Chap Clark - Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Todays Teenagers

Youth, Family, and Culture Series
Chap Clark, series editor

The Youth, Family, and Culture series examines the broad categories involved in studying and caring for the needs of the young and is dedicated to the preparation and vocational strengthening of those who are committed to the spiritual development of adolescents.

2004, 2011 by Chap Clark

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Hurt 2.0 is a revised edition of Hurt .

E-book edition created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4412-3579-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Chap Clarks classic book [is] highly recommended by youth workers and educators who write about teenage stress. It is foundational reading that provides valuable insight into the hurting hearts of young people.

Peggy Kendall , YouthWorker Journal

This book does a great job of framing the issues affecting adolescents. It provided me with some powerful insights. No wonder adolescents identify with the movies I have been makingthe characters are on the same journey of trying to find hope and authenticity. This book is a great look inside the adolescent world, the world beneath the one exposed to adults.

Ralph Winter , movie producer, X-Men Trilogy , Fantastic Four , Star Trek series, and Cool It

What makes Hurt so valuable is that it marries the very best of careful scholarship with a deep compassion for kids. Clark is not just an academic who offers thoughtful ethnographic research. Hes a frontline youth worker who still spends time with these students even after all the data has been collected. This important book will be very helpful to youth workers, parents, counselors, and educators alike.

Duffy Robbins , associate professor of youth ministry, Eastern University

This book is a must-read for anyone who has any contact with adolescents, for as Clark points out, overriding the negative forces of abandonment means each teen needs multiple positive voices in their world. Written accessibly, this book could be given as a resource to volunteers in a youth group, but the depth of research displayed makes it invaluable in an academic setting as well.

Anna E. Aven , Journal of Youth Ministry

[Clarks] lucid writing style combines warmth and compassion with sociology-textbook straightforwardness, backing his observations with extensive researchhis own and others.... Hurt is must-reading for every parent, educator, and youth worker in America.

Gary Hassig , CBA Retailers + Resources

contents

preface to hurt 2.0

I t is hard to know when a second edition of a book is needed. On the one hand, the issues and cultural changes detailed in the original Hurt led many people to such a new way of thinking about teens and the world we have handed them that the first editions basic conclusions should have a relatively long shelf life. Yet at the same time, one thing that has become clear to me since I first embarked on the Hurt Project (as it is now sometimes called) is that Hurt was only the beginning. The world is changing so quickly, and the way our young must adapt to those changes far outpaces adults assumptions and axioms about who teenagers are, how they feel, and what growing up is like from their perspective. Moreover, there have been sweeping changes in the systems and structures that adults have carefully crafted over the decades to guide our dealings with youth. From education to youth sports to media to parenting, just about every institution has become more complex, more demanding, and more relationally disengaged than when Hurt first came out. Adults themselves are scrambling to survive, and whenever a child or adolescent happens to throw a wrench in our plans or agenda, the child becomes the problem, or as therapists put it, the identified patient.

When Hurt was first published, I encountered a fairly significant amount of pushback from just about every side (except from the youth themselves, for in every case where a teenager has heard me speak or read Hurt or its more popular cousin, When Kids Hurt , they have nearly universally exclaimed, Finally, somebody gets us! Listen to him!). The two statements I heard during the first year or two the book was out were, Not my/our kids; youre talking about those kids in LA, and Youre just focusing on the extreme or fringe kids, not the ________ (fill in the blank: smart, stable, gifted, etc.) kids. Today, whenever I speak or interact with those who deal directly with teens on the field, including parentsand I get to speak to thousands every year on this topic around the worldthe response is almost always overwhelming: We get it, already! Now, what do we do about it?

So why would we need a second edition if the case has been made and we are collectively ready to do what it takes to bring substantive change to the way we care for and guide children and adolescents into productive adulthood? If society is ready to reengage our young by altering, sometimes radically, the systems and structures that serve them, why do we need to do more research, look at new and fresh data, ask deeper and more penetrating questions, challenge long-held assumptions, and be dragged into a more profound sense of fear for our kids? It is for one simple reason, and in the first edition I barely realized the implications of what Hurt had discovered and presented. The reason for Hurt 2.0 is that those who control and define the systems and structures charged with nurturing and training up our young (and especially those who have the power associated with them) are either ignorant of how destructive life is for todays adolescents or unwilling to take the wide array of indicators seriously.

To me, both of these options are beyond regrettable: they are reprehensible.

For those who think I speak in hyperbole or who have encountered Hurt along the way (maybe even read it) but who somehow were able to discount the findings or ignore the implications, this edition is for you, as well as any newcomers who have never been exposed to these results and conclusions. Hurt 2.0 uses the basic framework of the first edition, keeping in what has remained the same over the last few years. At the same time this edition takes on a whole series of new insights and data that have become relevant since the first edition was published. This edition goes point by point, paragraph by paragraph, and study by study in order to carefully assess what is going on with and inside todays kids.

Examples of some of the new materials and ideas examined for this edition include the following (and there are many, many more throughout Hurt 2.0 ):

• A CDC study states that 25 percent of fourteen- to nineteen-year-old adolescent girls have at least one of the more common sexually transmitted diseases (and this study was limited to those reported through CDC channels, so there is no knowing how widespread the danger is, and what the rates are when sexual activity ramps up in their twenties).
• In a Princeton and Cornell study on self-injury, one in five college freshmen girls and one in seven boys reported self-injury (a finding based on self-reported data, which could mean it is much more serious than even these numbersand this at our elite universities).