PSYC 3310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Youth Culture, Social Distance, Single Convention On Narcotic Drugs
20 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 7 COMMUNITY, CULTURE, AND THE
MEDIA
Introduction
• The local community where the teen lives is part of the exosystem.
• The macrosystem is a broader ideology of the adolescent’s culture,
subculture, or social class.
o This is where communities are embedded.
o This is a system of beliefs that sets forth how children should be
treated, how they should behave, what their proper place is in the
social world, and what their goals in life should be.
o These beliefs are passed along to younger generations both by
individuals – parents, teachers, neighbours – and by institutions such
as schools, government agencies, and the media.
• One of the traditional goals of social science has been to develop theories
that describe, explain, and predict what human beings in general think, feel,
and do.
Community
The Need to Belong
A Sense of Community
• Sense of community: the feeling of close, connection and shared purpose
that unites the person with others in the group
• Children and adolescents see themselves as an acknowledged, valued, and
protected part of the larger community.
o In return, they respect and value the community.
• Research shows that a sense of community belonging is related to good
mental and physical health.
2
• Poor inner-city neighbourhoods place multiple stresses on teens and their
parents.
o Children grow up with no clear idea what their parents do during the
workday, and parents are just as unclear about what their children do
at, and after, school.
o The age segregation leaves both teens and adults with inaccurate,
unflattering, and often alarming stereotypes of one another.
o Social distance and distrust adolescents become disaffected (stop
caring about the welfare of the community)
The Left Out
• The many stresses in the inner-city neighbourhoods in Canada include:
o Poverty
o Unemployment
o Inadequate housing
• These stresses help foster a sense of being disregarded, unimportant, and
powerless.
o This is so for teens and for many of the adults they look to for
guidance.
• Inner city teens are less likely to belong to a team or club, in part because
there are proportionately fewer adults in the neighbourhood to serve as
coaches and advisers.
• Social trust is lower in racially and socially diverse urban areas than in more
homogenous suburbs.
• Disengaged youth are at a higher risk of being recruited by hate and extremist
groups.
• Feelings of powerlessness tend to perpetuate themselves.
o Adolescents are less likely to expect help and attention form the
authorities.
3
Community Engagement
• As teens exercise their rights as members and take on responsibilities in the
organization’s activities, they begin to feel that their contribution is important
and their views count.
Benefits of Community Organizations
• Researchers suggests that community organizations can have a significant
place in an adolescent’s development.
o Help teens identify with the common good and become engaged in
their community
• Youth benefits
o Learn how to work towards a common goal
▪ Learn to make the organization’s well-being a goal alongside
their personal goals
o Develop a collective identity – “ingroup” feeling
o Learn democratic decision making
o Build social skills
o Positive impact on physical and mental health
▪ Intrinsic sense of reward
▪ Feel recognized, feel valued
• In families and schools, power and authority are top-down, but some youth
groups are democratically organized and everyone has a similar chance to
speak up and take a leadership role.
o Realize that people have different points of view
• Those adults who give their time and energy to work with teens also serve as
good models of positive community involvement.
• Community benefits
o The energy and enthusiasm young people bring to community
organizations can inspire new efforts and new achievements.
Document Summary
Community engagement: as teens exercise their rights as members and take on responsibilities in the organization"s activities, they begin to feel that their contribution is important and their views count. 3: adolescents may push for boundaries of what the organization is willing to attempt and able to accomplish. In canada, many initiatives have been implemented to attempt to change the. Win at any cost culture: each sport group has been tasked with creating a sport model for the athletes" technical development as well as their physical, emotional, and long-term physical health. America and western europe, by north american and western. European scholars, who tests north americans and western. European theories, by studying north american and western. Their shyness with peers often leads to rejection. 6: lying the canadian children said that taking credit for a good deed is a good thing and falsely denying you did it is a bad thing.
