Forever Young Syndrome

Forever Young syndrome

 

Youth culture swamping society, author contends

Perpetual adolescence has become normal

 

Olivia Ward

 

On Main Street Canada any weekend afternoon, middle-aged women with tattooed ankles jostle cheek by jowl with 50-something men in T-shirts and jeans, 16-year-olds in belly-baring tops, and couples in their 30s with electro-shock brush cuts gelled to knife-edge peaks.

 

This, says Marcel Danesi, is the Forever Young syndrome in action: a non-stop teen trip affecting people from pre-adolescence to twilight years, and stretching the bounds of immaturity to the breaking point.

 

"It's a cultural disease," laments Danesi, a University of Toronto anthropology professor specializing in semiotics and linguistics. "And now we're into the final silly stages."

 

Danesi's book Forever Young puts youth under the microscope and finds it wanting: in this case, wanting more and more, but understanding less and less about the world.

 

Compiled from five years of research including more than 200 interviews with teenagers and their parents, the book focuses on the interplay of culture and consumerism that has made youth the altar at which most of North America worships.

 

"It's the commercial media entertainment economy at work," Danesi says. "Age is now considered a disease. Youth sells. There's a big emphasis on having it all: Good living, keeping your youth, having as much fun as you can. It's empty because there is no wisdom behind it."

 

The problem, 58-year-old Danesi explains, is not that people are trying to look younger, healthier and trimmer for longer. But they are assured by society that immaturity is a desirable, even normal state for adults. As a result there's a spreading sense of futility and dislocation: crucial decisions are made by people with the value systems of teenagers.

 

"People are simply not growing up," Danesi says. "The category of adolescence now embraces everything from `tweenies' before the age of puberty to people years and years older. Everything that keeps the culture thinking, reflecting, seeking understanding, is missing."

 

Until a century ago, he points out, adolescence was an almost unknown concept. The struggling masses that made up most of the world's population couldn't afford it. Toiling from an early age, children passed into adulthood almost seamlessly, and the two stages were divided mainly by sexual maturity.

 

But in the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, focused on adolescence as a time of anxiety and confusion, as children struggle with the trauma of their new identity as adults. In psychology and child rearing, the idea of adolescence caught on.

 

Until the 1950s, "youth culture" scarcely existed. But as affluence grew in Western countries, the media and entertainment industries discovered the market potential of the young.

 

Adolescence became not just a transition period, but a permanent state of being.

It also became an industry.

 

By the 1960s, a "youthquake" shook the commercial world. Rebels without causes, troubled teens, Beatlemaniacs, potheads, hippies, total-life dropouts, all were setting a style standard, even as their elders wrung their hands over their views and values.

 

Back then, however, youth was a "counterculture," and adulthood still mainstream.

 

But in North America and much of the West, by the turn of the century teenagers were the dominant culture. They, and those who rushed to impersonate them, had taken over a huge share of the advertising, manufacturing, media, music, film and television industries. North American teens now pump more than $160 billion a year into the market, and surveys show Canadian teenagers have more than $100 a week to spend.

 

But, Danesi warns, what the commercial youth machine is churning out is often "youth at its most negative," promoting a feckless mentality that is ultimately damaging.

 

He likens the all-pervasive trend to Oscar Wilde's chilling novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a book that showed the dark side of the pursuit of youth.

 

In it, the elegant young Dorian Gray, fearing the end of his youth, makes a wish that his portrait would grow old in his place. Under the influence of a corrupt, decadent friend, he descends into a world of instant gratification, depravity and murder, while remaining freshly handsome even as his portrait becomes steadily more hideous.

 

Wilde's parable of the high price of being forever young is even more relevant today, Danesi says.

 

The increasingly brutal nature of the youth culture, with its enforced conformity of dress and language, bullying, ostracism, gang violence and suicide, he says, is a sign that "something is terribly wrong."

 

So is escalating chronic depression, drug taking, anorexia and a pathological fixation on looks among teens and children of younger and younger ages, as well as their elders.

 

Social scientists have recently declared adolescence a condition that lasts well into the 30s. The American-based MacArthur Foundation's landmark study "Transition to Adulthood," concluded that it ends around the age of 34.

 

In our society, reaching the 30s heralds an increasingly feverish scramble to remain young. TV and magazine makeover features have shifted their focus from clothing and cosmetics to plastic surgery, much of it aimed at recapturing youthful beauty.

 

"What worries me is it might reach a tipping point," shudders journalist Geraldine Bedell of Britain's daily newspaper The Guardian. "It might become like cosmetics, hair dye or straight teeth, things people once lived comfortably without, but which are now almost required.... If I want to carry on looking, and more importantly, feeling young, I might have to have it."

 

And, she adds, it's all part of society's movement away from judging people by character, and judging them instead on "personality" signalled by appearance, with youth being the qualifying characteristic.

 

"The infantilization of contemporary society is driven by passions that are quite specific to our times," says British sociologist Frank Furedi of Kent University. "The understandable desire not to look old has been replaced by the self-conscious cultivation of immaturity."

 

One of the signs, he says, is the marketing of toys for adults, from computer games to cyber pets, stuffed animals and in-line skates. Cartoons are pitched to adults in increasing numbers, along with fantasy and adventure books, and comics that were once the province of children and teens.

 

Marketing big-ticket items as toys has caught on, too. The American auto industry was quick to seize on the buying power of "urban audiences," which are young, cool and shaped by the gangsterized hip-hop culture of young black city dwellers.

 

Even Cadillac, once the brand of newly rich suburbanites, made an astonishing comeback with its top-priced Escalade model SUV, now a hip-hop icon.

 

"It has been a totally great surprise," the company's general manager, Mark LaNeve, told Newsday earlier this month. "We can't take credit for it. We're too busy to know what's cool. We let the kids tell us."

 

Market testing the young and restless is now de rigueur for any company that wants to stay afloat. Much as anthropologists once observed the behaviour of exotic tribes, corporations now pay to watch how teenagers will respond to new products and marketing schemes.

 

But: "Teens responsible for establishing and broadcasting trends don't want to be part of the mainstream," says Peter Zollo, president of Teenage Research Unlimited, a Chicago market research firm. "They value their position at the top of the trend-adoption hierarchy or outside of it altogether."

 

As marketers "aggressively mine youth culture" and publicize their current favourite products, he says, the kids thumb their noses and move on. Then their elders eagerly snap up the discards as the dernier cri of cool.

 

Corporations aren't the only ones cashing in on the youth trend. Churches, too, are tapping the youth segment, with outreach activities like rock concerts and extreme sports. And at a recent meeting of the staid Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland, curious moguls flocked to a panel on "How to be Hip."

 

However, Danesi insists, embracing the youth culture is not merely a flirtation with fashion victimhood.

 

Being "tough and cool," the dominant adolescent values, has deeper and more sinister implications for society. And he says, adults should look more closely at the young people they're emulating.

 

"The power of gang symbolism, with its tribal connotations, has probably much more to do with teen violence today than any of the traditionally accepted social causes," he concludes in Forever Young.

 

Teenagers, he says, are now less integrated into society, even as society tries to imitate their trends and habits. They have less meaningful contact with their elders and isolate themselves through language, as well as attitude.

 

Slang always existed. But now, Danesi says, instead of a fleeting fad that disappears as adolescents mature, it is a dominant part of the English language. It is also increasingly aggressive, ridiculing and obscene.

 

Teenagers' contempt for their elders is echoed in society's contempt for the middle-aged and elderly.

 

"Folk wisdom used to be respected, because it was something people could turn to in times of trouble," says Danesi, who spent part of his childhood in the Tuscan town of Lucca in Italy. "Now nobody looks to the old for solutions. And nothing else has replaced them. Society has lost its anchors."

 

Danesi says he has no magic formula for curing these social ills. But, he insists, we would be better off as teenagers and adults if there were a seismic shift in attitude to both.

It would include the radical step of "eliminating adolescence," by recognizing it as a transition to adulthood rather than a dominant stage of life.

 

He believes authority should return to the family, not through punishment, but by encouraging adults to offer guidance and mature examples for the young.

And, he says, the media should stop "juvenilizing" the culture and catering to the worst adolescent stereotypes.

 

Are today's teenagers a lost generation?

 

Danesi, who has a grown-up daughter and two school-aged grandchildren, is far from giving up on the young.

 

"I love teaching, because I learn so much from my students," he says.

"They're intelligent, they have great ideas and they're really motivated. They deserve the best world we can give them."

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I'm full blown when it comes to this FOREVER YOUNG SYNDROME... shit.

 

:lol:

 

that shit is the truth though. Kids these days are lazy as fuck, dont want any responsibility, yet they want the entire world handed to them on a silver platter, or maybe thats just me.

 

naw, im just slacking right now, ill get back on my feet eventually... but for most youths these days, id say this is a really big problem.

i want to be forever young but my body is telling me otherwise..

there are just certain things in life that you need to let go of your youth, staying up all night posting on channel zero is one for me..hahahaha

way to long for me to read

i've been told i have "no direction" by 19 year old students. i found that really funny. when i pointed out to them that the "white picket fence and volvo in the driveway" was the most bullshit aim you could have in life, i think they saw the error of their ways.

 

 

 

 

"a man doesn't go to his grave wishing he spent more time at the office"

i live my life by this statement. work to live, don't live to work - and have a fucking ball along the way

mr ABC - age???

1. If Tina and Ken snuck into an abandoned train station to do some throw-ups, they’d be:

 

a) engaging in recreational vomiting

B) spray-painting quick, simple graffiti designs

c) playing night vision volleyball

d) fine tuning some cheerleading moves for Friday’s big game

 

2. Inu-Yaha is:

a) the new president of Honda Motors Corp.

B) Thursday’s lunch special at Sushi On Bloor

c) A series of comic books about a 15 year old girl’s quest to save feudal Japan

d) An exercise considered by many to be the anti-yoga

 

3. Initial D is:

a) a popular arcade street-racing game

B) a rapper from Long Beach City, Calif.

c) The host of a local top-40 radio show

d) A series of propane-powered water pistols

 

4. DuWop Venom Flash is:

a) a kill-move in the latest version of Virtua Fighter

B) track 6 on the new Wu-Tang Clan album

c) a personal pepper spray safety device

d) a high-end lip gloss

 

5. Tension X is:

a) a performance enhancing milkshake for young athletes

B) a maker of flared low-rise jeans

c) a form of competitive skateboarding involving full body contact

d) the DJ who did the mikes for Allan Iverson’s rap album

 

6. The Young and the Hopeless is:

a) a TV show about the struggles of inner city teens

B) a famous zine created by a teenage literary phenom in California

c) the name of Good Charlotte’s most recent album

d) a song by Alexisonfire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Answers:

1b, 2c, 3a, 4d, 5b, 6c

Originally posted by Pfffffffffft

mr ABC - age???

 

old enough to know better, but young enough not to care

Originally posted by E MARTYR

I'm full blown when it comes to this FOREVER YOUNG SYNDROME... shit.

 

:lol:

 

that shit is the truth though. Kids these days are lazy as fuck, dont want any responsibility, yet they want the entire world handed to them on a silver platter, or maybe thats just me.

 

naw, im just slacking right now, ill get back on my feet eventually... but for most youths these days, id say this is a really big problem.

 

S DO T

 

FULL BLOWN..

LIVING IN PARENTS HOME..

YOU WERE NEVER ON YOUR FEET..

SAT AROUND AND BEAT YOUR MEAT..

YOUR SEXUAL HISTORY IS SUCH A JOKE..

BE LIKE PGW AND SNIFF SOME COKE..

 

S D O T

it's not a fucking syndrome, it's an industry.

Originally posted by gfreshsushi

it's not a fucking syndrome, it's an industry.

 

In a lot of ways, yes. But I gotta give a guy props if he is 50 years old and gets the first question in the quiz I posted right. I’m not sure how to apply this ‘syndrome’ to me. My hat is still cocked to the side, and I haven’t really changed that much from when I was 17. If that ain’t depressing, I don’t know what is. :D

I don't even have to read that article, I've said it too many times:

 

Most people will never have to grow up.

 

Now, I leave you with this:

 

it's not the right time to be sober

now the idiots have taken over

spreading like a social cancer, is there an answer?

 

Mensa membership exceeding

tell me why and how are all the stupid people breeding

Watson, it's really elementary

the industrial revolution

has flipped the bitch on evolution

the benevolent and wise are being thwarted, ostracized, what a bummer

the world keeps getting dumber

insensitivity is standard and faith is being fancied over reason

 

darwin's rollin over in his coffin

the fittest are surviving much less often

now everything seems to be reversing, and it's worsening

someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool

now angry mob mentality's no longer the exception, it's the rule

and im startin to feel a lot like charlton heston

stranded on a primate planet

apes and orangutans that ran it to the ground

with generals and the armies that obeyed them

followers following fables

philosophies that enable them to rule without regard

 

there's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated

political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred

majority rule, don't work in mental institutions

sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions

 

what are we left with?

a nation of god-fearing pregnant nationalists

who feel it's their duty to populate the homeland

pass on traditions

how to get ahead religions

And prosperity via simpleton culture

 

the idiots are takin over

26, who is that?

Originally posted by Weapon X

26, who is that?

 

NOFX.. Idiots Are Taking Over.

 

I swear I'm not an angry teen.

Originally posted by 26SidedCube

NOFX.. Idiots Are Taking Over.

 

I swear I'm not an angry teen.

 

But you still listen to nofx? Riiiiiiight. :rolleyes:

 

Jokes.

Sometimes i think what the massive amount of Wiggers are going to be like when they are 40/50.. I mean, all us whiteboys had the one stage in our life where we were like that whether it be in highschool or middle school and grow out of it, but man, there are some "long-run" wiggers out there..

Originally posted by Telo

Sometimes i think what the massive amount of Wiggers are going to be like when they are 40/50.. I mean, all us whiteboys had the one stage in our life where we were like that whether it be in highschool or middle school and grow out of it, but man, there are some "long-run" wiggers out there..

 

Come to Eastern Washington and find out.......you will see that shit first hand.......45 year old dudes rocking Fubu with balding mullets that talk with the "generic white-boy wigger" slang......it is very depressing yet funny at the same time.

you know what I think?

 

People need to stop sucking mommy teat and wipe their own ass for a change.

Really. I've seen kids as old as 14 still being treated like babies.

Shit.... how about a nice smack. That should help you pick up after yourself.

Sure I'm still going to be sporting a hoodie when I'm in the nurshing home,

but I hope I can reach that spot in between with some grace.

So now I know what happened to my youth. It was stolen, packaged and resold to some spoiled 30something brat.

 

villain/forever old....

Originally posted by Weapon X

But you still listen to nofx? Riiiiiiight. :rolleyes:

 

Jokes.

 

Noted and...

 

 

Noted and...

 

 

 

Noted and...

 

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Okay, not really countered. It's just a dumb picture.

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"I can still fight."

^ the hell... you feuding with makros again ?

forget living like that.

 

it's all about keeping things in perspective. and what i mean by that is that during my freetime and when i'm with my crew i might still dress and fuck around like i did when i was 18 but when it comes to business i am dead serious, dressed nice, clean cut, etc. i've been broke living on my own too long to avoid responsibility.

 

of course i still run the hundred dollar bar tab from time to time (and someday will be able to afford it).

FOREVER YOUNG syndrome? thought this was gonna be a rod stewart song apriciation thread... how disappointing.

this movie fucking rocked!

Hmm a lot of that article is some whiney nerd. But some of it does have valid points. I dont think that the youth thing is what leads to bad parenting and irresponsibility. But it may however lead to a break up of the traditional family structure and roles of people. This can be bad, but can be good.

 

I do know a couple people who are like 50 and still act 18, and its kinda sad. I guess they miss youth, but at some point you gotta accept that you are old. But I really dont think that this is making society collapse or anything. And I doubt it is really happening at a much higher rate than in the past.

Originally posted by Mr. ABC

"a man doesn't go to his grave wishing he spent more time at the office"

 

What a great statement.

 

I believe balance of work and play is key. I have some friends who live pretty sheltered lives. They have respectable jobs, bought their own cars, hang out with the same people, and have lived in the same city their whole lives. I'm more used to a faster lifestyle. I've also made my own money, but I've traveled, met new people, experienced things that have fulfilled my life that no money could buy. Some people take this lifestyle to the extreme, and never settle down. I'm also much happier satisfying my wander lust than working a 9-5, but once I quench my thrist to go out, I go back to my normal home life of school, work, and family.

Some cats need to just give it up. Let it go. I'm only 21 but I don't wear the fubu jerseys, massive chains and hats galore like I did back in high school... cats be in high school thinkin they shootin a music video. To me now it's all about the classic clean-cut polo look (with a slight hip hop influence). When you age and mature, so should your choice of clothing in my opinion. Doesn't mean you have to start dressin like a nerd. But accept the fact that you ain't a rebellious teen anymore.

 

Ed Lover & Dr. Dre

 

Marley Marl... notice the gray streaks in his hair...

 

 

Flava Flav

 

 

Rakim

 

We got cats in their mid-late 30's in the military with the Timb boots, Coogi jeans, throwback jerseys and fitted hats. I can understand though since when they were in their teens Hip Hop was in its Golden Age.

I think it goes deeper than consumerism or whatever. “Young people music” and the like has nothing to do with it. Remember Office Space? Those dudes were bucking the Geto Boys and such. My brother is a mad yuppie (judging by attitude and values and hell – dress code), but he still buys the Linkin Park cds, just like the seventeen year old chronic down the street with adhd.

 

It has to do with the fact that sex sells. Young people have sex, so youth sells. The kit kat commercial that was just on had some thirty some odd year old saying “dude, I was chillaxing…” The OC employs 27 year olds to play the role of high school juniors. There’s something about being “cool”, being a noncomformist these days. Teenage years are sometimes looked at as the best years of one’s life, so why not try to emulate those days as much as you can? Behaving like a child is fun as hell. Like Kilo says, you can be in the old folks’ home and still wear the hoodie, still go out back to burn one.

 

If you guys think that a sign of maturity is putting on the Lawrence Welk and throwing away the Redman CD, then fuck, go ahead. I’ll go through your trash when you’re asleep at 9pm.

 

Sorry for the rant, my leafs are losing, and I need a cigarette.