YouthWorker Journal - March/April 2009 - (Page 8)

Youth Culture Update EMERGING TRENDS Saving the Last Dance for Friends research. According to the study, arrests of teen boys for violent crimes have fallen by 14 percent since 1998, and 13 percent for teen girls. In fact, arrests for aggravated assault by girls under the age of 18 have dropped by 17 percent in the last decade—a relief for law enforcement officials, who saw a sharp incline of misbehaving girls the previous decade. “We’re not facing an epidemic of girls gone wild,” says J. Robert Flores, chief of the office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. (USA Today) T o “Quote “They had signs: ‘Save Bill Maher,’ ‘Pray for Bill Maher.’ But they’re Canadian, so they are polite. One of them asked me for my autograph.” —Comedian Bill Maher, talking about the protestors to the Canadian premiere of Maher’s religion-skewering documentary Religulous. (Entertainment Weekly) “Crusade is a dramatic word, while ‘Penn Students for Christ’ leaves us to decide what we are about.“ —Jordan Regan, who leads what was formerly known as a Campus Crusade for Christ chapter at the University of Pennsylvania. The chapter, like many others, is changing its name. (Christianity Today) ” Is Comedy Affecting Politics? You Betcha! Romance, schmomance. When it comes to high-school dances, many students would rather hang out with friends than be seen with a steady. “Having a date is kind of a drag sometimes,” says Jenna Camp, a sophomore at Glenbard East High School in Lombard, Illinois. “You have to be with your date the whole night; it gets annoying.” Experts say that, in part because of the influence of Facebook and MySpace, friendship is seen by many teens as more important than romance or love. Significant others come and go, they seem to believe, but friendship lasts forever. As a result, many youth who went to traditional date-heavy dances, such as homecoming, opted to go with a group of friends. “They’re never, ever disconnected from their friends, whatever they’re doing,” says Eric Greenberg, author of Generation We: How Millennial Youth Are Taking Over America and Changing Our World Forever. “Because they’re so tied together in the social networks, their inclination toward community and toward the collective is a lot higher.” (Chicago Tribune) She might have lost at the polls, but she won, technically, in the Nielsen ratings. When Sarah Palin appeared alongside doppelganger Tina Fey on “Saturday Night Live” Oct. 18, the NBC show scored its highest ratings in 14 years; but it was a hollow victory. Most experts say Palin’s public perception has been largely shaped by Fey’s skewering “SNL” impersonations of her—another sign that entertainment is shaping how we think about politics. More youth get their political news from shows like Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” than from a daily newspaper. John McCain and Barack Obama often appeared on “SNL,” “The Tonight Show” or “The Late Show with David Letterman.” “You have to become a celebrity because if you’re not, no one will pay attention—it’s what the public craves,” says David Zinczenko, editor for Men’s Health. (USA Today) “The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a ‘boast’ by a working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll.” —Article published on 40th anniversary of release of The Beatles’ The White Album in Vatican daily newspaper Osservatore Romano about Lennon’s 1966 comment to a London newspaper that the Beatles are “more popular than Jesus now.“ (New York Times) Twigenometry Take that, “Guitar Hero.” The National Toy Hall of Fame went retro with its 2008 inductees, honoring the baby doll, the skateboard and the stick. Don’t laugh. The lowly stick runs rings around its competition on several levels, curators say. For one, the twig is the ultimate plaything for the environmentally–conscious child. For another, sticks are almost always free. “We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that 13-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur, but that’s the wrong lesson. Our world allowed only one 13-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?” —Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success Teens Staying Out of Trouble Not as many teens are getting arrested for violent crimes compared to a decade ago, according to new governmental “Nothing is sadder that someone who has lost his memory, and the Church which has lost its memory is in the same state of senility.“ —Church historian and Anglican priest The Very Rev. Henry Chadwick, who died in June (New York Times obituary) 8 March/April 2009 | YouthWorkerJournal.com http://www.YouthWorkerJournal.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of YouthWorker Journal - March/April 2009

YouthWorker Journal - March/April 2009 Contents Feedback Youth Culture Update Culture Watch Encountering God Campus Ministry The Urban Take Sight Unseen Worldview Soul Care Managing Your Ministry 10 Minutes in God's Word From IQ to CQ Caring Amidst Crisis Risky Business When Tragedy Gets Personal Deaths in the Family Stopping Suicide Blessed Are They Who Mourn Healing the Healer Resources for Working with Crisis Tools Stirring it Up

YouthWorker Journal - March/April 2009

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.