{"id":5021,"date":"2006-08-09T13:59:54","date_gmt":"2006-08-09T13:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5021"},"modified":"2006-08-09T13:59:54","modified_gmt":"2006-08-09T13:59:54","slug":"a-new-survey-of-youth-entertainment-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5021","title":{"rendered":"a new survey of youth entertainment culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting LA Times poll<\/a> of American kids (age 12-24) finds them bored despite a plethora of electronic entertainment devices. “‘I feel bored like all the time, ’cause there is like nothing to do,’ said Shannon Carlson, 13, of Warren, Ohio, a respondent who has an array of gadgets, equipment and entertainment options at her disposal but can’t ward off ennui.”<\/p>\n

I like Reed Larson’s idea that adolescents lack opportunities for “initiative,” which he defines as voluntarily choosing a task and then planning and sustaining it over time. Kids choose their entertainment, but needn’t plan or sustain it. They are supposed to sustain interest in their school projects, but they don’t choose them. For Larson (a pyschologist), the lack of opportunities for “initiative” explains frequent reports of boredom. Service projects and other forms of civic engagement are important alternatives.<\/p>\n

The LA Times poll also challenges some myths about young Americans. For example, more than twice as many said that they had voted in a real election as said they had voted for an American Idol candidate. Even accounting for some “response bias” (i.e., kids may feel that they ought to say they voted in a real election), that’s still a refutation of the cliche that youth are only interested in pop culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting LA Times poll of American kids (age 12-24) finds them bored despite a plethora of electronic entertainment devices. “‘I feel bored like all the time, ’cause there is like nothing to do,’ said Shannon Carlson, 13, of Warren, Ohio, a respondent who has an array of gadgets, equipment and entertainment options at her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}