Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Büttner, Christian: Images sans frontières : media safeguards for young people in Europe / Christian Büttner ... (Hg.). - Gießen : Psychosozial-Verl., 2000 (Reihe „Edition psychosozial“) ISBN 3-932133-95-1
© 2000 Psychosozial-Verlag Goethestr. 29, D-35390 Gießen, Tel.: 0641/77819, Fax: 0641/77742 e-mail: info@psychosozial-verlag.de www.psychosozial-verlag.de Alle Rechte, insbesondere das des auszugsweisen Abdrucks und das der photomechanischen Wiedergabe, vorbehalten. Satz: Simone Neteler Umschlagabbildung: Nadine Helfenbein Umschlaggestaltung: Till Wirth nach Entwürfen des Ateliers Warminski, Büdingen ISBN 3-932133-95-1
Preface
7
Harmonization or Diversity? Christian B체ttner and Verena Metze-Mangold To Harmonize or to Live with Diversity? The Path to Globalization
15
Cornelius Crans and Joachim von Gottberg Practical Pressure versus Cultural Resistance: Differing Traditions and the Way to Standard Youth-Protection Criteria
35
Youth and Media in Europe: Facets of European Diversity Hans-J체rgen Wirth Protecting Youth: The Culturally Defined Relationship between Children, Young People, and Adults
59
Christian Palentien Patterns of Adolescence
72
Ingrid Kromer and Heide Tebbich Being Young in Austria
84
Bernhard Natschl채ger and Wilfried Datler No Such Thing as Opting Out: The Quest for Autonomy and the Use of Media amongst Young People in Austria
104
Jack Sanger Pictures of Youth in the United Kingdom
115 5
Paul van Heeswyk Adolescents in Their Own Minds
121
RĂŠgine Boyer Leisure Time amongst Secondary School Students
138
Sophie Jehel Young People in France: Current Trends
158
Stan Meuwese, Thea Meinema, Sharon Detrick The Youth of the Netherlands
181
European Youth Media Protection: Putting a Good Idea into Practice Frithjof Berger Youth Media Protection in European Politics and Legislation: Preconditions, Prospects, Limits
209
Anja Bundschuh European Youth Media Protection: Putting a Good Idea into Practice
224
Notes on Contributors
243
6
Preface Youth Media Protection in Europe It is safe to say that for a peace and conflict research body to get together with a private television watchdog to talk about media violence and youth media protection is not an everyday occurrence. In 1998, the Arbeitsstelle Friedensforschung Bonn (AFB/Peace Research Unit Bonn) and the Berlinbased Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Fernsehen (FSF/Voluntary Self-Regulation in Television),1 working in concert with the German UNESCO Commission, took just such a step, with a view to airing the intercultural issues raised by the idea of a European-wide system of youth media protection. Together they set up the first-ever international work-group that aims, in collaboration with scholars, youth-media practitioners, and official bodies, to build up a picture of childhood and youth in individual countries and, in so doing, to arrive at a better understanding of the different ways in which youth protection is handled. The talks and discussions in the first two sessions of the work-group identified childhood and youth as social constructs. In terms of youth protection, this means phases of life in which particular phenomena are out of bounds and must remain an adult preserve. The cultural differences in the view of what ought to be regarded as harmful or acceptable became evident in a whole range of domains. In Sweden, young people are allowed to watch pornography, in the USA they are allowed to carry guns, but in neither country are they allowed to drink alcohol. In the Netherlands, discussion tends to centre on the harm caused by depictions of violence, in Britain on that caused by depictions of sex or by ‘bad language’; in Germany, meanwhile, the debate is currently revolving around talk-shows. Whilst Austria is busy 1
As far as peace research, and thus also peace education, are concerned, the points of contact with the theme result from the key object of their investigations, namely violence. The role which peace research sees itself as playing is not confined to the analysis of conflicts and violence in international relations; it also addresses the ‘inner domain’ of societies and their relationships of violence. The point of contact for the Nederlands Filmkeuring and Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Fernsehen derives from the programme which they see themselves as fulfilling.
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discussing the link between media encouragement of pleasure in others’ misfortunes and corresponding shortcomings in social attitudes among children, the risk-factors under discussion in France are commercialization, the increasing consumerist attitudes fostered by advertising, and the influence of the US-dominated film-market on French culture. The work-group – which meets once or twice a year – is trying to discover how these differing youth-protection regulations relate to culturalcum-historical context. How, for example, do the various European countries view childhood and youth? What cultural roots determine the way children and young people are regarded, and the judgement as to what should be seen as dangerous for them?
The Present Situation Whereas European political and economic union is already well advanced, youth media protection still operates on a nationally circumscribed scale. The differences between the individual countries are considerable. Apart from the variety in the institutions concerned, and the fact that these may be organized as self-regulating bodies or government authorities, the regulations governing the way in which films, video, and television are dealt with vary from country to country. In addition, each country has its individual view as to what films may be seen by children and young people and at what age. Classifications often differ widely. Although the various classifying bodies in Europe start from the same assumptions about effect, the way in which these assumptions are interpreted and weighted in concrete instances differs. One factor behind this is the differing importance of the ideas of freedom and protection in the individual countries. Whereas in France, almost 70 per cent of cinema films are released with no age-restrictions, in Germany the figure is less than 10 per cent. In Germany, imposed cuts are considered a legitimate means of taking the violent ‘edge’ off a film; in the Netherlands and, above all, in France, such cuts are rejected as interference with artistic freedom. In almost all EU countries, there are calls for stricter age-classifications; in Denmark, the complete abolition of legal age-limits is under discussion. 8
The question of what risk-factors a particular film contains is also answered differently from country to country. In most European countries, for example, the combination of action and humour in depictions of violence is regarded as mitigating the impact, whereas in Norway the humorous context is thought to trivialize the violence. In Germany, many American actionfilms are only passed for viewing by those aged over 16 or 18, because it is assumed that multiple scenes of violence for which there is no sufficient justification makes violence appear a normal and appropriate means of resolving conflicts. The same films often get a ‘12’ certificate in France, on the grounds that the action is clearly recognizable as fiction and is not transferable to the real lives of young people living in France. The variations in formal youth-protection criteria appear in a different light when set against the cultural background. Thus, the liberal attitude to depictions of sexuality in the Netherlands will be seen differently if one is aware that sexual relations between adults and 12-year-olds do not constitute an offence there. This all suggests that to arrive at a European-wide system of youth protection, we need to press on with intercultural exchange.
Alternatives for Action Discussion in this area centres on the tension between harmonization/levelling and cultural identity. On the one hand, swift action is needed. In view of technological developments and the globalization of the media market, the possibility of instituting standard European criteria is increasingly being mooted in the political domain, particularly as there will be a growing need for a European counterbalance to any US-American system that may come into being – for the Internet, for example, with film classifications and other restrictions. Certain basic standards and some kind of alignment of youthprotection criteria are therefore needed. On the other hand, cultural differences cannot be ignored. Any alignment must be based on mutual recognition and acceptance, and we therefore need to understand the different modes of seeing and the different backgrounds. How particular criteria are to be interpreted is ultimately impossible to determine; the answer lies in a conglomeration of practical precedent, tradition, and standards. 9
Coping with diversity thus means, in the first place, looking for common ground, but at the same time allowing differences to persist and accepting them. In line with this, the present book brings together information from the different countries of Europe – as a first step in building up a ‘crosscultural picture’ that will throw light on the cultural background to youth protection. A joint European system of regulation on youth protection could, similarly, take account of both aspects – the similarities and the differences. One way in which it could do this would be through dual labelling – by the relevant institution in each country, and by an international body responsible for issuing pan-European classifications.
About This Book In its first attempt to look more closely at its subject-matter, the Work-Group on Youth Protection in the Media asked what young people in the various countries of Europe were like, how they might be described in social-science terms, and how such a description might help elucidate differences in the assessment of youth and of media products – as reflected, for example, in the differing age-ratings given to such products. In other words, it asked how one could explain the fact that a particular media topic is seen as harmful to young people in one country but not in another. We can begin to answer these questions by examining existing interpretations of youth – as represented here in contributions from five European countries. These texts do not adhere to a particular social-scientific method of presentation; nor are they all by experts from the same field. Hence, they mirror not only European diversity, but also a diversity of scientific-cumtextual approaches. (From Germany there are articles by Hans-Jürgen Wirth and by Christian Palentien; from Austria by Ingrid Kromer and Heide Tebbich, and by Bernhard Natschläger and Wilfried Datler; from the UK by Jack Sanger and by Paul Heeswyk; from France by Régine Boyer and by Sophie Jehel; and from the Netherlands by Stan Meuweese, Thea Meinema, and Sharon Detrick.) The choice of European countries dealt with in the book – Germany, France, Britain, Austria, and the Netherlands – came about more by accident 10
than by design. Not only is it a challenge to get European academics ‘round a table’; it is also a hard task to arouse their enthusiasm for a topic that is currently of limited interest to social scientists – the topic, namely, of Europe. There is too little transparency as regards where the process of European unification is headed, and whether the social sciences play, or will play, a systematic part in developments in this area. It was our hope to be able to offer two contributions on each of the countries, but – not least because of the challenges mentioned above – we have not always succeeded in doing this. The contributions are not intended to be representative of the countries concerned: in every country there will be a variety of accounts of young people, and one of the tantalizing experiences offered by this book is that of getting a sense of national similarities and international differences rather than having them set in stone, as it were. Up to now, the European discussion-process has devoted too little attention to such issues for anyone to be able to make any firm pronouncements on these differences and similarities. This book is a first attempt at this. Besides describing the motley entity that is European youth, we have gathered together texts that describe the framework within which the discussion about youth protection is located. This includes, in the first instance, overall conditions and the ‘nerve centres’ of power, and also the local conditions of life of young people and their families. The range covered here – from the matters dealt with ‘at the highest level’ to the problems which young people and their families face on the ground as a result of Europeanization in the media domain – are brought out particularly tangibly in the two parts of the joint contribution by Christian Büttner and Verena Metze-Mangold. Which tasks are entrusted to which organizational structures (or not?) in the attempt to guarantee meaningful protection for young people in the media in Europe is a question dealt with in the contribution by Joachim von Gottberg and Cornelius Crans. The article focuses on the tension between practical necessity and theory-led action in a domain only partly connected to the political decision-making process. In a section following on from the main body of the book – which contains the country-specific descriptions of young people – Fritjof Berger examines current European regulations on youth media protection, and the way in which these have evolved. He indicates the position occupied by 11
social-science research in the European debate and the way in which the national differences in perceptions of the relationship between young people and adults is reflected in the detail of the regulatory apparatus. Anja Bundschuh closes with an overview of the media economy in Europe. This book poses the same kind of challenge to the reader as does Europe itself: the patchwork of European youth media protection is already busily being woven without the ends of the threads in each country being properly visible. What are we to do about this, in an as yet non-existent polity that does not, or cannot, subject itself to democratic refinement and control? How should we go about drawing together something which as yet has no political foundation, indeed no foundation at all, in joint democratic decisionmaking? We hope that, apart from anything else, this book will whet the appetite for a (social-science) venture whose final outcome is still far from decided. Christian B端ttner (HSFK) Cornelius Crans (NFK) Joachim von Gottberg (FSF) Regine Mehl (AFB) Verena Metze-Mangold (UNESCO) Claudia Mikat (FSF)
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Ingrid Kromer and Heide Tebbich
Being Young in Austria A marked emphasis on youthfulness is currently observable in Western societies. Being young has long since ceased to be the preserve of the up-andcoming generation: ‘forever young’ is an anthem that is intoned in almost every age-group. Young people’s ideals of life are being generalized across society, and more and more effort and imagination are needed on the part of adolescents to demarcate themselves from the so-called ‘adult world’. At the same time, in Austria, as in all Western European countries, the number of children and adolescents as a proportion of the total population is steadily declining. About 15 per cent of the Austrian population are between 15 and 24 years old; the under-fifteens make up 17 per cent. According to current demographic forecasts, the proportion of adolescents is set to decline further: in 2000, it will sink to 12 per cent, and in 2030 to only 10 per cent (BMfUJF 1998, 6). In the long term, the age-pyramid will therefore be reversed: over the next few years, the number of young people will steadily decline, whilst the over-fifty-five age-group will increase in size. In 1996, there were a total of 2,062,446 young people between the ages of 11 and 29 living in Austria (ÖSTAT 1997). Table 1. Predicted Size of Age-Groups in Austria 2000 – 2030 Age-group 10 – 29 55 – 89
Year 2000 1,996,643 2,125,179
2015 1,896,221 2,558,661
2030 1,687,450 3,209,011
The effect which this continual decline in the proportion of adolescents and children may have on the social, economic, and political situation of these groups is as yet unclear. In specific situations, there could be an enhancement of their status. The more realistic scenario, however, is that the concerns and needs of older people will move centre-stage and that the interests 84
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of the rising generation will command less attention (current political discussions such as those about pensions are being conducted almost exclusively from the point of view of ‘old people’). This means the young will become even more marginalized. It almost seems as if there is an attempt to compensate for the ‘disappearance’ of young people in society as a whole by a trend towards increased youthfulness across all age-groups.
Growing Up in the midst of the Modernizing Process For young people, living and growing up in the midst of the process of social modernization gives rise to a number of contradictions. The conditions of life and contexts of development in which life-course changes are embedded are themselves undergoing rapid cultural transformation and this is having a lasting impact on the everyday worlds of the rising generation. The main pillars of the cultural transformation are, in outline, as follows. – The gradual disintegration of the traditional social milieu has loosened group affiliations and brought greater freedom for the individual. Collective attitudes and values, especially those specific to a particular milieu, have given way to individual blueprints for life. But this increasing social individualization is also dissolving the ties that bind the individual into a social network (Beck 1991, Heitmeyer and Olk 1990). Young people are increasingly having to take their lives into their own hands. This can open up opportunities, but it can also result in the young being forced to find their own way and determine their own status. – The proliferation in opinions, knowledge, and concepts of life, and the disintegration of old values and tried-and-tested parameters, are leading, amongst other things, to a pluralization of life-styles. Society is fragmenting into a confused host of tiny subgroups of people with similar needs and interests. Youth as a social group has therefore become difficult to define and has never before assumed so ramified and unhomogeneous a form as it has today. Youth today is like a jigsaw puzzle made 85
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up of very diverse cultures, cliques, and lone individuals. As a result, the spectrum of youth scenes has become extremely varied and wide. – For young people, the universal mediatization and technologization of everyday life constitutes a formative element of their generation (Luger 1991): the media provide the basic fund not only of symbols and signs, but also of values and attitudes through which young people define themselves as a generation and demarcate themselves from the adult world. Through their focus on image and presentation, the electronic media have sparked the growth of a new political culture that operates according to a primarily visual logic. Permanent confrontation with media necessitates constant classification and evaluation of all sorts of occurrences, from mundanities to global events. – An increased functionalization of everyday life, resulting from economic modernization and the expansion of the welfare state, is leading to an ever-greater fragmentation of everyday life and sometimes also to the increasing insularity of particular areas of life. Existence in a variety of worlds such as school, family, sports clubs, peer groups, leisure groups, youth centres, etc., in which different norms apply, requires that young people display both geographical and social mobility – in other words, a modal personality that will enable them to survive in the different socioecological contexts. – Young people today live in a consumer- and leisure-based society. Thanks to the way in which the rising generation has gradually worked its way to independence in the communication and leisure domains, the culture industry has developed into an authoritative entity which on the one hand supports young people in their efforts to secure autonomy and on the other hand helps ensure they become integrated into the consumer system that underpins capitalist society. Nowadays, leisure is not just the sphere of the cheery ‘anything goes’, of games and relaxation, the domain of boundless possibilities, in which there is no longer any need to justify why one does, or doesn’t do, particular things. Young people also make selective use of the leisure-goods and leisure-services market for the purposes of their ‘leisure careers’ – either to improve their personal skills, to build up social networks, or to secure status. 86
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All in all, the points highlighted above show that, for young people, the fact of growing up in a changing society implies not only liberating developments, but also new pressures and constraints. How the ambivalences are dealt with depends on concrete social and economic conditions and – not least – on the quality of relations between young people and their parents, teachers, peers, and other groups to which they relate.
An Early Farewell to Childhood Nowadays, adolescence is extending over a longer and longer period between childhood and adulthood. The defining moments that demarcate it are becoming increasingly blurred, because the adolescent phase is undergoing both a chronological extension (post-adolescence) and a chronological shift backwards (pre-adolescence). Because of this structural extension of adolescence, giving a general definition of the start and finish of childhood and adolescence has become very difficult. The backward extension of the adolescent phase is also clearly reflected in the rising generation’s perception of itself. In the 11- to 14-year-old group, 63 per cent of children questioned define themselves as adolescents. From the age of 12, more than half the children consider themselves adolescents; only in the case of the 11-year-olds do a majority (62 per cent) define themselves as children (Kromer and Tebbich 1998). These developments in children’s biographical definition of themselves point to a radical change in self-image. The group of 12- to 14-year-old boys and girls now enter the generational context of ‘youth’ at an earlier stage. This also means that their needs in terms of social locus and socio-emotional factors have already developed beyond the childhood phase. They look for recognition as, and participation in the status of, ‘young people’ – a development that should also be borne in mind in reflections on youth protection. At the same time, adolescents now live longer with their family of origin than was usual in the 1970s – and not just in Austria. In the majority of cases, physical separation from the parents now takes place in the third decade of life. For young people in Austria, the average age of departure is 87
Ingrid Kromer and Heide Tebbich
just over 24 (Kytir and Münz 1994, 40). This later leave-taking from the parental home can be linked to a variety of factors. Extended schooling, later entry into paid work, the lack of ‘affordable’ accommodation, the later date at which people are setting up families, and so on, undoubtedly play a part in extending the period for which young people remain within the family of origin; but another important factor here is the de-dramatization of the relationship between the generations.
The Family – A Basic Locus of Living Nowadays, young people live in a variety of types of family – traditional nuclear families, long-term non-marital relationships, step-families, oneparent families with or without siblings, and so-called patchwork families in their various compositions and permutations. One of the most important consequences of the modernization and individualization of our society is the ‘terminability of social relationships’. Marriage and the family can no longer be viewed as permanent social relationships: the number of divorces has risen steadily since the 1960s, and now stands at double the figure of that time; the global divorce-rate for Austria has settled at 30 per cent. Despite these developments, one should not lose sight of the fact that one cannot in any sense talk of a radical shift away from the prototype of the family. The parent-based family continues to be the main form of family in which today’s children and young people grow up. More than two-thirds of under-fifteens currently live in families of the mother-father-child/children type. Family socialization has not declined in importance for children and young people, even though other entities such as the media have gained in importance. Despite the multiplicity of forms of living, the family is still the most basic locus of living for young people. One should not make any mistake either about the persistence of traditional, gender-specific role-patterns within families, even if division of labour within the home and in working life is now a subject of general discussion and discussion within families. In the perception of young people 88
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at least, the gender-specific roles within the family seem scarcely to have changed over the last few decades. In descriptions of families by 11- to 14year-olds, fathers are conspicuous by their absence; and when they are there, they are often tired or doing ‘other things’. The mothers continue to be the ones who take care of everything, to whom one talks if one has problems, who are there when young people need something (Kromer and Tebbich 1998). The physical and emotional absence of fathers is particularly problematic for sons – they are deprived of an important identificatory support. The lack of a father they can tangibly experience means that in developing and piecing together their own male roles, boys rely primarily on exaggerated, unrealistic, and partly distorted media models of manhood. As the evidence shows, both girls and boys partly reflect the traditional division of labour within their families of origin in their own notions about the future. Although they repeatedly stress their egalitarian view of the sexes, the dual female orientation towards job and family is seen by both sexes almost as a natural consequence of gender. That both sexes should find the idea of successfully combining job and family inconceivable – simply on the grounds that women can bear children – comes as a surprise (Friesl 1999). The study Jugend 97, carried out by Fessel & GfK, established that almost half of young people still see the woman’s going out to work as a strain on the family (see Fig. 1). male female % of sample
10 12
Agree strongly
38
Agree
32 36 34
Disagree 16
Disagree strongly
23 0
10
20
30
40
50
FIG. 1.
Responses to the proposition ‘The family suffers when the woman goes out to work’. From Fessel & GfK 1997. Based on a sample of 2,000 young people aged 14 to 24.
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Ingrid Kromer and Heide Tebbich
Leisure – A Key Locus of Self-realization During adolescence, leisure is the area of life in which girls and boys have an opportunity to discover their personality and fulfil it. Free time should be seen as the key area of self-expression for young people – in which they tackle important conflicts between personal and social identity-formation, between individuality and group loyalties, between dependence on, and separation from, the family of origin. The most recent representative data in Austria on the leisure activities of 14- to 24-year-olds are shown in Fig. 2. Listening to music
94
Doing something with friends Talking with friends Watching TV/videos Doing self up/Clothes/Personal grooming
89 74 73 73
Reading magazines Telephoning Going out/Going to cafés/bars Relaxing/Lazing about Getting to know new people Spending time with partner Playing sports Shopping/Going on shopping sprees Going to parties Learning
70 68 68 66 58 57 52 52 49 48 0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
FIG. 2.
Top fifteen leisure activities amongst young people in Austria. Figure shows percentage engaging in an activity often or very often. From Fessel & GfK 1997. Based on a sample of 2,000 young people aged 14 to 24.
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From these data, it is clear that listening to music and activities with friends top the list, for both boys and girls. This is no surprise: many other studies in Austria and elsewhere have come up with the same finding. Music is the core element of all youth cultures and thus also the defining medium for young people. Accordingly, a large proportion of young people’s income is spent on audio products and electronic equipment for playing music. Through reading music magazines, young people acquire an astonishingly high degree of specialist knowledge about musical styles and the youth-culture phenomena associated with them. Music is the most important medium through which young people’s need for expression and movement is satisfied. It acts as a catalyst in bringing about social contacts, and it expresses a whole range of experiences and yearnings felt by young people. Today, the leisure domain can be interpreted as being, for most young people, a sphere that offers multiple life-styles and patterns of behaviour. The way in which leisure is organized undergoes frequent changes during adolescence. After a phase in which it is organized and spent mainly within the internal domain of the family, the (externally accessible) circle of friends assumes a higher profile. But age is not the only important factor in any description of the leisure-habits of the young; so too is differentiation by gender. Venues, budgets, and activities are by no means gender-neutral. If one compares the most popular leisure-activities according to gender, clear differences emerge, notably in the areas of telephoning and shopping, where girls predominate, and in computers and sport, where boys are in the majority. In this situation, deviations from these patterns can serve as a way of accentuating non-conformist boy/girl personality patterns: by engaging in leisure activities not typical of one’s gender one can project and perceive oneself as ‘different from others’.
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Ingrid Kromer and Heide Tebbich male female % of sample
35
Shopping/Going on shopping sprees
69 28
Housework
59 55
Telephoning
82 32
Reading books
55 64
Doing self up/Clothes/Personal grooming
83 37
Going for walks/trips
56 67
Talking with friends
79
40
Looking after animals
52 65
Reading/browsing
76 41
Working on computer
28 59
Playing sports
44 25
Playing video games
8 38
Playing computer games
13 0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
FIG. 3.
Gender-specificity of leisure activities amongst young people in Austria. From Fessel & GfK 1997. Based on a sample of 2,000 young people aged 14 to 24.
Youth Culture Equals Scene Culture One not inconsiderable function performed by the products of the culture industry is to provide the fund of signs and symbols through which membership of youth scenes is realized. In the main, youth cultures today are no longer subcultural phenomena linked to the milieu of origin; they are fully commercialized, media-promoted, transnational groupings of youth life92
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styles. These life-styles ‘symbolize and are the vehicles for attitudes, interpretations of reality, moral and normative standpoints’, and they ‘serve to produce external demarcation or internal integration’ (Kögler 1998, 11). It is safe to assume that membership of, and identification with, particular scenes is more important than ever for young people. In a study on youth carried out in Upper Austria in 1996 (Dornmayr and Nemeth 1996), 41 per cent of young people between 13 and 21 stated that they were involved in at least one youth scene. Forty per cent of 13-yearolds already felt they formed part of a youth culture, and this percentage increased slightly with age. Affiliation to a ‘scene’ reached its high point at the age of 16. From 19, a rapid decline in scene-affiliation was observable: only 20 per cent of 21-year-olds still felt they were part of a youth culture – in other words, the much-observed ‘backward shift in the youth phase’ was evident here too. In contrast to, say, the 1970s, youth cultures in the 1990s are no longer dominated by students – in other words, by ‘elderly’ adolescents (see Fig. 4). 62
Techno
21 32
Grunge
10
identify with member of % of sample
59
Skateboarding scene
8
Rap
8
56 45
Hip Hop
7
Heavy metal
30
7
30
Punk
5 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
FIG. 4.
Identification with, and membership of, youth scenes. From Dornmayr and Nemeth 1996. Based on a sample of 1,265 young people in Upper Austria aged 10 to 21.
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Ingrid Kromer and Heide Tebbich
Because of the structures of modern, media-based society, participation in youth culture is no longer dependent on real, personal, or local factors; it may very well be confined to virtual or imaginary scene-membership, or it may amount to no more than empathy with a particular scene: ‘With a satellite dish and VIVA, the hip-hop culture makes its way out to the most far-flung village and thus reaches the would-be hip-hopper who is sitting there – maybe dressed hip-hop style, or maybe not – watching music TV. In this situation, personal or local ties and relationship-structures are no longer needed; a high degree of identification with the scene is enough to be involved – at least virtually’ (Großegger 1998, 44).
Peer-Groups as a Means of Self-help Adolescents spend significant proportions of their leisure-time in informal peer-networks. These voluntary, independent groups of friends, or ‘peergroups’, are characterized by shared goals, values, styles, secrets, interests, and by ties of mutual affection and admiration; they demarcate themselves from the outside world (which need not always be the adult world) through their own sets of symbols or features such as music, hair-style, clothes, and language (Klawe 1986, 164). What is special for young people in such groups is, amongst other things, the fact that their relations are not determined by an adult authority but are characterized by co-operation in the shared quest for a meaningful form of union. In an ideal situation, they can develop a relationship of equality and reciprocity. For an increasing number of young people, peer-groups are beginning to assume socializing functions at an ever earlier stage in their lives. An increase in the importance of such groups is particularly apparent in Western industrial societies. Young people spend their (free) time with people of the same age, and, from their common position within society, they try to interpret, cope with, or fend off the demands made on them by the adult world (Fend 1988, 154; Baacke 1991, 283ff.). At the same time, formal youth-groups (religious and political youth-organizations, institutionalized youth-initiatives, associations of various kinds) are currently faced with declining memberships. 94
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Because social paradigms and patterns of integration have started to crumble, peer-groups have not only a preparatory function (preparation for the as yet inaccessible adult world) and an integrating function (mediation between traditional and modern value-systems). Nowadays, they fulfil a vital, meaningendowing function in helping young people cope with life. They ‘help children to help themselves’. They provide orientation, security, a feeling of safety, and, most importantly, support in shaping their own lives; they are ultimately the locus of identity-formation for the young (Ferchhoff 1990, 29). The ‘mutually supportive community of peer-groups’ offers children a space in which they can come to grips with, and work through, ‘biologically determined processes of maturation, internal developmental tensions, and socio-contextual conditions’ (Baacke 1991, 284).
Youth Sexuality Equals Relationship-based Sexuality All the studies carried out in the German-speaking world indicate a trend towards relationship-based sexuality amongst the young; the sexual attitudes and behaviour of both girls and boys are tied into communicative contexts. Relationship-based sexuality amongst the young is founded on the principle of serial monogamy, implying that faithfulness is limited to the duration of the relationship concerned. Most boys and girls today take it for granted that before marriage they will go through several love-affairs or intimate relationships, until they have found the ideal wife or husband – and that they will do this responsibly, self-confidently, and independently. Young people nowadays are no longer willing to be told how they should manage their sexuality, and they seem to set great store by virtues such as faithfulness and love which their own parents rejected in their youth. Wherever a relationship is sought out and entered into, sexuality sooner or later becomes involved. Traditional sexual morality is being replaced by negotiationbased morality between the partners, thus permitting a multiplicity of sexual modes of behaviour.
95
Ingrid Kromer and Heide Tebbich male female % of sample
45
Agree strongly
63 41
Agree
25 11
Disagree
9 2 3
Disagree strongly 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
FIG. 5.
Responses to the proposition ‘Sexual fidelity is the most important precondition for a relationship’. From Fessel & GfK 1997. Based on a sample of 2,000 young people aged 14 to 24.
If one compares the relevant studies on the sexual behaviour of young people carried out over the last few years, it emerges that the different phases of heterosexual behaviour amongst girls and boys – that is to say, from the first kiss to the first occurrence of intercourse – proceed in an almost uniform manner and sequence. Thus, young people have their first sexual experiences in a quite predictable ‘succession’: after falling in love and the first date comes the first kiss, and after the first experiences of petting comes the first occurrence of intercourse, and so on.
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Being Young in Austria
The following table, based on an international study on youth sexuality and aids (Nöstlinger and Wimmer-Puchinger 1994) shows the average age at which each psycho-sexual step occurs. Table 2. Average Age at which Psycho-sexual Phases Are Completed Stage of psycho-sexual development
% of sample having completed relevant stage
Age
Falling in love for the first time
94
12.9 (14)
First date First kiss
91 89
13.1 (14) 13.1 (14)
First steady girl/ boyfriend
72
14.3 (15)
First incidence of heterosexual petting
62
14.9 (15)
First incidence of homosexual petting
4
13.4 (13)
First incidence of heterosexual intercourse
43
15.5 (16)
n = 1,108, Ø age 17.15. Source: Nöstlinger and Wimmer-Puchinger 1994.
Ninety-four per cent of all the young people questioned had already fallen in love once. On average, this had occurred when they were just under 13, though the most frequently mentioned figure was 14. In this test sample, the average age at which intercourse first occurred was established as 15.5. In the current study on AIDS and youth, published in 1997, the average ‘first-time’ age is also 15.5, for a partial sample of 616 sexually experienced adolescents. This is about half of the adolescents in the total sample who had had sexual experiences either a ‘a few times’ (28 per cent) or regularly. On average, the young people questioned had slept with two partners. 97
Ingrid Kromer and Heide Tebbich
No gender-based statistical differences were observable (Fink and WimmerPuchinger 1998, 40 f.). The Austrian ‘Kids’ study Abschied von der Kindheit. Die Lebenswelten der 11- bis 14-jährigen Kids (‘Farewell to Childhood: The Lives of Elevento Fourteen-Year-Olds’),1 which contains representative data on this segment of the population in the different areas of life, also shows that these age-groups are by no means as precocious as is often claimed in the media. In this transitional phase, sexual experiences with the opposite sex mainly take the form of holding hands, cuddling, kissing, and caressing. As the age goes up, other, more intimate forms of sexuality assume a higher profile. No significant gender-based or education-based differences show up for this age-group as far as sexual experience is concerned. It is only amongst the 15- to 17-year-olds – who were questioned as a control-group in the ‘Kids’ study – that differences begin to emerge, with those in employment revealing greater sexual experience than those still at school. Most studies on sexuality ascribe particular importance to the average age at which intercourse first occurs. It is often regarded as an indicator of moral attitudes (collapse of values, liberality). Early sexual experiences are therefore generally open to wild speculation. Over the last fifty years, one can talk of there having been a marked shift backwards in the start of sexual experience, with the major changes in this respect occurring during the 1960s and 1970s (Schmidt 1993, Nöstlinger and Wimmer-Puchinger 1994 etc.). In the last twenty-five years, however, ‘the sexual milestones’ have hardly advanced at all. Whether young people today are described as a ‘restrained’ or ‘precocious’ generation therefore depends on the standpoint of the observer. Contradictory speculations as to whether the time of first sexual experience is undergoing a further major shift backwards or a shift forwards (‘reconventionalization’) cannot currently be resolved on the basis of the empirical data available. 1
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The researchers chose the looser label ‘kids’, because the target-group of 11- to 14year-olds no longer fall into the childhood category but are not yet fully fledged teenagers either.