I propose to do my Contextual Analysis Project on: What Country Makes a “Careless” Teenager

This project asks the question that is often misunderstood. Are teenagers really “careless” of are we not just passionate about what adults think we should care about? This is the real question. In my project I plan to compare teenagers and their “careless” behaviors from country to country. I will interview both teenagers and parents/adults and also give my perspective on why I believe we are not carless. This project is relevant in the fact that often times teenagers have this label that people don’t think we care about anything when in fact I know this is false. It will be interesting to compare society’s teenager from different countries and see how they match up to each other.

This question is important to almost everyone, especially teenagers, parents, adults, social media sites, and teachers. To begin this question is important to teenager, because many wonder why this label is placed on us, when it is not entirely true. This question is important to parents/adults because they are the ones placing the labels on the teenagers and maybe with a comparison to other countries and statistical research they will have a better understanding of the mindset of a teen. Teachers should care about this question because if they understand a teenager then maybe they can modify their teaching techniques to help us better understand important material and help us find ways that makes what seems like something that is boring to teenagers seem interesting and important. One of the most, if not the most relevant question this relates to is social media/advertisement. How do they relate to us and what makes our generation so fascinated with it? They target teenager’s everyday and it is important for them to know how we think and what we think is interesting and what is not. Even though this is a large list of people who this question is relevant to they all contain the same value of curiosity in understanding this question.

Mindlin, Alex. "Parents Misjudge Social Network Habit." Nytimes.com. The New York Times Company, 30 Aug. 2009. Web. 27 Apr. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/technology/internet/31drill.html?_r=1>.

Alex Mindlin’s article, “Parents Misjudge Social Habit” asserts that there is a gap between parents understanding of their child’s use of social networking and how much they actually use it. Mindlin backs up this claim by comparing statistics on the percentage parents think their child spends on social media sites compared to what they actually spend. Mindlins purpose to point out that parents often times have a misunderstanding of what their children do in order to inform the reader that there is a large gap in the misunderstanding of teenagers. Mindlin article uses examples and statistics and targets this article toward adults, especially parents.

Parker-Pope, Tara. "Teenagers, Friends and Bad Decisions." Nytimes.com. The New York Times Company, 3 Feb. 2011. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/teenagers-friends-and-bad-decisions/>.

Tara Parker-Popes article, “The Kids are More Than Alight” argues that teenager are more reasonable than parents believe them to be. Parker-Pope backs up this claim up by comparing statistics of drug and alcohol use and the percentage of teens having sex and getting pregnant compared to statistics from older generations. Parker-Pope’s purpose is to inform the reader that teenagers are in fact making wiser decisions than people think them to be and to in order to jolt awareness into patents mind about the choices teenagers are making. Given the statistical language used in this article, Parker=Pope is aiming this article towards parents.

Parker-Pope, Tara. "The Kids Are More Than All Right." Nytimes.com. The New York Times Company, 2 Feb. 2012. Web. 26 Apr. 2012. <http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/the-kids-are-more-than-all-right/>.

Tara Parker-Pope’s article, “Teenagers, Friends, and Bad Decisions” proves that teenagers are more likely to make bad decisions when they are abound friends or peers. Parker-Poe proves this claim by providing statistics from a study that was done, showing that teenagers reward circuit of the brain was more active when around their peers and that they also tend to make more risky decisions. Parker-Pope’s purpose is to inform parents of this data in order to notify parents that they need to keep a closer watch on their kids when they are with peers. “Teenagers, Friends, and Bad Decisions” contains a lot of statistical data and is aimed towards the audience of parents who have teenagers.