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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Media and the adolescent

...psychologist says keep a close eye

by

Bobie-Lee Dixon
2145 days ago
20190831

The 1972 tril­o­gy God­fa­ther; 1992 crime and dra­ma thriller—Reser­voir Dogs; 2015 bi­og­ra­phy dra­ma—Nar­cos; 1991—Boys in the Hood; 2002 Shot­tas; and the 1997 Amer­i­can thriller Gang Re­lat­ed—What did all these movies have in com­mon? They all ex­hib­it­ed how liv­ing an il­le­git­i­mate lifestyle al­most al­ways re­sult in an en­tan­gled web of bloody re­ward. But al­so they sub­lim­i­nal­ly glo­ri­fied the gang cul­ture, killings, in­car­cer­a­tion, at times even mak­ing them seem ex­cus­able—“good guy” char­ac­ters are cre­at­ed out of the same ones shed­ding blood.

Equal­ly, the gen­res of hip-hop, rap and dance­hall have long been as­so­ci­at­ed with wine, women, and song. Through­out the years, the lyri­cal con­tent of these songs con­tin­ued to por­tray a “get rich quick or die try­ing” prac­tice—ex­alt­ing guns and vi­o­lence.

In one of im­pris­oned Ja­maican Dance­hall artiste, Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer's 2019 of­fer­ings, ti­tled Any Weath­er, he makes a call to all “ghet­to youth to get their mon­ey longer” through any means nec­es­sary.

Fel­low Ja­maican artiste An­dre “Squash 6ix Boss” Whit­tak­er, talks about “nev­er leav­ing his gun” and “lock­ing down large turfs from state to state,” in his 2018 sin­gle Ohh Lala La.

It's not an anom­aly to see rap­pers il­lus­trate and ad­ver­tise their il­le­gal hus­tles through rhymes, which af­ford­ed them lav­ish lifestyles. Whether these songs were in­spired by true events or not, the mes­sage was al­ready con­veyed and now im­print­ed in the minds of young peo­ple.

Af­ter the Ju­ly 2019 killing of Sea Lots re­put­ed gang leader Aki­ni "Dole" Adams, sev­er­al videos cir­cu­lat­ed show­ing the ex­treme ado­ra­tion for the de­ceased who lay in a cof­fin while his 'dis­ci­ples' played his favourite dance­hall songs and em­bell­ished him with his sig­na­ture over­sized gold chains, de­sign­er clothes and mon­ey—scat­ter­ing lo­cal and for­eign cur­ren­cy on top his body. These acts of prais­es were per­formed be­fore the eyes of young chil­dren.

With this re­al­i­ty and the easy ac­cess to me­dia, what mes­sages are be­ing sent to young minds? Can what they view and hear re­al­ly in­flu­ence their thoughts and be­hav­iours?

Keep a close eye and ear on ado­les­cents and teens

Psy­chol­o­gist Michele Carter said yes. Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian, Carter, al­so an ed­u­ca­tor, said it must be un­der­stood that ado­les­cents and young adults are at a stage in their lives when they're de­vel­op­ing and in­ter­nal­is­ing a lot of in­for­ma­tion that they are con­stant­ly bom­bard­ed with and, like it or not, in­for­ma­tion in­flu­ences be­hav­iour.

“We live in a con­tem­po­rary world where we have so­cial me­dia giv­ing young peo­ple ac­cess to all types of in­for­ma­tion and in­for­ma­tion in­flu­ences us. It in­flu­ences our thought process­es, be­hav­iour and de­ci­sion-mak­ing process. And we can­not de­ny the im­pact of this, be­cause the me­dia is one of the ma­jor in­stru­ments we use to gain in­for­ma­tion in to­day's world,” Carter said.

Not­ing that the first point of so­cial­i­sa­tion of any in­di­vid­ual starts in the home, Carter said as they grow and they ma­ture, they are al­so ex­posed to oth­er forms of in­flu­ence in the form of be­hav­iours learned at school, from their peers and in to­day's world-me­dia, which is at their fin­ger tips.

“At the ado­les­cent and teenage stage, they are form­ing and trans­form­ing, adapt­ing their be­lief sys­tems. What­ev­er they con­sume will nat­u­ral­ly have an im­pact on what they are drawn to and what ap­peals to them, rather than what is right or wrong,” Carter ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Carter, the in­for­ma­tion some­one re­ceives could have a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive im­pact on them and this de­pend­ed on how the in­for­ma­tion was in­ter­nalised, processed and used.

Carter said there was a need for par­ents to keep a close eye and ear on what their ado­les­cents and teens were lis­ten­ing to and watch­ing.

“If you look at a young per­son you are al­ways see­ing them on their phones, they al­ways have on their head­pieces—they're al­ways lis­ten­ing to mu­sic. And if they are con­stant­ly lis­ten­ing to mu­sic that's speak­ing a lot of vi­o­lence, en­cour­ag­ing them to pick up a gun, or to en­gage in cer­tain il­lic­it be­hav­iours, there is the 90 per cent chance, they would be in­flu­enced in some way to en­gage in these be­hav­iours, es­pe­cial­ly if all their peers are lis­ten­ing to the same mu­sic and be­hav­ing in the same man­ner,” Carter ex­plained.

“We have to re­mem­ber that mu­sic and the shows to­day are all made in an ap­peal­ing na­ture to young in­di­vid­u­als be­cause these artistes have to sell their songs and movies. The more views they get and the more their mu­sic is bought, the more mon­ey they make, so ob­vi­ous­ly they are go­ing to fash­ion their songs and shows in a man­ner that will ap­peal to young peo­ple who is their tar­get au­di­ence.”

One is re­spon­si­ble for the de­ci­sions and choic­es one makes. This is what crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira be­lieves. In an in­ter­view with Figueira, he said the world­view dis­persed by the me­dia does not out­fit the con­sumer for the ac­tu­al per­pe­tra­tion of crime. That is a per­son­al choice made by the in­di­vid­ual and in many cas­es, it is the fail­ure to choose but sim­ply to let her/his peers choose for them. He said, there must be an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment and/or en­abling per­son/s, the leader and the fol­low­er.

“The en­abling push fac­tors arise from cul­tures of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour where per­sons so in­clined find space, sup­port and en­cour­age­ment to car­ry out crim­i­nal acts for in these spaces crime is an ac­cept­ed way of life and busi­ness by which you earn,” said Figueira

While Carter agreed that the fi­nal de­ci­sion to en­gage in any be­hav­iour lies with the in­di­vid­ual, she said there are al­so dri­ving fac­tors that in­flu­ence de­ci­sions and choic­es.

“We must bear in mind, when it comes to young peo­ple, again, they are now de­vel­op­ing and find­ing their path in life, es­pe­cial­ly the ado­les­cent. The ado­les­cent is deal­ing with a lot of changes in their life phys­i­cal­ly. And with these phys­i­cal changes come emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal changes as well and they are in fact at a stage where they are in­flu­enced by the en­vi­ron­ment around them.

“They want to look like the peo­ple they idolise. They wear the same clothes like them, talk like them and walk like them, and if some­thing like a drink or a brand of shoe is en­dorsed by their idols, they want those things too. And this is not ab­nor­mal be­hav­iour for an ado­les­cent.”

She em­pha­sised the stage of the in­di­vid­ual's life must be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. Carter said an old­er per­son with ex­pe­ri­ence and a cer­tain lev­el of ma­tu­ri­ty would un­doubt­ed­ly be able to make a more in­formed and in­tel­li­gent de­ci­sion than that of an ado­les­cent.

Re­fer­ring to Ger­man-Amer­i­can de­vel­op­men­tal psy­chol­o­gist and psy­cho­an­a­lyst Erik Erik­son's psy­cho-so­cial the­o­ry of the sev­en stages of the psy­cho-so­cial de­vel­op­ment of hu­man be­ings, Carter said it was found with the ado­les­cent stage the in­di­vid­ual is deal­ing with iden­ti­ty ver­sus iden­ti­ty con­fu­sion.

She said in Er­ick­son's notes he ex­plained from the ado­les­cent stage per­son­al­i­ty de­vel­op­ment is char­ac­terised by an iden­ti­ty cri­sis which he called a turn­ing point—a cru­cial pe­ri­od of in­creased vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and height­ened po­ten­tial, there­fore dur­ing each cri­sis an in­di­vid­ual is more sus­cep­ti­ble to ma­jor mod­i­fi­ca­tions in iden­ti­ty, ei­ther pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive. And con­trary to pop­u­lar us­age, an iden­ti­ty cri­sis is not a cat­a­stroph­ic event but rather an op­por­tu­ni­ty for an adap­tive or mal-adap­tive ad­just­ment.


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