Researching Young People’s ‘Private’ Space

Abstract

All of us reading this book will have been a teenager at some time or may even still be experiencing those years. While there are underlying ‘biological’ and ‘psychological’ effects of this experience that may indeed be similar across the generations, there is also a plethora of cultural and social differences that in many ways make the experience of being a young person a very individual and unique one. These experiences change from decade to decade, year to year, even month to month in a rapidly changing global world (Miles, 2000; Muggleton and Weinzierl, 2003; Nilan and Feixa, 2006) and in what has been termed a ‘risk’ society (Beck, 1992; Mythen and Walklate, 2006) in which young people have to negotiate the many twists, turns and contradictions that make up their biographies and which infiltrate their everyday lives (Furlong and Cartmel, 2006; Roberts, 2009; Woodman, 2009). Each of us grows up in quite different circumstances all of which have an effect on how our teenage, and thus adult, lives ‘shape up’, which, consequently, makes understanding young people’s lives as a sociological phenomenon a difficult and complex task.

They seem to think that teenagers aren’t very bright. But I haven’t found that to be the case. I listen to kids. I respect them. I don’t discount anything they have to say just because they’re only 16 years old. (John Hughes, filmmaker [1985] Chicago Herald Tribune)¹