Victims of the Modern Age

by Johanna Armstrong

“Teenage” has recently appeared to have acquired a negative connotation. Where, before, adolescent years seemed to hold a sort of promise of love, victory, maturity, and happiness, it now forebodes pressures, depression, isolation, and danger. Wally Cleaver ideals have mutated into Kurt Cobain idols, The Beatles become The Killers, and Valium has replaced pot as the drug of choice.

But what is there to point fingers at? Who is there to blame for this emergence of such a dark culture? Music is only a reflection of the change in teen minds, marketing ploys to appeal to what’s popular. We can’t blame music for turning an entire generation into pill popping, self destructive, apathetic adults. We can’t blame violence on TV, either, because something has to have happened to allow the human mind to sit through the mutilation and gore on modern cable and in theatres, to give children the desensitization needed to put themselves through that with no reaction, or worse, laughing. Similarly, we should not be concerned about children being influenced by violent video games, but rather by the fact that they can become obsessed with them, addicted to the method and execution of the violence.

So what has brought society from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Saw? Pong to Grand Theft Auto? The Bee Gees to the Sex Pistols? Depictions of drug abuse, violence, suicide, and sex dominate modern media, reflecting the dark, hidden underbelly of teen culture. Heroine-chic drives young women into anorexia while music idols caught in the talons of alcohol and heavy drug addiction are glamorized by the youth who strive to be like them. But, again, the idols are not to blame: it’s those who idolize them.

Perhaps we should examine not the children but the experiences and expectations pressing upon them. Modern teenagers are growing up in a post-9/11 universe, where the Government has waged a war on a terrorism that they have only experienced once, and which only 3,000 families experienced first hand. The on-again off-again terrorist alerts have come to mean nothing, and the war itself has become, to those who don’t personally know anybody fighting, only something for the government to exploit. The pressure being put upon the leaders of tomorrow to fix the mistakes of those that preceded them are already beginning to overwhelm youth, with campaigns against global warming, terrorism, genocide, economic gluttony and the misdistribution of world resources, child labor, government torture, etc. pressing heavily on their decisions to make something of themselves, to live up to the expectations of their parents and elders, to right the wrongs and fix what’s been broken. In an attempt to escape, they trip themselves on acid. In an attempt to release what they have to hide from adults, they self-injure, they murder pixels, they bask in the animosity of the Internet and live out extreme fantasies that are considered taboo in society. In an attempt at individualism and extreme rebellion (the rebellion of yesterday now considered tame) they push all limits, they cross lines, they establish a caste-like system of classification among their peers as if to wage their own wars, as if to set up people to hate for the sake of hating. Teenagers need outlets from the increasing expectations and pressures of the modern age, even if it’s damaging to themselves or others or, even, deadly.

But perhaps it is not only the fact that they have to deal with the problems imposed by today’s adults, but also the problems themselves. Children are surrounded by violence, not from the media, but from the world. Images of children from Africa, of Darfur, of Guantanamo Bay, Rwanda, of Mexicans scrambling over American borders and getting shot, of train bombs in Britain, and the War in Iraq are all riddled throughout news channels so that any channel-flipping tyke can catch, if only for a second, a taste of true life outside of his or her middle class home. This constant exposure to the violence people are capable of will no doubt mess with the developing mind of the youth, whether 3 or 13, and perhaps it is only a defense mechanism kicking in that they grab on to gaming controllers and reenact World War II battles on their living room TVs, that they watch movies like Scream and Saw and realize, perhaps only subconsciously, that people like this exist, that things like this happen, and perhaps it is their bodies trying to convince their minds that they like this, that violence is attractive, that violence is normal. Perhaps it is only their bodies giving them the desire to shoot hi-definition pixels of uniformed military men, or scantily clad hookers. It is their bodies trying to desensitize their minds so their minds won’t have so much trouble growing up in a world where this happens on a daily basis, far away, maybe, but it’s happening and they better get used to it if they ever hope to deal with it. Why do we wonder, then, why these kids are able to slit their wrists? Why suicide and self-destruction, rape and the degradation of fellow man is glamorized in modern music? Not because people have become demoralized, because secularization has eaten away at all ethics established by preceding generations, but rather because the actions done and hidden by man have been discovered, have been recorded, have been distributed on a mass scale for people to be informed of. The information age has backfired, and we expect the youth to fix it. We have force fed children all of man’s mistakes, and we expect them to fix it, to do something about it, without realizing that perhaps it was too much too soon, that perhaps those mistakes shouldn’t have been made in the first place, and now what is happening is the regurgitation.

Media is only a reflection of what society wants, of what society is. Extremes have led to extremes and adults wonder what’s up with kids these days. Perhaps it is evolution, this desensitization of children’s minds, or perhaps devolution. Regardless, expecting children to fix mistakes as they continue to be made is a mistake in itself. What man is doing is passing down an exponentially worsening existence, and we have only just realized it.