In the mid-1950s, the idea that the cutting edge of pop would come to be dominated by relatively young people writing songs for and about people even younger was a revolutionary notion, one that in the next decade would come to be taken for granted.
How much did the music help encourage youth culture or the youth culture encourage the music? This was a period with a growing number of children and teenagers and a different sense of what youths could do and contribute to society.
It would be interesting to compare that time period to today regarding music. Some of those original influential youths from the 1950s and 1960s music scene are still alive. They continue to make new music as well as play their old hits. They are no longer young; but do they continue to carry on a youthful spark or the youth culture of that time? Or do they not matter much as younger people continue to make, remake, and innovate music.
It is hard to imagine otherwise but imagine the purveyors of rock music in the 1950s and 1960s were not young – not Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, etc. – but rather musicians in their 30s and 40s. What might be different – the sound? The lyrics? The scene? Would rock music be different today based on those changes back then?
When JonasCon, an all-day special event celebrating the 20 years since the debut of the hit boy band the Jonas Brothers, was first announced in mid-February, anyone who still cared about the JoBros (myself included) thought it would be a disaster. After all, the announcement came less than two months before the event; information about what was actually going to happen during the convention was nowhere to be found, even mere weeks away; and it didn’t help matters that there were last-minute reports that the Jonas Brothers were struggling to find sponsors for what would likely be a “complete and chaotic mess.” Hints of an impending trainwreck angered fans; not only were they financially invested in traveling to the event, but they were also feeling protective over (and worried about) the reputation of the once-popular band of brothers, who have been left behind in an era short on boy bands and heavy on “popgirlies.”
But what actually happened on that Sunday in March, at the behemoth that is the American Dream mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, wasn’t the reincarnation of Fyre Fest that everyone was expecting. It was something else entirely…
Being inside of the bubble of the teenage dream—while literally ensconced in the American Dream—makes you forget that the real world is still happening.
Four things seem to be converging here that add up to the American Dream:
A shopping mall/attraction site that calls itself American Dream. The large thriving shopping mall is a great embodiment of the postwar suburban American Dream. (In terms of spaces, it might only trail the single-family home and yard as the epitome of the American Dream for a certain era.
The teenager experience is a unique one in American society. The mix of independence and growing up and testing out adult things can come together into a heady time where experiences and patterns can prove influential for the rest of life.
Music gets wrapped up in #2 as an important narrative element. Certain artists or genres can speak to teenagers in ways they might not to adults The music and the memories that go along with the music are powerful.
The American Dream is not just an idea; it can be experienced. The setting here is a fan convention that brings together in a suburban setting people who enjoy particular music. They get to enjoy the music, the energy, and meeting people at one time. There are other experiences that can be the American Dream – perhaps a backyard cookout, perhaps driving fast down a road – but the fans at this event seem to get to experience something that helps them ignore what else may be happening.
Parents define for their children the role that religious faith and practice ought to play in life, whether important or not, which most children roughly adopt. Parents set a “glass ceiling” of religious commitment above which their children rarely rise. Parental religious investment and involvement is in almost all cases the necessary and even sometimes sufficient condition for children’s religious investment and involvement.
This parental primacy in religious transmission is significant because, even though most parents do realize it when they think about it, their crucial role often runs in the background of their busy lives; it is not a conscious, daily, strategic matter. Furthermore, many children do not recognize the power that their parents have in shaping their religious lives but instead view themselves as autonomous information processors making independent, self-directing decisions. Widespread cultural scripts also consistently say that the influence of parents over their children recedes starting with the onset of puberty, while the influence of peers, music, and social media takes over.
Other common and influential cultural scripts operate to disempower parents by telling them that they are not qualified to care for their children in many ways, so they should turn their children over to experts. Further, the perceptions of at least some (frustrated) staff at religious congregations is that more than a few parents assume that others besides themselves (the staff) are responsible for forming their children religiously (in Sunday school, youth group, confirmation, catechism, etc.).
Yet all empirical data tell us that for intergenerational religious transmission today, the key agents are parents, not clergy or other religious professionals. The key location is the home, not religious congregations. And the key mechanisms of socialization are the formation of ordinary life practices and identities, not programs, preaching, or formal rites of passage.
There are multiple implications of these findings. I’ll briefly consider one hinted at above. In the United States, religion is often considered an individual matter. A believer is one who has consciously made a choice in their religious beliefs, behaviors, and belonging. In the American religious system, there is plenty of freedom to make such choices, whether one is identifying with a different religious tradition, putting together multiple pieces from different traditions, or citing no religiosity at all.
But, sociology as a discipline suggests no one is a complete free agent. This applies in all areas of life, including religion. We are pressured – a negative connotation often in the American context but social pressure can be positive or negative – by society and its parts.
If a religious tradition then emphasizes agency and authenticity regarding faith, it has the possibility of ignoring or downplaying social forces at work. Take evangelicals. According to the Bebbington Quadrilateral, one feature of this group is conversionism. This emphasis on a religious conversion often refers to an individual moment when a believer made a decision and/or had a definable conversion experience. This helps establish that this is a true and authentic faith, in comparison to being a cultural Christian or adopting the faith of one’s family or people.
The excerpt above does not suggest that the actions of a parent – or other social actors or institutions – always leads to a certain outcome but rather that how parents interact with religion increases or decreases the likelihood of religious faith of their kids. It is not deterministic but it is a demonstrable pattern where social forces – parents – influence individuals regarding religiosity.
If parents influence the faith of a teenager, is that teenager’s faith less real? Or, is this how human life works: we are influenced by social forces around us and we have the ability to exercise some agency?
Parts One, Two, and Three of this series have summarized academic work on how poetry, novels, and screens (television and film) have engaged and depicted suburbs. What about popular music? While I have not comprehensively looked for academic sources regarding music in the ways I have for the other cultural mediums, I do not know of as much work in this area. At the same time, this does not mean music has not addressed the suburbs.
Starting with a broad view, the rise of mass suburbia coincides with the spread of pop and rock music in the twentieth century. Rock music arose amid the development of teenagerdom as a life stage (now in suburbs that privileged children and family life), as music that borrowed from blues music (now heard in largely white suburbs and from many white performers), and broadcast through mass media like radio and television (now in many suburban homes).
Here are some of my own ideas on this connection between suburbs and music:
-Another aspect of this possible connection is how music is produced and consumed in the suburbs. The reputation of suburbs is that they are not exactly hotspots of culture, notwithstanding the occasional community that serves as an entertainment center. Music is occasionally performed in restaurants, bars, and festivals (with a heavy emphasis around here on rock/pop cover bands at community festivals). The stereotypical garage band of teenagers working out their music would benefit from the surfeit of suburban garages. Compared to the music ecosystem in larger cities including performance spaces of various sizes, the presence of music labels, and the mixing of musical groups and settings, the suburbs may not be the liveliest music scene.
-The connection between poetry about the suburbs and music about the suburbs would be worth exploring further. If singer/songwriters or popular artists are writing for the masses, how do their words and products compare? Furthermore, the role of music in all those television shows and films about suburbs could be worth considering. Is there a stereotypical “suburban soundtrack”?
-Certain genres of music have connections to particular places. Country, as its name implies, is connected to more rural areas and the South. Hip-hop and rap music emerged from urban settings. Is there a genre or type of music closely connected to suburbs? Middle-of-the-road (MOR) pop music?
Tomorrow, I will sum up this series on cultural works and the suburbs.
I recently read Eric Klinenberg’s 2018 book Palaces for the People. In the next few days, I will highlight a few short passages from the book that make some interesting connections regarding physical places.
In a discussion of relationships and social media in Chapter One, Klinenberg concludes:
Building real connections requires a shared physical environment – a social infrastructure. (41)
Research on social media tends to back this up: meaningful or lasting relationships on social media are often grounded in offline interactions and relationships. Social media may be particularly good at helping people maintain connections over time but many social media relationships have roots in or also take place offline. These deeper connections take place in particular settings. Physical spaces can help foster social interaction and togetherness.
This reminds me of Herbert Gans’ conclusions about the lives of teenagers in an early Levittown: there was nowhere for them to go. If there are not tangible physical spaces for young adults to gather (a role formerly played by the shopping mall), then the smartphone and social media look more attractive. Communities may struggle to find places for teenagers to go and be welcome – for example, even shopping malls did not necessarily want them – but the alternative may be worse.
Many shopping malls are in dire straits. The potential end of shopping malls can also induce nostalgia and good memories. Add to the decades-long critique of how shopping malls have harmed communities and societies and we have an odd moment: should we celebrate or lament the end of shopping malls?
A few reasons why there is nostalgia:
The shopping mall was a prime social space, let alone a business space, for at least a generation or two. Hanging out at the mall as a teenager was a sign of independence for many and it is glorified by media narratives and images.
The shopping mall is a marker of the past and those growing older can often lament the disappearance of what they knew. Perhaps they did not even like shopping malls or visit them very much but they are a marker for a particular era.
The shopping mall was a significant shift in the shopping experience by providing a collection of chain stores in a single place surrounded by plentiful parking. While we have since moved to big box stores and now to online shopping, the shopping mall transformed retail.
But balance the nostalgia with the critiques:
Shopping malls killed downtowns, from big cities to suburbs to small towns, across the country.
Shopping malls are part of suburban sprawl that wastes resources and land (and contributes to more driving)
They contributed to mass consumption and commercialization. As one quick example: would the commercial celebration of Christmas today be the same without the development of the mall?
How shopping malls end up in the collective memory down the road still remains to be seen. Once the generations that spent so much time in shopping malls is gone, what will their legacy be?
-Kavanaugh lived in Bethesda, Maryland. This community just northwest of Washington D.C. is largely white as well as very wealthy and educated. Ford also lived in the Washington D.C. suburbs.
-Kavanaugh described his summers in high school as involving working (having his own lawn mower business, working in construction) and getting together with friends. It sounds like they were able to drive themselves places. They had some measure of independence to engage in teenager activities. Ford described spending many summer days at the country club pool.
-Both Kavanaugh and Ford went to private schools in high school and highly ranked colleges (Yale and the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill).
-The partying and drinking scene at people’s houses and other settings (like the beach) sounds like descriptions I have heard about parties in wealthier suburbs as well as occasional stories relayed to me from my own suburban setting.
-Kavanaugh described himself as working really hard at school even as he also came from a family with good jobs and resources. He also described participation in a number of high school activities including football.
-Kavanaugh had a decent-sized group of friends who hung out and knew each other fairly well (even if they have not kept up so well over the years since high school).
-A number of the physical settings mentioned in the hearing are common in suburbia. The alleged assault took place at a two-story suburban house in nearby Chevy Chase (also a very white and wealthy suburb) that probably does not stand out much from neighboring houses. Ford described running into Mark Judge at a local supermarket.
-Both Ford and Kavanaugh ended up in successful careers that might be considered befitting of their wealthier suburban origins: Kavanaugh has a law degree and is a judge and Ford has a Ph.D. and is a psychologist.
The descriptions of this suburban life from the allegation and the denial seem like they could come from any number of wealthier American suburbs. These are places where teenagers often have a good measure of independence and some access to vehicles, money, and alcohol (and/or drugs), the teenagers generally end up as successes, and some mischief or misdeeds are allowable for kids from good families (and perhaps even encouraged). On one hand, these are the sorts of places where teenage life can look pretty good. On the other hand, as the hearings imply, wealthier suburban life can go horribly wrong in ways that resources and success can not easily remedy.
The initial headline finding about the 54% could be interpreted two ways:
Only 54% of teenagers are worried about this???
This is great that at least half of teenagers are worried about this!!!
But, the additional detail in the survey responses suggests the devil is in the details:
Interestingly, there is little association between teens’ views of how much time they spend on various screens and whether or not they have tried to limit their time on those devices. For instance, 53% of teens who say they spend too much time on their cellphone have ever cut back the amount of time they spend on their phone. That is nearly identical to the 55% of teens who say they spend about the right amount or too little time on their phone who have tried to limit their mobile usage.
In other words, a slight majority of teenagers are worried about their smartphone use but roughly half of that group has “ever” tried to limit their use. Their concerns are not necessarily translating into action. This could be for multiple reasons:
Smartphone use is just so ubiquitous. Cutting back or not using the smartphone is tantamount to not being part of the 21st century.
Peer pressure. If they do not participate as much, their social world passes them by.
They do not have good models to look to as to how to limit their use. (This is where the data from the same report on parental concerns is interesting.)
How exactly teenagers and other smartphone and social media users will learn to employ what they would consider appropriate boundaries in using these devices and platforms is an open question.
A decade ago, if you were a bored teen looking to post about suburban life, relationship problems, Starbucks, or fleeting thoughts like, “The holidays are approaching and being single sucksssss lol,” you might turn to Facebook. But of course, today’s teens don’t use Facebook. Instead, they take their most #relatable thoughts to Twitter, often racking up hundreds of thousands of retweets and faves in the process.
Twitter is full of tribes: gay Twitter, stan Twitter, politics Twitter, media Twitter, weird Twitter. The mostly white, well-adjusted suburban teens who share stale platitudes of the kind that some internet users might call “basic” are part of a tribe known as local Twitter.
Though most users do mainly follow people from their hometowns, local Twitter has more to do with what you tweet than where you live. The typical local Twitter user is a teen who is “in their own bubble of simple life pleasures and desires,” doesn’t live their entire life online, “and uses Twitter to connect to their real-life friends like they used to do on Facebook,” explains Raeequaza, a 22-year-old in New York…
Local Twitter teens are townie-like in the sense that their world mostly revolves around life in their hometown, though most will probably grow up and eventually leave for college. Some older local Twitter users might actually be townies, but the majority of local Twitter—particularly the part that has the power to make local tweets go viral—is made up of teens.
The ongoing plight of American teenagers in suburbia continues: they feel cut off from the exciting outside world, the suburbs are dull and do not feature spaces for teenagers, the suburbs represent conformity and middle-of-the-road values, and daily life revolves around school and family. Compared to Gans’ time where being able to drive represented freedom for teenagers, now teenagers can escape the suburbs (or live the ironic suburban life) through Internet and social media connections that theoretically can connect them to any person or place in the world.
Two additional quick thoughts:
How many of these local Twitter users will end up living in suburbs as adults?
Are the local Twitter users more perceptive about their local surroundings or are they just willing to tweet about their observations?
Such abstention from social media places him in a small minority in his peer group. According to a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center, 92% of American teenagers (ages 13-17) go online daily, including 24% who say they are on their devices “almost constantly.” Seventy-one percent use Facebook, half are on Instagram, and 41% are Snapchat users. And nearly three-quarters of teens use more than one social-networking site. A typical teen, according to Pew, has 145 Facebook friends and 150 Instagram followers…
Most of the social-media abstainers whom I interviewed aren’t technophobes. On the contrary, they have mobile phones that they use to contact their friends, usually via text. They are internet-savvy and fully enmeshed in popular culture. And they are familiar with social media. They just don’t like it…
For many nonusers of social media, the immediacy of face-to-face interaction trumps the filtered intimacy of Facebook and Instagram. “I do love seeing kids otherwise attached to their phones equalize when they’re cut off,” says Katy Kunkel of McLean, Va., whose four children range in age from 7 to 12. None of them are on social media. Especially during the summer months, she notes, “The kids recalibrate much quicker than adults. They find a tribe, then fun or trouble in trees and creeks…. They are way more active by default.”
The children themselves don’t often feel that they are missing out. Even though “almost 100%” of his friends are on social media, Brian O’Neill says that he can’t recall a time when something important happened in his social circle and he didn’t hear about it. “They let me know if something is going on,” he said. Ms. Furman’s experience is similar: “Sometimes I wouldn’t understand a specific joke everyone was telling, but 90% of the time, it’s not really worth it—it’s just a joke.”
Small subpopulations like this – the 8% of teenagers not using social media – can be attractive to journalists and social scientists alike: what causes them to go against the pervasive social norms? However, studying such small groups is often difficult. Large-scale surveys will not pick up many of them as there aren’t many to find.
This journalist went the route of interviews which can provide more detail but take more time. Still, how do you find such teenagers to interview when they are not easy to track down online? (Well, these teenagers might be active on other parts of the web without being on social media.) Perhaps a snowball sample was used or a quota sample. And, how many teenagers should you interview? The article quotes just several teenagers – perhaps more were interviewed – and tries to suggest that these quotes are representative of the 8% of teenagers not on social media.
Does this article correctly identify the reasons behind why a few teenagers are not using social media? It is hard to know but I’m not too hopeful based on a limited number of interviews with teenagers who may or may not represent those 8%. This may work for a journalist but I hope it wouldn’t pass academic muster.
Legally Sociable 