Teenage Employment Trends and Factors

• Chapter 7, Lecture 9 discusses work, leisure, and media in relation to adolescents.

The Rise and Fall of the Student Worker

• Before 1925, most teenagers from less affluent families became full-time workers between 12 and 15 years old.
• Adolescents were typically either students or workers, but not both.
• More young people stayed in school longer as secondary education became more common, leading to fewer dropping out to work.
• 3% of high school students worked during the school year in 1940.
• A sharp increase held part-time jobs among American high school students in the 1970s.
• Working during the school year became common.

Recent Trends in Adolescent Work

• Student jobs during the school year have lessened in the last 40 years due to several factors.
• Schools began increasing graduation requirements.
• More students enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) courses with significant homework demands.
• Students opted for school clubs, sports, and volunteer work instead of after-school jobs.
• Jobs started hiring unemployed adults over high school students because of high workplace demand.
• Immigration also increased the labor pool.
• Tech growth led to greater leisure opportunities for teens, reducing their motivation to work.
• Leisure activities became more affordable.

The Adolescent Workplace Today

• Most teenagers work in the retail and service industries.
• Older teens hold formal jobs like retail or restaurant work.
• Younger teens hold informal jobs like babysitting or doing yard work.
• Teens in rural areas are more likely to be employed in agricultural jobs than urban or suburban teens.
• 60% of employed 8th-graders work in just one or two types of jobs, like babysitting or yard work.
• Adolescent jobs are often repetitive, monotonous, and intellectually unchallenging, and may be stressful or dangerous.
• Work may involve intense time pressure and potential for injury, but is not necessarily tedious.
• Few adolescent jobs offer ample opportunity to learn new or higher-level skills.
• Even menial jobs can be satisfying, especially when adolescents are given responsibility and feel more responsible.

Employment and Adolescent Development

• Researchers have addressed three questions about employment and adolescent development.
  • Does working help adolescents develop a sense of responsibility?.
    • Assumptions that working builds character and prepares adolescents for adulthood are not well supported by research.
      • Some research has found high rates of misconduct among adolescent workers, especially without adult supervision.
    • Holding a job can provide opportunities for learning how to budget, save, and spend money wisely.
    • Whether this happens depends on the nature of the job.
      • Teens in jobs with genuine responsibility and challenging tasks are more likely to develop maturity, competence, and dependability.
      • Teens in repetitive, stressful, or unchallenging jobs, will probably gain very little from the experience.
      • Working a more responsible job is not a PROBABILITY.
  • Whether working interferes with other activities such as school.
    • A 20-hour minimum job typically does not interfere with school.
    • More than 20 hours can cause less engagement with school.
    • Adolescents who are less interested in school may choose to work longer hours, leading to disengagement from both school and work.
    • Working long hours particularly affects achievement among White and Asian students from middle-class families.
    • Students who work more than 20 hours and expect to stay at the job long-term are more likely to drop out of high school.
  • Whether work promotes undesirable behaviors such as drug and alcohol use.
    • Employment during adolescence doesn't deter delinquent behavior.
    • Working long hours may be associated with increases in aggression, school misconduct, minor delinquency, and precocious sexual activity.
    • Rates of smoking, drinking, and drug use are higher among teenage workers than nonworkers, especially when working long hours.
      • Drug and alcohol use is more common in adolescents who work under conditions of high job stress.
      • Working long hours disrupts relationships with parents, leading to problem behavior.
  • Extensive employment during the school year harms school performance
    • Students pay less attention in class and exert less effort on their studies.
    • Students may use strategies such as taking easier courses, cutting corners on assignments, copying homework, and cheating.

Adolescents Free Time and Their Moods

• Adolescents in the U.S. spend nearly half of their waking hours in leisure activities.
• Teens report better moods during leisure activities compared to school or work.
• Assessments at a specific point in time may not reflect overall moods throughout the day.
• Recollections of moods may not always be accurate.

The Experience Sampling Method

• This involves collecting data about adolescents' emotional states.
• Individuals are signaled and asked to report on their mood and activity.
• Adolescents carry electronic devices like smartphones and are signaled to report their location, activities, and feelings.
• ESM has been used to chart adolescents' moods, monitor social relationships, and catalog activities in detail.
• Early ESM studies used pagers and self-report forms for a week, with surveys completed when signaled.

Adolescent Moods

• In school: moderate concentration but low motivation.
• With family: more negative moods, especially between 5-7 pm.
• With friends: positive moods, but least positive when alone. - Teenagers report moderate motivation but low levels of concentration.
• Extracurricular activities: high concentration and high motivation.

Adolescents and Screen Time

• Questions being asked:
  • Does exposure to online sexual content increases sexual activity
  • Whether online gaming increases aggression
  • Is electronic communication negatively affecting social skills, and whether adolescents are becoming addicted to the internet

Media Saturation

• Media significantly influences adolescents' lives.
• The number of people consuming media has increased over time.
• 93% of Americans go online daily.
• 75% use one or more social media sites.
• Popular sites among adolescents include YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.
• 75% of all adolescents have their own smartphone or access to one.
• Texting increases between early and middle adolescence, then declines.
  • The average teenager sends about 50 text messages each day, and 40% of all American teenagers text and drive monthly.
• Adolescents spend an average of nine hours using one or more media simultaneously.
• The quality of content depends on what they spend time on.
• Compulsive texting is associated with poorer school performance.

Displacement

• What activities are being displaced by media use?
• The worst activities to displace are sleep and physical activity.

Theories of Media Influence and Use

• Frequent parental phubbing (phone snubbing) can make some adolescents depressed.
• Three theories address the impact of media on adolescent development:
  • Cultivation theory: Media exposure influences adolescents' knowledge, attitudes, values, and behavior.
    • Playing video games can make adolescents more aggressive.
  • Uses and gratifications approach: Users actively choose media consistent with their interests.
    • Adolescents choose the media they are exposed to.
    • Individual inclinations influence which media are chosen.
    • Adolescents' pre-existing interests and motivations shape their media choices.
  • Media practice model: Adolescents interpret media in ways that shape its impact
    • Adolescents preferences and their media exposure affect each other
      • Example: A 13-year-old views a beer advert; one imagines enjoying parties, while the other believes that beer is bad.

Other Information

• Correlation is when two things go hand in hand.
• Causation is when one thing actually causes the other.
• Reverse causation is when the correlation between two things is due to the second thing causing the first, rather than the other way around.
• Spurious causation is when the correlation between two things is due to a third factor.

Social Media and Socializing

• Positive: Social media content can improve mood, with two-thirds of adolescents reporting this benefit
  • 60% have reported feeling closer to someone they know.
• Social Media can help you to stay in touch with friends. -Increase in empathy and civic engagement. -Easier to initiate and flirt with potential romantic partners. -Easier for Socially anxious adolescents to communicate with friends online
• Content can lead to arguments or ending of friendships, with one quarter adolescents reporting this outcome.
• Seeing negative or hurtful content about self or others on the internet, and happens to almost adolescents.
• The use of discussion boards is associated with more anxiety and depression.
• Viewing risky behavior is associated with greater risk-taking.
• Social media and the internet provide opportunity to misunderstand the context.
• FOMO, or the fear of missing out, can lead to sleep disturbances.
  • Can interfere with sleep.

The Impact of media on adolescents.

• Impact of social media on relationship depends on usage of social media
  • Maintaining contact with friends through social media is not a risk to teens' mental health, it can improve perspective-taking skills.
  • Instagram and Snapchat use report a greater amount of support from friends.
  • Twitter and Facebook, along with discussion boards, are linked to increased rates of anxiety and depression.

Social Rich vs Socially Poor

• Daily use of the internet has little impact on self-concept based on school support.
• Increased media use exacerbates lack of support in school.
• Socially rich adolescents feel ever worse.
• Problematic Social Media Use:
  • Internet addiction / Compulsive Internet use (CIU): Characterized by six features - Salience, mood change, tolerance, withdrawal(Experiencing negative feelings when prevented from being online), conflict and relapse and reinstatement(Returning to addictive internet behavior after getting it under control).
    • Problematic or excessive social media use correlated to depression, sleep difficulties, loneliness, procrastination, social anxiety, and ADHD.

Sexting

• Sexting involves sending sexually explicit content, typically images, over the internet, and around 20% of US adolescents have engaged in it.
  • It is often flirtatious and consensual by request.
    • Some individuals report feeling coerced by their partner.
    • Sexting can be more prominent for Teens who are sexually active early on the internet.
    • Victims of bullying due to sexting have reported depression
    • Teens who ingage in unsolicited sexting are likely to engage in other risky behaviors.
      • Including risky sex

Explore the historical trends in teenage employment, factors influencing workforce participation changes over the past 40 years, and educational impacts. Discover the differences between adolescent students and workers before 1925. Understand common jobs, work environments, and effects of employment on teenagers.