Four Inescapable Realities about Youth Culture

Yesterday I quickly chimed in with my late night thoughts after watching MTV’s 2011 VMAs and the new show that premiered after. (Wow! And I thought Jersey Shore was racy.) Today I wanted to give you even more about what the VMAs teach us about pop youth culture, along with a couple nice little resources to springboard discussion with your teenagers.

After David and I watched the show and discussed it, we both landed on four inescapable realities about youth culture spewing from this influential network. I posted our article, 4 Observations from the 2011 MTV VMA’s, about two hours ago now.

We tried to make it easy for you as a youth worker or a parent who wants to keep your thumb on the pulse of youth culture: you can read the 5 minute version of our article, or, if you have a few more minutes you can dive into as much research as you like, probably spending more than an hour, because we provided you with over 20 links in this article alone with research and resources. Click on any of the links and you can dive into more of the research (such as Pew Internet’s research about the religious makeup of our country, or the report from the American Academy of Pediatrics about the sexualization of our young girls).

You’ll also find some links that might help you kick off some discussion with your kids. For example, in our 3rd point about MTV’s promotion of “Coming Attractions,” we link a bunch of shows and commercials. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to jump on our article and click on our link for the Pac Sun commercial, “Dress Irresponsibly.” Personally, I’m going to show that video to my own teenaged daughters and ask them, “What do you think the message of this commercial is?” I might even ask a couple follow up questions. (“Do you think commercials like this subtly influence our culture?” “What does the Bible have to say about the topic?)

Or try clicking on our link for the Plan B “Here’s Emergency Contraception” commercial. Ask your kids, “How does the unexpected happen?” “Do we sometimes put ourselves in situations that set us up for failure?”

Enjoy the article:  4 Observations from the 2011 MTV VMA’s and What They Teach Us About Pop Culture

You can find a couple hundred articles just like this on our Youth Culture Window page.