Why do we hate teenagers so much? What made them an acceptable target for disenfranchisement?
On one of my professional e-mail lists, somebody brought up a problem with teenage skateboarders: they love to use the covered walkway in front of a facility frequented by senior citizens with visual and mobility challenges. Too often (I presume) they’re not paying close attention their surroundings, so they create a safety hazard to others who would walk there.
Somebody in the discussion mentioned the “Classic 7-11 or mini-mart approach”: pipe classical music or adult “easy listening” music along the walkway. Apparently it drives young people batty, so they leave. The writer called it “worth a try.”
CNN recently reported on a device called “The Mosquito” (sold in North America under the name “Kids Be Gone”) that is “designed to drive away loiterers with a shrill, piercing noise audible only to teens and young adults”. Some municipalities have banned them, but others seem to have embraced them outside of stores or movie theaters as a way to drive away crowds of skateboarders and other loiterers.
The blog Architectures of Control (via Boing Boing) reports that Councillors in Sutton, Surrey (England) are preparing to redesign a public stairway specifically to make it difficult for young people to sit there. The original article reports:
Not only will the steps be made longer and more shallow to make them uncomfortable to sit on, but no handrail will be installed just in case teens decide to lean against it….
Explaining the need for the changes, St Helier Councillor David Callaghan said: “At the moment the steps are like ready-made seats so changes will be made to make the area less attractive to young people.
One thing these places — the ones we would forbid to teenagers — have in common is that they are places where lots of people, and not just young people, spend time. It seems that young people actually want to spend time in places full of adults! I’ve previously quoted sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who wrote about the time a relative
complained that the youth of the community were a “bunch of ingrates.” They did not appreciate the special hangout that had recently been constructed for them.
After listing to his lament, I asked him two questions: Was the place right smack in the center of town – right in the middle of things? And, “Do the adults go there, too?” The answer in both instances was no. The place was “especially” for the youngsters and nobody wanted such a place right in the middle of town. As in so many cases nowadays involving both the very old and the young, the desire is to sent them aside.
Time and again, we read that what teenagers really need and want — often by their own admission — is for adults to pay attention to them and to set limits on their behavior. Do you hear this, adults? Teenagers, even if they seem like mouthy, disrespectful little monsters to you, actually seek your company and want you to guide them into acceptable behavior!
Indeed, we have to wonder: if young people are constantly barred (either through subtle, psychological means or more overtly) from adult places, how can we expect them ever to learn adult behavioral norms?
If their behavior in public seems horrid (and, as a former public librarian, I’ll say it sometimes does), then it seems to me that they need, not fewer places to bother adults, but more. Not actually to bother adults, of course, but they need more adult-filled places offering worthwhile activity — or just quality loitering. Such places should be cheap, since young people may not have the money for fine dining. They should be not only safe, but comfortable. And they should be ubiquitous, or at least easily accessible.
Young people need ways to be meaningfully incorporated into our lives. What do we, as a society, have to offer them?
Great topic, great post. I remember once as a high schooler having a Twist and Shout come on the radio about 11:30pm and we stopped the car, turned up the volume, and started dancing in the residential street. A few doors opened, but we were back in the car and gone just after the song was over. I remember thinking both how much fun we were having just being into the music, but also how they must be thinking what degenerate teenagers we were.
So when I see kids doing outrageous , but essentially harmless stuff, I think of that time (and a few others), and smile. Having done some volunteer work with homeless kids, I know that the kids hanging around the Town Square in Anchorage are really starved for adult attention, especially if it is friendly and positive, even if their response isn’t.
The idea of making a public place unsitable is depressing. It’s like medicine treating the symptom and not the cause. Again, thanks for making me think about this. And for the criteria for blog lists.
You could get a book out of this topic. Perhaps you should.
I’ll second your recommendation for Ray Oldenburg’s “The Great Good Place”, though it talks more about indoor quasi-public places rather than genuine outdoor public space. Both are important, of course.
There is an element of ingratitude or at least bewilderment in Sutton Council’s attitude towards local young people. I’d have been quite amused to have been a fly on the wall when the youth workers went to this area to inform those hanging out in the “wrong” place about all the great facilities the council had provided for them. I do hope their responses were recorded and considered.
As you say, “quality loitering” should not just be permitted or possible, but encouraged both by policy and urban design. Unfortunately, current UK policy is entirely to the contrary. The official national guide to “Youth Shelters” claims to provide “advice and guidance for police forces, local authorities and partnerships on how to solve the problem of young people ‘hanging out’.” The “solution” in this case is a dedicated place far away from the rest of the community where young people can behave as they please and only annoy each other.
Chiltern District Council at least gets this much right:
“Not all young people need or want structured activities like youth clubs. For some having somewhere they can meet in safety, without being hassled or made to feel unwelcome is all they want.”
but unfortunately:
“If we don’t cater for our young people, of all ages, they’ll continue to meet in places not intended for this use” such as “a bus shelter, bench in town or just the corner of a road”.
The real solution, of course, is to make young people welcome in all public places and as you suggest, to provide the social opportunities and appropriate feedback to allow them to successfully negotiate the sharing of that space with others of all age groups. I can see no reason why we all can’t learn to be both more tolerant and more tolerable to enable this to happen.
Apparently not just in the States, but in Great Britain, the problem is an increasing “rationalization” of space: every space must be “rational” — which means predictable and used only for the one purpose for which it was intended.
We have this design problem no less in “rural” Fairbanks than in any more urban town: every location has only one purpose. People may live here, but not do business; shopkeepers may sell here, but not play; citizens may recreate here, but not reside. Really, to remove public stairs’ natural function as places to sit and loiter is to denigrate them by reducing their dimensions. To those who appreciate public space, it is no less offensive than saying that it’s the place of Blacks to serve our meals and play music in our nightclubs.
This makes me wonder if we need to start thinking, in our urban design, not “How can we make people use this as intended?” but rather “What else could this be used for, and how can we make that use practical?”
This is an excellent post, Paul. I too was on that professional list serve that discussed the problem–which basically was teenagers on skateboards zooming by in area where the old farts might get run over. The focus of the discussion was how to prevent the teenagers from skateboarding in the area, which is a perfect skateboarding run–rather, than, say, how to get the older, slower folks to walk in and out safely and avoid getting in the way of the energetic, excercizing teenagers. So there was an inherent bias against the kids’ use versus the older (or much younger) people’s use. And the discussion concentrated on creating obstacles. The best response was for the local librarian to go out and say, “Hey, kid, be careful when you zoom by–don’t run over the pedestrians.” That, it seemed to me, was the most respectful of both types of uses.
The focus on single-use areas has resulted in sprawl cities where people MUST drive to an area, because any other access is blocked off, and because (for example) the residences are Here and the shopping is There and never the twain shall mix. Multiple uses are indeed the best use of space, and multiple types of users.
I’m very excited about the revitalization of Girdwood’s Skate Park for these exact reasons. I mean, when I was a kid, we rambled around in the woods, broke our legs falling out of trees, felt dangerous and edgy exploring the banks of the Mississippi River, and I’m not that old so it can’t possibly be all that different.
I guess what happens, though, is that when you take away the woods and the trees and you inject a video game culture, expectations for down time activities change a little. And that’s where the skate park comes in!
Hooray for quality loitering!
It’s curious to me that even when the forum is specific to “What do teenagers want?” (what are community needs in next 5 years), adults always directed the conversation.
For example,
Everyone thought that a pool and rec center was the most important need of young people in Bethel. After our group finished discussion, the parents moved to another part of the room. But I paused the kids from leaving and asked, if you could only have one thing, what would it be? The overwhelming answer was a “safe house”. If not them, their friends desperately needed a safe place to go late at night when it wasn’t safe to go home.
The other curious thing, as mentioned above, is that seldom one group of people’s needs are vastly different or incompatible to others’. The nice thing about “town squares” (or malls in rural states) is the ability for everyone to “hang out”.
Ah! Not all teens are bad.
I am 15, but I never skateboard. I am more of an old man than a teen. I listen to Gene Austin – my favorite song is his version of ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’. I was born in the wrong era.
And believe it or not, some of these skateboarders are 18 and even in their 20s. I saw a 30 year old man at the skatepark near my local library. They often throw things at the library windows and smash windows. Once they ripped up shelves of books. And this 30 year old man lead the riot.
it’s ironic. You can get 10 year old adults and 30 year old kids. Hehe.
In response to the music, “mosquito”, and rebuilding stairs so teens won’t be able to sit there. I believe the constitution gives us the right to peaceably assemble. So unless the teenagers are destructive to property or picking fights with people, they should be allowed to stay where they are. I think the problem is that adults just don’t have any respect for teenagers. For example, I’m 14, when I was walking in the mall someone spit on my head. Gross, I know. So I went to a coffee stand and grabbed a napkin and an old woman, who DIDN”T EVEN WORK THERE, said that I would be stealing if I ask to take it. Again, the clerk had no problem and I am convinced that if I was forty years old the woman wouldn’t have said anything. I guess my point is , adults don’t give us teens enough credit, we’re not all thugs who have sex, do drugs, drink, and steal!!!
“In response to the music, “mosquito”, and rebuilding stairs so teens won’t be able to sit there. I believe the constitution gives us the right to peaceably assemble. So unless the teenagers are destructive to property or picking fights with people, they should be allowed to stay where they are. I think the problem is that adults just don’t have any respect for teenagers. For example, I’m 14, when I was walking in the mall someone spit on my head. Gross, I know. So I went to a coffee stand and grabbed a napkin and an old woman, who DIDN”T EVEN WORK THERE, said that I would be stealing if I ask to take it. Again, the clerk had no problem and I am convinced that if I was forty years old the woman wouldn’t have said anything. I guess my point is , adults don’t give us teens enough credit, we’re not all thugs who have sex, do drugs, drink, and steal!!!”
HEAR! HEAR!
I agree with Clayton Van March. Us teen do get treated like trash and I insist people stop being so stupid and say that all teens are bad cause that some of us but not all of us. I’m also fourteen years old, and whenever I go somewhere like walgreens people watch me like as though I’m gonna steal something when I don’t steal. Stealing is a sin and I’m catholic. Kids steal and everyone thinks there so innocent to tell the truth. Don’t ever look at a teen with hatered cause us teens are going through so many problems like most of us think of suicide cause of whats going on at home. We get abused by someone we care about. Haven’t us teens suffered enough already? I say that enough is enough. Leave us teen alone. We are all not bad, there is good in many of us. So remember when you were a teen. Think of all the problems that you went through. We’ll teens today go through worse than you think we do. Treat us right and we’ll treat you the same is all I’m saying. K? We can all be friends if we respect each other. I say that we should all start respecting each other now. Hey, it’s now or never. Think about it really good.
your not using the correct term, its CHAVS not ‘young people’. Goths don’t mugg you, moshers don’t. we are sick of people using the incorrect terms, it’s ‘CHAVS’
Sorry about shouting. it’s just that these people don’t understand our social groups. I’m 15 and i hate leaving my house unless it’s band practice or to go on holiday. I live near old folks and 2 of them stickup for me because i’m nice and have quite an old mid and i like melodic stuff like TESTAMENT. My school is full of chavs and they descriminate too much, they call me a ‘mosher’ but i’m a thrash-metaller read Urban dictionary.com on the term. I like old dudes but i will calmly correct there terms if they say ‘young people’ but if they get abusive i will try to reason with them, but if they wont make up i will sterotype them as they would in the said surcumstanses, with the old ‘i’m so scared i fell over and can’t turn over and get up’. my freind mum has atrisis in the leg and she gets up on a beach in 2 seconds.