Relationships
A youth generation is defined by
relationships. Thirteen-year-old
eighth-graders might know some
high school seniors, but anyone
older is ancient—except maybe
their siblings and neighbors. Five
years is nearly forever!
Cooler Than Cool
American youth culture has had a
lot of words for cool. Do you
recognize them all? Could you put
them in chronological order?
Issue 88
When working with youth it can be
surprising how quickly a youth
generation—five years—passes.
For teens, five years is 1/3 of their
lifespan—a lifespan
1972
already marked by
constant change,
“long-lost” friends,
new slang, and for
girls especially, new
ways to look sexy.
Think: bikinis, bobby
sox, miniskirts, high
boots, hot pants,
bare mid-drifts, and
yoga pants.
March
Youth Generations
2015
Youth Culture
newsletter
Vocabulary
Generation: the average
length of time between
the birth of parents and
the birth of their children.
A youth generation: the
average length of time
between one form of
“cool” and the next.
Slang
Words for “cool” have a short
shelf life. You can determine
almost anyone’s age by asking
them what word was a slang
synonym for cool when they were
sixteen: the cat’s pajamas, hip,
groovy, outasight, sweet, wicked,
da bomb, phat, sick, or cray. There
is nothing so uncool as slang that
is out of date. “Word?” And five
years is a word’s typical shelf life.
Technology
It is an interesting coincidence that
music technology also has about a
awesome
bodacious
brill
chill
cray cray
crazy
da bomb
epic
fantabulous
far out
fresh
groovy
five-year shelf life. The hi-fi was
knocked out by the transistor
radio and that by the stereo. In
succession thereafter were the
eight track, the walkman, the CD
player, and the mp3 player.
Napster lost to Pandora. Spotify is
being re-taylored swiftly and by
2020 the smartphone could be
reclassified as “so 2015.”
Marquee Events
People remember epic events.
Where were you the day JKF was
shot? Or when man landed on the
moon, or the space shuttle blew
up? Such events define a cohort.
fresh
gangsta
gold
hellacious
hip
hoppin’
hot
kickbutt
off da hook
out of sight
peachy
phat
The Cold War was prehistoric to a
28-year olds. A 23-year-old wasn’t
alive when the Berlin Wall came
down. An 18-year-old has no feel
for the Princess Diana effect and
13-year-olds relate to 9/11 like I did
to the end of World War II. To
them it is no longer relevant.
In youth work, if your knowledge
base is nearing five years old, you
better think about updating it. Or
you could just switch your career
to paleontology.
primetime
rad
rockin’
sick
smashing
spiffy
sweet
to die for
wet
wicked.
Yup! All that and
a bag of chips!
Teenage Heartthrobs
Pop idols for thirteen-year-old girls, not
surprisingly, also have a shelf life of about five
years. Justin Bieber replaced the Jonas
brothers, who had replaced Justin Timberlake.
Bieber shot up the Google Trends charts in late
2009. Just this month he has dropped to
below his February 2010 figures. The race to
replace him is on. At 21 he is just too old to be
a thirteen-year-old’s heartthrob anymore. Pop
culture abhors a vacuum and the music
industry is passionate about filling it quickly,
but with whom?
The candidate must meet certain criteria. He
must be sixteen or younger, have a great
smile, nice hair, and at least a mediocre voice.
Most importantly he must get discovered by a
key player in the pop music industry who
knows how to rocket him to the top.
Shawn Mendes is a candidate. He is the first to
have used Vine, the six-second video app, to
gain serious recognition. (Justin Bieber used
Living on the Vine
Nash Grier recently turned seventeen. He is
Vine’s biggest star with 11 million followers. He
became nationally known in 2013 for his sixsecond Vine videos. He has over seven million
followers on Instagram and four million on
Twitter. When he added his YouTube channel
last year over four million people subscribed to
it in just four months.
Grier has developed a highly engaged fan base
due to his mix of slapstick comedy and doing
parodies of current pop songs. His videos often
YouTube and Twitter.) Mendes first started
posting six second cover videos on Vine in 2013
and within months had picked up millions of
followers. He released his first song, “Life of
the Party,” in June 2014 and became the
youngest artist ever to have a debut song in
the top 25 of the Billboard Hot 100 list. Within
37 minutes of his making the song available on
iTunes, the song catapulted to the top spot.
He was just under sixteen. He has nice hair,
co-star his brother Hayes and sister Skylynn,
and are posted to coincide with the end of the
school day. “I don’t use cuss words. I try not to
do anything awful. You don’t want to lower
your audience,” he says. His focus is almost
always upbeat and uptempo.
Major brands such as Sonic, Aeropostale, and
Virgin Mobile who have paid him as much as
$100,000 to plug their products on Vine videos.
Nash Grier is a Christian from North Carolina
who frequently consults his iPhone’s Bible app
while on the road.
great smile, a good voice, but he might just
look too old at sixteen.
The better candidate is the twelve year old
rapper, Matty B. Hair, smile, voice, and
machinery are all in place: YouTube, Twitter,
Vine, Facebook, iTunes, wristbands,
sweatshirts, caps, and t-shirts. He isn’t yet
thirteen so he may still be a year or more away
from becoming the thirteen-year-old’s
hearthrob, but he has a good shot at it.