Tag Archives: emerging adults

Popular music has become more narcissistic in recent decades

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Several psychologists argue that pop music has become increasingly narcissistic over recent decades:

Now, after a computer analysis of three decades of hit songs, Dr. DeWall and other psychologists report finding what they were looking for: a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music. As they hypothesized, the words “I” and “me” appear more frequently along with anger-related words, while there’s been a corresponding decline in “we” and “us” and the expression of positive emotions…

His study covered song lyrics from 1980 to 2007 and controlled for genre to prevent the results from being skewed by the growing popularity of, say, rap and hip-hop…

Today’s songs, according to the researchers’ linguistic analysis, are more likely be about one very special person: the singer. “I’m bringing sexy back,” Justin Timberlake proclaimed in 2006. The year before, Beyoncé exulted in how hot she looked while dancing — “It’s blazin’, you watch me in amazement.” And Fergie, who boasted about her “humps” while singing with the Black Eyed Peas, subsequently released a solo album in which she told her lover that she needed quality time alone: “It’s personal, myself and I.”

The majority of this article is about how narcissism is measured and how it shows up in younger generations.

But I would prefer to see more thinking about why music has changed in this way. A broad question could be asked: does or should pop music reflect culture or change culture? I would suggest that it does both but it would be interesting to see data on this: is music more narcissistic because people are more narcissistic or are people more narcissistic because music is more narcissistic? Answering this broad question also requires figuring out what music really means to people. For younger people, listening to music is an important activity and is an integral part of adolescence and emerging adulthood.

This recent study also tries to get at this question and can’t say much about the direction of causality:

With each level increase in music use, teens had an 80% higher risk of depression, the study found.

The study didn’t measure total listening times, but based on previous data, the study authors estimated that teens in the highest-use group were likely listening to music for at least four or five hours a day…

“At this point, it is not clear whether depressed people begin to listen to more music to escape, or whether listening to large amounts of music can lead to depression, or both,” said Primack in a statement.

By contrast, researchers found that reading books had the opposite association: with each level increase in time spent reading, teens’ risk of depression dropped 50%. “This is worth emphasizing because overall in the U.S., reading books is decreasing, while nearly all other forms of media use are increasing,” Primack said.

This contrast to reading is interesting. Does this suggest that listening to music is more self-indulgent while reading is not?

Overall, it sounds like we need more research to sort out this issue. Music is more narcissistic, the culture may be more narcissistic, this has an effect on people, but it is a bit unclear which direction the causal arrows go. If only we could design some sort of controlled experiment that could isolate the effect of more narcissistic music…

Growing numbers of senior citizens on Facebook, SNS

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Facebook is growing all over the world but especially among American senior citizens:

Edelman is one of many senior citizens using social networking at rapidly increasing rates, according to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center. Social networking use among Internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled — from 22 percent to 42 percent between 2009 and 2010, according to the study. For Internet users older than 74, that number has quadrupled, from 4 percent to 16 percent.

Indeed, women over 55 are the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook, according to InsideFacebook.com, a website that tracks and analyzes user data…

According to iStrategyLabs, a Washington, D.C., social media marketing firm that tracks user data, about 10.6 percent of Facebook users are over the age of 55, a 59 percent increase from 2010…

While Twitter and Facebook users who send out status updates may tend to skew younger, with most members under 40, the average age of a LinkedIn user is 45, said Krista Canfield, a spokeswoman for the business-oriented social networking site. One trend Canfield said she sees among older LinkedIn users is a desire to retain connections with former co-workers.

Considering Facebook is just six years old and started among college students, these numbers are remarkable.

It strikes me that today’s older generations (and future older generations) will need to be more tech-savvy than previous older generations. This could have some benefits (staying connected) and some downsides (see this recent research on problems with multitasking). Just as young adulthood (“emerging adults”) is being transformed before our eyes, what it means to be a senior citizen is also rapidly changing.

Emerging adult men struggling to follow “life script”

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An excerpt from a soon-to-be released book, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women has Turned Men into Boys, talks about the sociological concept of “life scripts”:

But pre-adults differ in one major respect from adolescents. They write their own biographies, and they do it from scratch. Sociologists use the term “life script” to describe a particular society’s ordering of life’s large events and stages. Though such scripts vary across cultures, the archetypal plot is deeply rooted in our biological nature. The invention of adolescence did not change the large Roman numerals of the American script. Adults continued to be those who took over the primary tasks of the economy and culture. For women, the central task usually involved the day-to-day rearing of the next generation; for men, it involved protecting and providing for their wives and children. If you followed the script, you became an adult, a temporary custodian of the social order until your own old age and demise.

Unlike adolescents, however, pre-adults don’t know what is supposed to come next. For them, marriage and parenthood come in many forms, or can be skipped altogether. In 1970, just 16% of Americans ages 25 to 29 had never been married; today that’s true of an astonishing 55% of the age group. In the U.S., the mean age at first marriage has been climbing toward 30 (a point past which it has already gone in much of Europe). It is no wonder that so many young Americans suffer through a “quarter-life crisis,” a period of depression and worry over their future.

This is a decent description of the category of emerging adults. This is an ongoing area of research interest among sociologists (and others) and I have some earlier posts on this topic: here is a recent posting on Catholic emerging adults, here is part 1/part 2/part 3 of an earlier series on studies about emerging adults.

It is hard to tell from this excerpt whether this author argues that the fact that women have risen in society has directly led to the downfall of young men. If so, this sounds a zero-sum kind of argument: since women have risen in society, then men must fall. Does it have to be this way – can’t both men and women find acceptable and expanded roles? And what have men done to fight back against broader social forces or to find and strengthen new roles or develop an attractive “life script”?

Explaining the mean girls (and boys)

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A study from the most recent American Sociological Review is getting attention because of its finding that popular kids in middle and high school are more likely to be mean:

[A] paper released Tuesday in the American Sociological Review, which found that the more central you are to your school’s social network, the more aggressive you are as well — unless you’re at the top of the heap, in which case you’re more likely to give your peers a break.

“By and large, status increases aggression, until you get to the very top,” said the study’s lead author, UC Davis sociologist Robert Faris. “When kids become more popular, later on they become more aggressive.”

Three larger trends seem to be converging in this research: analyzing social networks of teenagers/emerging adults while also looking into bullying/aggressive behavior.

The network analysis is based on a measure common now to sociological surveys and research:

Faris and UC Davis sociology Professor Diane Felmlee followed almost 4,000 middle and high school students in three North Carolina counties, asking each child to name their five best friends. They were also asked to identify up to five people they bullied and five classmates who picked on them.

The researchers mapped each student’s popularity based on their personal relationships and compared it to aggressive behavior.

I’m curious to know if this analysis would also apply to adults.

Conference on faith among Catholic emerging adults

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A number of recent studies have focused on the religion of emerging adults, those who are roughly 18-29 years old and are making the transition from being teenagers to adults. Some of these findings and thoughts about Catholic emerging adults were shared at a recent conference:

Sociologist James Davidson, professor emeritus at Purdue University, said young Catholics “distinguish between the Catholic faith, which they identify with and respect, and the Catholic Church, which they are less attached to.”

Quoting a wide body of research, including his own, Davidson said eight of 10 young Catholics believe there are many ways to interpret Catholicism and they grant more authority to their individual experience than they do to the magisterium.

“They stress the importance of thinking for themselves more than obeying church leaders,” he said. “Instead of simply embracing church traditions and teachings, they tinker with them. They distinguish between abstract beliefs and principles that they think are at the core of the Catholic faith, and more concrete norms and codes of conduct that they consider optional or peripheral.”

In essence, Davidson said, “they believe that doctrines such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, Mary as the mother of God, Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist and the need to be concerned about the poor are more important than teachings such as the need to limit the priesthood to men, the need for priestly celibacy, the church’s opposition to artificial birth control and its opposition to the death penalty.”

Catholic young adults are not immune to the complex encounter between the church and popular culture, said participants in a panel discussion on “Sex and the City of God.”…

There is some more interesting stuff here. These discussions sound very similar to the findings of Soul Searching and Souls in Transition: emerging adults are less interested in organized religion but are still spiritual even as this spirituality looks more like “moral therapeutic deism” and they question traditional (or conservative) stances of the church toward social issues.

Defending the actions of “not quite adults”

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In recent years, there has been a lot of research and conversation about the actions of 20-something adults who have moved back home in greater numbers and are waiting longer to marry and pursue careers. Are these 20-somethings lazy, prudent, or are they simply responding to a tougher world? While much of this conversation is negative, a sociologist talks about why he would defend the choices of these “not quite adults”:

Q: How do young people today compare with the past?

A: As we evaluate young people today, it’s like we’ve got the wrong benchmark. That kind of quick start to adulthood that so many generations have in their heads — all that grows out of the postwar period. (But) that’s the anomaly. It was a time when people were quick to leave home. They were also quick to marry. Why? It’s because economic opportunities were ample and social conventions really encouraged it. It was expected and also possible. But if you look further back, you’d see that a lot of the patterns today — with young people in a period of semi-autonomy— was also true of the decades before World War II.

Q: What worries you most about the future?

A: There’s so many negative portrayals of young people, and there are so many worries about why young people are taking their time. My bigger worry is we don’t want to push kids out of the gate before they’re ready. A quick marriage is clearly more likely to end in divorce and involve kids. That’s not good. Quick parenting? It makes it difficult to attain your education and to work full time and build skills and experiences that would help you over the long haul. That’s not good. A quick departure from home means you have fewer resources to invest in your future. Early departures from home are much more likely to result in poverty. That’s not good.

Q: Back to the main idea here. Why is it that today’s young adults have such a bad rap?

A: Maybe it’s just that each generation comes of age in its own time and what is true of one can’t easily be applied to the next. It seems like a timeless theme in history that older generations look down and think the younger one screwed up. What really matters and what we hope to show in this book is just how different the world is they’re trying to navigate, and it’s not just about personal choices. It’s about these big forces that have changed the very landscape of life. We have to not just point fingers at young people but also look at the things they’re doing right and see what we can learn from them.

An interesting perspective as this sociologist argues that this is really a debate about cultural perceptions and values. Within the American context, this idea of autonomy that arose after World War II is particularly interesting. It contributed to these ideas about leaving the house and quickly starting an adult life as well as led many to move to suburbs where they felt they could control more of their own destinies.

This leads to a broader question. What leads to better social outcomes for those in their twenties: to stay at home longer and take advantage of existing social networks or to strike out on their own at an earlier age? This researcher suggests several ways these actions improve the life changes of 20-somethings in several ways: lowers divorce rates, limits the likelihood of living in poverty, and increases the opportunity that those in this group can obtain a worthwhile education.  But I haven’t seen any research looks at data that would allow us compare people who follow these two different routes.

Asking why emerging adults seem to be leaving the church in greater numbers

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A story in Christianity Today looks at recent research that suggests a larger proportion of Christian emerging adults are leaving the church compared to previous generations. On top of some questions about whether these numbers are a big change or not, there is another question: why is this happening? The author suggests more emerging adults are leaving because of reasons related to the church rather than due to outside pressures:

In my interviews, I was struck by the diversity of the stories—one can hardly lump them together and chalk up all departures to “youthful rebellion.” Yet there were commonalities. Many de-conversions were precipitated by what happened inside rather than outside the church. Even those who adopted materialist worldviews or voguish spiritualities traced their departures back to what happened in church.

What pushed them out? Again, the reasons for departing in each case were unique, but I realized that most leavers had been exposed to a superficial form of Christianity that effectively inoculated them against authentic faith. When sociologist Christian Smith and his fellow researchers examined the spiritual lives of American teenagers, they found most teens practicing a religion best called “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” which casts God as a distant Creator who blesses people who are “good, nice, and fair.” Its central goal is to help believers “be happy and feel good about oneself.”

Where did teenagers learn this faith? Unfortunately, it’s one taught, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, at every age level in many churches. It’s in the air that many churchgoers breathe, from seeker-friendly worship services to low-commitment small groups. When this naive and coldly utilitarian view of God crashes on the hard rocks of reality, we shouldn’t be surprised to see people of any age walk away.

An interesting argument. But it would be helpful to know the converse – why do some emerging adults stay? What keeps them linked to churches while others head elsewhere?

Any sociological studies about moral therapeutic deism within evangelical churches and evangelical theology?

An emerging portrait of emerging adults in the news, part 2

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In recent weeks, a number of studies have been reported on that discuss the beliefs and behaviors of the younger generation, those who are now between high school and age 30 (an age group that could also be labeled “emerging adults”). In a three-part series, I want to highlight three of these studies because they not only suggest what this group is doing but also hints at the consequences. (Find part one here.)

In Sunday’s edition of the Chicago Tribune, there was a story citing research that shows emerging adults are more tolerant than previous generations on issues like intermarriage, gay marriage, other races, and immigration. Yet, at the same time, there is also research suggesting levels of empathy among college students are down about 40% compared to the 1970s:

“Millennials, A Portrait of Generation Next,” an extensive study of teens and 20-somethings released earlier this year, showed that members of the Millennial Generation, generally born between 1981 and 2000, are “more racially tolerant than their elders.”

More than two decades of Pew Research surveys confirm that assessment.

“In their views about interracial dating, for example, Millennials are the most open to change of any generation,” the report states.

The study goes on to report that nearly 6 in 10 Millennials say immigrants strengthen the country, compared with 43 percent of adults ages 30 and older…

The problem is that tolerance doesn’t necessarily mean understanding, researchers say. Adults working with teens say they see an unsettling strain of desensitivity among young people.

In May, University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research issued a report on an analysis of 72 studies on the empathy of nearly 14,000 college students between 1979 and 2009. The result: Today’s college students are about 40 percent lower in empathy than students two or three decades earlier.

The researchers suggested that disheartening trend may have to do with numbness created by violent video games, an abundance of online friends and an intensely competitive emphasis on success, among other factors.

This is a very interesting conclusion: the younger generation is more tolerant but less understanding and empathetic. So what exactly does this tolerance look like? The lack of empathy, in particular, is interesting as it is another step beyond tolerance. Empathy is the ability to understand and take on the feelings and perspectives of others. Is tolerance the end goal or is there more that we should be striving for as a society?

This conundrum reminds me of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the current topic of our Sunday School class. In verse after verse, Jesus suggests that Christians aren’t just supposed to put up with people: “loving your neighbor” means taking an extra step toward people, bringing reconciliation, peace, and blessings to other rather than just letting them be or letting them pursue their rights in their own space. Loving people means putting them above yourself, something beyond both tolerance and empathy.

One outcome suggested by this story is a meanness or harshness among high schools. Teenagers understand about respecting difference but this doesn’t translate as well into personal interactions where being mean is seen as being cool.

Another possible outcome is living alone, keeping people at a distance. I will consider this in part three of this series.

An emerging portrait of emerging adults in the news, part 1

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In recent weeks, a number of studies have been reported on that discuss the beliefs and behaviors of the younger generation, those who are now between high school and age 30 (an age group that could also be labeled “emerging adults”). In a three-part series, I want to highlight three of these studies because they not only suggest what this group is doing but also hints at the consequences.

Almost a week ago, a story ran along the wires about a new study linking “hyper-texting” and excessive usage of social networking sites with risky behaviors:

Teens who text 120 times a day or more — and there seems to be a lot of them — are more likely to have had sex or used alcohol and drugs than kids who don’t send as many messages, according to provocative new research.

The study’s authors aren’t suggesting that “hyper-texting” leads to sex, drinking or drugs, but say it’s startling to see an apparent link between excessive messaging and that kind of risky behavior.

The study concludes that a significant number of teens are very susceptible to peer pressure and also have permissive or absent parents, said Dr. Scott Frank, the study’s lead author…

The study was done at 20 public high schools in the Cleveland area last year, and is based on confidential paper surveys of more than 4,200 students.

It found that about one in five students were hyper-texters and about one in nine are hyper-networkers — those who spend three or more hours a day on Facebook and other social networking websites.

About one in 25 fall into both categories.

Hyper-texting and hyper-networking were more common among girls, minorities, kids whose parents have less education and students from a single-mother household, the study found.

Several interesting things to note in this study:

1. It did not look at what exactly is being said/communicated in these texts or in social networking use. This study examines the volume of use – and there are plenty of high school students who are heavily involved with these technologies.

2. One of the best parts of this story is that the second paragraph is careful to suggest that finding an association between these behaviors does not mean that they cause each other. In other words, there is not a direct link between excessive testing and drug use. Based on this dataset, these variables are related. (This is a great example of “correlation without causation.”)

3. What this study calls for is regression analysis where we can control for other possible factors. It would then give us the ability to compare two students with the same family background and same educational performance and isolate whether texting was really the factor that led to the risky behaviors. If I had to guess, factors like family life and performance in school are more important in predicting these risky behaviors. Then, excessive texting for SNS use is an intervening variable. Why this study did not do this sort of analysis is unclear – perhaps they already have a paper in the works.

Overall, we need more research on these associated variables. While it is interesting in itself that there are large numbers of emerging adults who text a lot and use SNS a lot, we ultimately want to know the consequences. Part two and three of this series will look at a few studies that offer some possible consequences.

Reinterpreting the actions of emerging adults: searching for discipleship?

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At her.meneutics, Kristen Scharold argues that some Christian emerging adults aren’t just wasting time. Instead, they may be figuring out what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus:

Admittedly, some of us are resistant to settling into the “traditional cycle” of adulthood, but is this because we are sloughing off responsibilities, or because we are waking up to a new set of responsibilities? For 20-somethings who are committed to Jesus, it could be the latter.

We are becoming increasingly ill-fitted categorical adults, but only within the narrow definition that adulthood means settling down — that is, tethering ourselves to romantic partners or to permanent homes. But if adulthood means accepting responsibility — regardless of whether we stay in one place, with the same career, or with the same people — then some of my peers aren’t emerging but have already arrived. They are taking Jesus’ call to discipleship seriously. They are embracing an expansive vision of adulthood, one that doesn’t necessarily involve getting a spouse and a mortgage, but more importantly means following Jesus, a call that sometimes requires reckless abandon (“and immediately they left their nets and followed him”), singleness (“there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”), and financial insecurities (“sell all you have . . . and come follow me”).

Some Christian 20-somethings might look like their fellow emerging adults, but by remaining single, serving overseas, working for justice, creating cultural goods, and pursuing other unprecedented opportunities for gospel advancement and renewal, they may be responding most responsibly to the call of discipleship.

Scharold may be right: they likely are some Christians who are pursuing this. It would be frustrating to be someone who is trying to live a Godly life and instead is simply lumped in with supposedly lazy, shiftless emerging adults.

However, we don’t know how right she is – she cites no data. If this is based on anecdotal evidence (this is also the basis of many arguments against the behaviors of emerging adults), we have no idea how many Christian emerging adults are actually engaging in this behavior.

Of course, there is data to appeal to when exploring these questions. In the area of emerging adults and faith, check out Soul Searching and Souls in Transition. These books suggest while there are some emerging adults who can be classified as devoted to their faith, there are many others who are somewhere between no faith and devoted faith as they try to figure out how to make their lives their own.