Digital Young

Talking about where do teens and youngsters spend their time, when is beautiful, well, they are going in the parks. Another observation of a foreigner was that parks are filled with young people, every hour of the day, like it was holiday time or vacation one.

Three weeks ago, Sunday, there was the Youth Day in Romania. Several things happened during this day and some of them took place in the biggest park in Bucharest, Herastrau. Now, what I would like to talk about in this post is a very paradox attitude at youngsters. Most of the sociological researches (both French and English-American) announce, regarding the relationship between institutions (especially parents) and teens, a big rupture, in the sense that teens do not care anymore about parents, that teens replace in their life parents with peer group.

Well, just allow me a little bit to think about this. If we follow this line, then we might say that teens and youngsters are an anti-culture, that they are against all sorts of institutions like family, school etc. From my observations on the field, I could argue against this radical view. Yes, it is true that peer group starts to play a center role in teen years, but it does not replace family. And just to give you an example: a teen makes a tatoo without parents knowing. In their presence (when eating together or watching tv), he will hide the tatoo, he will put a blouse with longer sleeves. The same way with cell phone. What does this say about teens? That they do not care anymore about parents and family as an institution (with its rules etc)? If it was like this, then they would have reacted totally different: they would have shown their tatoo or their cell phone, just to position themselves in a rebel way AGAINST rules. So, by hiding the tatoo or the cell phone, that means they DO CARE about family. It is just that in teen years, the center of gravity changes from family to peer group.

And this is also what I saw in the Herastrau park, in the Youth Day, when Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Internal Affairs came to present their offer to young people, in order to attract them to apply to their academies. So, here we are, we speak about two important institutions, with a big tradition. If teens would not care at all, they would have not come to this manifestation. In exchange, the place was filled with teens. In plus, they liked very much the badges with Ministry of Defense logo. I am sorry if most of researchers look at these aspects – institutions, teens, youngsters, parents, family, school etc – in a radical way, but I think that things are more complex than that and that we really have to think differently when talking about a certain aspect of social life.

(in front of the park)

And, of course, graffiti…

So, I really hope you found this post interesting and intriguing. Or just to put you to think a little bit about how easy we become judgmental and how hard is to stay apart of prejudices.