwindled to just more than 20 percent of all homes. This lack of presence of family has led more people to look outside the family for support on issues ranging from entertainment to matters of faith.
“I get a lot of E-mail from young people, primarily college students, and the issues they’re asking about largely have to deal with relationships with the opposite sex, their parents, one another and cultural issues,” Watters says. “A lot want to know how to defend or hold on to their faith in the face of hostility from their professors or others on campus.”
But the Internet isn’t always the best place to find the best information.
“It’s become so prevalent,” Watters said. “It makes it more difficult to have a national conversation about faith, and the Internet makes it possible to feel like you have the truth without ever actually being exposed to the truth. You can be reinforced in your most perverse habits or beliefs by a group of people who say it is normal, and it’s not as easy to have community standards anymore. That poses some new challenges for faith, to try to explain to a young person that there is a ‘capital T’ truth.”
WHAT’S A PARENT TO DO?
To counter this, Isaac recommends parents get involved with their children on every level, and openly discuss issues that might otherwise be ignored, such as the messages being dispensed in alcohol commercials on TV. Studies have found parents’ remarks influence teens more than almost any other factor.
“If parents will open their mouths and express their opinions, like when Britney Spears comes up on a Pepsi commercial and starts taking her clothes off,… say something; don’t just sit there numb. Talk about these issues; get involved in your teen’s world.”
Isaac is careful, though, to warn parents not to confuse rule-making with precedent setting.
“Never forget as a parent your goal isn’t to simply create a list of do’s and don’ts,” he said. “Your goal is to equip your child to make these decisions on their own. Black and white lists of do’s and don’ts only serve a short-term purpose. Your goal has to be loftier. Pretty soon (teens and young adults) are off to college and on to their careers and marriage, and if you haven’t laid the groundwork for discernment and making wise choices in countering the world, there’s a missing link.” 
