Youth in Today

Youth in today’s society feel a need to be rebellious because of individualism and peer pressure from role models. Youth in the 90’s want to be like their favorite actor or actress, they want to be well liked and popular with others, and they want to be an individual doing their own thing; but what are the factors that contribute to youth’s rebelliousness? One of the big contributors to youth’s rebelliousness starts with individualism. Young people feel as if they do not need to be controlled by anyone. As George Lipsitz states in his essay, We Know What Time It Is, “People resisting domination can only fight in the arenas open to them; they often find themselves forced to create images of themselves that interrupt, invert or at least answer the ways in which they are defined by those in power” (p.179). Lipsitz tells the reader in this statement that young defiant people often rebel from domination in order to become free of any laws or rules that govern them. Lipsitz states, “Despite endless rhetoric about “family values,” the wealthiest and most powerful forces in our society have demonstrated by their actions that they feel that young people do not matter, that they can be our nation’s lowest priority” (p.177). This quote declares that young people are regarded to as the lowest priority in our nation. Lipsitz continues, “From tax cuts that ignore pressing needs and impose huge debts on the adults of tomorrow in order to subsidize the greed of today’s adult property owners, to systematic disinvestment in the schools, the environment and industrial infrastructure, the resources of the young are being cannibalized to pay for the irresponsible whims and reprehensible avarice of a small group of wealthy adults” (p.177). This quote further supports his statement how young people are referred to in the U.S. as the lowest priority in our nation. By young people becoming aware

Cited: Lipsitz, George. “We Know What Time It Is” Grossberg, Lawrence. Cinema and the Representation of Youth’s Alienation Krieger, Barbara Jo. Dialogue and Discovery New York: St.Martins Press, 1996.