Moral Panic and Young People Behaviour - Literature review Example

Literature on Moral Panic and Young People Behaviour By: Name: Tutor: Subject: Institution: City: Date: Moral Panic and Young People Behaviour There are many environments that a child grows up in, including the family, the home, the neighbourhood. As discussed by Mah (n.d.), each of these environments has its own unique way of influencing the development of a child. These environments may predict the future success or failure. The home represents the child’s first community and the most important because it is the one in which the foundation for development is laid. Different children may exhibit different behaviour when the join school such that children present the teachers with numerous challenges. As a result, the parents and the entire teaching fraternity have resulted in developing ways in which they can help mould the behaviour of children and youths. One of these ways and the one that has become common in today’s education circles is a moral panic. According to Krinsky (2012), moral panic is an episode caused by shocking and alarming media, causing public concern, fear, anxiety, and anger over a perceived event or person likely to pose a threat to the society. Moral panic is anchored on the phenomenon of deviance amplification. Sensational media represents the channel in which this deviance is amplified because media unintentionally increases rather than restrains apparent deviance. As a result, rather than solving the problem, it creates social problems on the part of recipients who among them are the children and the teenagers. Since their minds are in their early developmental stages, teenagers are the most affected group by moral panic. Surprisingly, rather that changing them, ‘moral panic’ stories are contributing in exacerbating the problem. Moral panic has five elements, including concern, consensus, hostility, volatility, and disproportionality. People often hold different contradictory opinions on childhood in regard to moral panics. A common post-Romantic notion takes a child to be innocent and vulnerable, thus, requiring protection from unconditioned adult’s unnatural influence. However, what underlies this notion is the older notion that views the child as the one who bears the original sin. Many questions are raised regarding children social problems and safety. The public debates on moral panic are often centred around children based on a common argument forwarded that children are far more innocent and natural compared to adults therefore readily leading to a situation in which adults prey on them. Adults believe that children have inherent tendencies toward destruction, sexuality, and violence; therefore, they must be restrained. The interaction between children and condoned adults is largely unsupervised thus encouraging children to exhibit antisocial behaviour. However, the present paper is directed towards investigating the imagined risk behind many moral waves of panic. Children are not regarded much as a source of risk compared to youths. Youths are both regarded as a risk as well as the source of risk in many moral waves of panic. This risk or source of risk is closely associated with the transition stage between childhood and adulthood. There are ambiguity and marginality in according to youths such a status thus exacerbating the regulation and the reproduction of the social order. However, even the youths also find the relationship between the generations and generational culture to be problematic. As a result, their cultures and subcultures are usually decoded and read as responses and attempted solutions to such strains. Based on this conception, youths are viewed to present an additional transitional figure, even to themselves, leading many commentators on moral panics to argue that the youths need exceptionally higher society’s protection compared to children. They are often viewed as particularly vulnerable to unexpected dangers, therefore, needing higher society’s protection compared to children. Youths stand on the threshold of adulthood, occupying the borderlands of society thus triggering moral panics as either folk devils or symbolic victims. Youth culture has particularly been seen as exceedingly difficult to define, thus, seen as expressing their own responses to their equivocal position relative to adult society. In the opening part of his article, Adolescent Masculinity Homophobia, and Violence: Random School Shootings, Kimmel and Mahler (2003) state that violence is given birth by impotence and that it is the hope of people who do not have power. The author has investigated the questions and issues surrounding increased school shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2001. They investigate whether these teenagers commit shootings as a result of emotional disturbance; or whether these acts qualify as media-generated violence, particularly from the internet, video games, rap, or rock music; or whether their parents are to blame. To answer these questions, the authors have analysed different commentaries and literature on school violence. Their observation is that these commentaries and literature ignore the ‘masculinity’ factor. This means that these commentaries and literature do not consider the ‘gender’ factor. Further investigation into these commentaries led the authors to conclude that all the cases of school shootings had one thing in common – the perpetrators of these shootings had a history of having been harassed. Most of them were mainly ‘gay-baited’ boys who were viewed as people who cannot measure up to the norms of hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, it is clear that the only mistake these boys did was over-conforming to a particular normative construction of masculinity. These boys perpetrated these acts because they had no power to conform to a certain normative construction of masculinity. Violence seemed to be the only hope they had. It is argued in the literature that studying ‘moral panics’ is important to youths in schools because of what this study reveals about the workings of power (Critcher 2010). This author argues that this debate among the youth is a socially necessary form of academic engagement since moral panics are around them all the time. One of the most common concepts and one that has proved attractive in discussions on moral panics is the concept of folk devils. In his book, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, Cohen (2002) has discussed the criteria by which ‘media-driven narratives’ are recognised as moral panics, including exaggeration, emergency and crisis, drama, evil forces, and an object of concern among others. These characteristics qualify as essential ingredients of moral panics – volatility (concern, hostility, and anxiety) and disproportionality (dramatisation, exaggeration). Volatility means that moral panic often has a sudden appearance and is short lived. The sheer frequency of violence meted on youths by other youths creates an accumulative impression of urgency. The anxiety on the side of expert commentators is that freedom of expression is gravely at risk. Experts who review ‘moral panic’ cases offer different stories as to why an incident happened. However, on his part, Furedi (n.d.) advises that ignoring such experts may be best for the one’s child arguing that these experts have transformed modern parenting into a formidably difficult job leading to ‘overburdened parents and over-parented children. The author observes that the parent has been loaded with an endless stream of strong opinions as to why their children behave the way they do. Each of the individuals or groups that offer these opinions is convinced that their suggestions are true. These strong opinions are given to an already terrified father and mother. Surprisingly, the only person who seems not to have an opinion regarding a child or youth is the one who gave birth to that child – the parent. This has led Furedi (n.d.) to suggest that parents should ignore most of these experts in order to address the problem facing their children today. Parents lack confidence in their own opinions and about what is good for their children. According to this particular author, child-bearing has a changing effect on the parent in that when one becomes a parent, his/her worldview changes where he/she suddenly starts viewing other people as potentially threatening strangers. The salacious details about an incident make excellent content for news media. Sometimes, these contents include the opinions of experts despite some media consulting the opinions of individuals who have very little expertise. In support of ignoring the expert opinions, Ferguson (2013) argues that such expert opinions are oftentimes full of confusion a factor that ends up confusing the recipients of these opinions even further. According to this author, even politicians join in the bandwagon because spreading moral panic gives them an opportunity to appear to be concerned. Their motive for doing this is not to contribute in the transforming of the behaviour of the youths but to help themselves gain rating among the community they serve. However, rather than parents believing in their opinions and good judgement, they believe what these experts say and give to be the appropriate solution to the problems and crisis facing their children. What they do not know is that the objective of these alarmist warnings is to create a market of terrified parents (Ferudi n.d.). Ferudi concludes that these expert opinions are more harmful to the children and teenagers than they are helpful. Parents have certain fears and attitudes towards their children. To worsen the matter, the media joins in and plays a significant role in provoking these irrational attitudes. Due to false conception generated by expert opinions, parents are either too harsh on their children or to suspecting. After the realisation that their parents are too harsh or too suspecting, teenagers end up worsening in terms of behaviour. References Clitcher, C. 2003. Moral Panics and Media. Buckingham: Open University Press Cohen, S. (2002). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: Routledge. Ferguson, C. 2013. Adolescents, Crime, and the Media: A Critical Analysis. New York: Springer Science & Business Media. Furedi, F. n.d. Paranoid Parenting: Why Ignoring the Experts may be Best for Your Child. Kimmel, M. and Mahler, M. 2003. American Behavioral Scientist, 46(10), 1439-1458. Krinsky, C. 2012. The Ashgate Research Companion. London: Routledge Mah, R. n.d. Difficult Positive Discipline for Prek-3 Classrooms and Beyond: Behaviour in Early Childhood. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Read More