Reading: Barker [Youth]

When I think of the youth scene, two things come to mind immediately. First, the social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace that the youth culture is drawn to for community both inside and outside their current personal relationship structures. Why are youth attracted to online communities in the massive numbers they are? Is there a emotional, relational or spiritual void that these sites feed towards youth that the church can/should tab into? The second phenomenon in youth culture today is text messaging. Texting has immersed itself into the youth culture so much that schools have been forced to bad cell phone use on school grounds.

The study of resistance within cultural studies brings to mind the 'punk' movement, as Barker mentions within Chapter 13. But there is a resistance within the punk counterculture called the straight edge punks that stand up against punk ideals. A resistance against a resistance, if you will.

And I will. Straight edge punks resist against many of the cultural ideals within the hardcore punk subculture whose adherents abstain from alcohol, smoking, and other recreational drug use. The letter "X" is the most prevalent symbol of straight edge. Commonly it is worn as a marking, symbol or tattoo on the back of one or both hands, though it can be displayed on other body parts as well. Although a definitive subculture apart from the punk scene, the punk scene shares music as the dominant media source for tenets of the straightedge subculture.