Nurturing Child and Adolescent Spirituality

Fostering Child and Adolescent Spirituality

2. If f stripling individuality formation is, in portion, about ‘searching for something to decease for” as Erikson suggests, so what does the market hope they are deceasing to hold?

As Kenda, Erickson, and our other stuffs have pointed out, Adolescence is a period of highly rapid passages in physical and psychological features in the human being. In fact, except for babyhood, no other period of the life rhythm involves such rapid alterations. Like babyhood these alterations are influenced by, psychological, societal, cultural, and historical factors which, besides like babyhood, have enduring deductions on the future life of the grownup.

During this utmost period of alteration America ‘s Adolescents are bombarded with the images and thoughts of pop civilization everyday. Now, the advertisement industry claims that they develop publicizing around what teens enjoy. This is based on research into adolescent lives, civilization, and their manner of thought in order to obtain the most successful advertisement method. In the film Merchants of Cool one executive put it this manner “ We ‘re merely reflecting the existent universe. [ if it ] is a portion of adolescent ‘s lives…it better be in their media, excessively. ” ( Merchants of Cool ) . So the inquiry becomes, Do the teens develop the dad civilization foremost, or does the media make something pop civilization?

The picture Merchants of Cool would reason that adolescents do n’t really make up one’s mind for themselves what is cool, and I tend to hold. On the rare juncture that they do, it is taken from them, repackaged, and sold back to them. I would reason that by in big Most of the clip adolescent civilization is n’t chosen, it ‘s dictated to them. Adolescent civilization is mediated to them any manner possible via films, music, Television and the cyberspace. In fact, the word adolescent is itself a determined term. It began life as marketing term dreamed up in an advertisement executives office, and do n’t believe they stopped at that. The new growing market in the industry is called tweens.

So what do I as an advertisement executive hope striplings are deceasing to hold more than anything in the universe? Do I desire them deceasing to hold my merchandise? Well that ‘s a good thing for certain, but it ‘s a spot little minded. I think there are two things that the full adolescent & A ; tween industry is trusting teens & A ; tweens are deceasing to hold. The first is I do n’t desire them merely deceasing to hold my merchandise, I want them to decease for my merchandise. I want to sell them a life style non a merchandise. I want them to develop a set of shared values or gustatory sensations based on my merchandise. Take Apple for an illustration, their popular ad phrase “Think Different” or even better “I ‘m a Mac” is perfect to put up people to believe like my life style. I want teens to decease for the life style I ‘m selling them, and I wo n’t be satisfied until I ‘ve whipped them into a bubbling, shriek, fainting, cyberspace supporting group of super fans the likes of which Elvis, the Beatles, Steve Jobs, and Edward Cullen have of all time seen. I want to give them symbols, that are related to a merchandise through agreed-on associations. I want their full suites, closets, and computing machine screens to be painted with merely the colourss I have chosen for my merchandise. So much so that anyone who steps indoors will believe those are the lone colourss God of all time deemed to make.

Second and more significantly I want them to believe that sufficiency is a word that is merely used at the terminal of the sentence “I can ne’er have______” . I want them to believe that felicity and satisfaction are merely things achieved after they have put down their TeenNick mug of TeenNick approved java, after completing a TeenNick web log, under the visible radiation of their TeenNick lamp and wrapping themselves in TeenNick sheets shuting their eyes and praying to God that they can be merely like what of all time TeenNick star I decided to do celebrated that twenty-four hours.

The end is to do them consumers every bit immature as possible. The word ‘enough ‘ is ne’er heard in popular civilization. The media and advertizement industry Teach immature people that they can ne’er hold plenty, and so they continually want more. In God ‘s Politicss: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Does n’t Get It, Jim Wallis observes: The existent enemy here is n’t sex, or force, but instead the commodification of everything.”

What the merchandisers of cool have done is to turn all values into market values, depriving our lives of some of its satisfaction, a rapacious hungriness to make full up our lives with more material. I believe they have slightly gutted the universe of echt love, lovingness, compassion, and connection…at least until they find a manner to do those sell.