Adolescent Alienation Research Articles

Impact of social networking sites on adolescent alienation and depression with special reference to Facebook usage

Social networking sites, especially Facebook, have become common among adolescents and young adults. The use of Facebook enable enables users to make new friends, to establish and/or maintain relationships and to respond, comment and share information. Despite its social and innovative features, there has been increasing concern regarding its negative consequences on psychological and social well-being among adolescents and young adults. In light of this, the current study focuses on Facebook usage and its relationship with depression and alienation among adolescents. The study’s findings indicate that Facebook usage has a positive and significant relationship with alienation but is negatively correlated with depression. Further, it was also found that alienation and depression would contribute to the prediction of Facebook usage of adolescents both independently as well as conjointly

Investigation and analysis of medical students' sense of alienation

In order to investigate the current situation of alienation among medical students, this study adopted the convenience sampling method to select students from a medical university in Guangxi, China as the research objects and measured the alienation level of medical students through the General Information Questionnaire and the Adolescent Alienation Scale. Results: ①The overall level of medical students' alienation was low, nevertheless social alienation and environmental alienation were slightly higher than interpersonal alienation. ②In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, medical students have a high sense of alienation and meaninglessness in their living environment. However, meaninglessness is the highest in the dimension of social alienation, loneliness is the highest in interpersonal alienation, and living environment alienation is the highest in environmental alienation. The alienation level of boys is slightly higher than that of girls. ③Grade, family economic level, and whether there is only one child are important factors affecting medical students' sense of alienation. Among them, the sense of alienation of freshmen is significantly lower than that of sophomores, juniors, and seniors in all dimensions. The level of alienation in the third year each dimension is higher. Poverty-stricken students and children from One Child Families have a high level of alienation, so mental health education in the medical university should be attached great importance.

Shyness and social adjustment in Chinese college students: A moderated mediation of alienation and school connectedness

Existing studies have explored the relationship between shyness and specific indicators of social adjustment of children or middle school students, indicating that individuals with shyness have social maladjustment. However, few studies have examined the overall social adjustment and underlying mechanisms of college students. Therefore, the present study explored the influence of shyness on the overall social adjustment of college students and its underlying mechanism from the perspective of individuals’ interaction with their environment. 1201 participants (Mage = 19.43, SD = 1.40) from two universities in China were measured using the College Student Shyness Scale, Adolescent Alienation Scale, School Connectedness Scale, and Chinese College Student Adjustment Scale. The results showed that shyness was negatively associated with social adjustment and that alienation partially mediated the relationship between them. Moreover, this mediation effect was moderated by school connectedness. Specifically, school connectedness moderated the second stage of the mediating process, that is, school connectedness could effectively alleviate the social maladjustment caused by alienation, and the protection effect of this moderation on low alienation was more obvious. These findings enrich the research on social adjustment of college students, and show that reducing alienation and strengthening school connectedness can alleviate the maladjustment of shy college students.

Alienation of Tibetan Adolescents in Rural Boarding Schools

Adolescent alienation is a symptom of problems in relations among the individual, school, community, and family. Based on a research conducted with a sample of 897 Tibetan adolescent students in Grades 7 to 12, this study reveals that over one third of subjects experience high levels of alienation. Questionnaire data and field work show possible sources of this alienation in contemporary rural Tibetan society in China, factors that may reduce alienation, and explanations for low levels of alienation among some students. The paper concludes with an argument for researchers and policy makers to pay greater attention to the issue of alienation among minority boarding school students.

Suicide, Self-Harm and Survival Strategies in Contemporary Heavy Metal Music: A Cultural and Literary Analysis

This paper seeks to think creatively about the body of research which claims there is a link between heavy metal music and adolescent alienation, self-destructive behaviours, self-harm and suicide. Such research has been criticised, often by people who belong to heavy metal subcultures, as systematically neglecting to explore, in a meaningful manner, the psychosocial benefits for individuals who both listen to contemporary heavy metal music and socialize in associated groups. We argue that notions of survival, strength, community, and rebellion are key themes in contemporary heavy metal music. Through literary-lyrical analysis of a selection of heavy metal tracks, this paper aims to redress the balance of risk and benefit. We argue that listening to this type of music, the accompanying social relationships, sense of solidarity and even the type of dancing can ameliorate tumultuous and difficult emotions. Songs which could be read as negative can induce feelings of relief through the sense that someone else has felt a particular way and recovered enough to transform these emotions into a creative outlet. This genre of music may therefore not increase the risk of untoward outcomes in any simple sense but rather represent a valuable resource for young people in difficulty.

Effect of Family Functioning on Adolescents' Alienation: Moderated Mediating Effect

Alienation is a negative emotional state,reflecting individual impotence in dealing with others and establishing an effective bond with social groups,such as among family,classmates and peers. While modest alienation is good for psycho-social development,high levels of alienation may negatively impact development. Adolescence is a period of heightened risk for high levels of alienation. Research on the relationship between the family environment and peer relations revealed that higher conflicts among numbers of family as well as weak or unhealthy family functioning could lead to adolescents feeling alienated from their parents and resisting inclusion in their family. Those who scored high on the alienation scale usually lived in a troubled family,where family members experienced a lack of close relationships and self-control,and were unable to adapt to social experiences properly. However,peer groups are another necessary micro-system that play an important role in adolescents psychological social development. Good peer relations can provide adolescents with valuable information and feelings of support; and positive peer acceptance can help alienated adolescents alleviate the sense of stress and anxiety. But neither family environment nor peer acceptance can affect adolescents' alienation on its own. Research is needed to examine the interaction between the effects of the family environment and peer acceptance. The majority of research on adolescent alienation has been conducted in Western cultures,and information on how contemporary Chinese adolescents experience alienation is still limited. In the past two decades,China has experienced profound transformations; rapid social and economic development has changed the family structure through socioeconomic status and general family functioning. It is thus necessary to explore the alienation characteristics of Chinese adolescents from a systemic perspective,and to find the interaction mechanisms of family functioning and peer acceptance. The present study investigated the effect of family socioeconomic status,family functioning,and peer acceptance on adolescents' feelings of alienation in contemporary China. The Adolescent Alienation Scale,Family Function Scale,Family SES measure and Peer Nomination survey were administered to 608 adolescents (317 boys and 291 girls) attending junior and senior high school in Jinan City,Shandong Province,using Structural Equation Model Analysis. Results were as follows:(1) There was a significant difference between school-age stages; senior high school students reported higher alienation than students from junior high school. (2) A significant difference was found among three dimensions of adolescents' alienation; environmental alienation was highest,followed by social alienation,and interpersonal alienation being the lowest. (3) Family functioning could fully mediate the relationship between family socioeconomic status and adolescent alienation. That is,parents' education level,their professions,and the family's income could affect adolescents' alienation through influencing family functioning. However,the mediating effect of family functioning was moderated by peer acceptance. High peer acceptance could actually protect adolescents who were in a family with poor functioning from high alienation. In fact,family functioning,as a moderated mediator,had an effect on adolescents' alienation. These results imply that we could assist adolescents with high alienation by improving their family socioeconomic status,improving their family functioning,and helping them build positive peer relations.

Reconnecting Troubled Students: A Christian Perspective on Reducing Adolescent Alienation

Reconnecting Troubled Students: A Christian Perspective on Reducing Adolescent Alienation

Adolescent Alienation the Effects of Disability, Gender, and Ethnicity on Perceptions of School Life in Secondary Environments

Responses to the School Factors Questionnaire (SFQ) administered to 222 students were used to ascertain student perceptions of alienating factors within secondary school environments. Descriptive statistics (i.e., frequency of responses to SFQ items) were used to report the data. The results indicated that although secondary students liked coming to school, regardless of their personal characteristics (i.e., placement in general vs. special education, gender, ethnicity), students reported similar alienating experiences associated with school life (e.g., the curriculum having little relevance to their lives, lack of pride concerning school, negative/no comments from principals and faculty, no involvement in curriculum planning). There needs to be a restructuring of secondary school environments before all students are able to re/connect to learning. The author discusses practical implications regarding what secondary school personnel can do to create more positive experiences for all students.

Inside Shock Music Carnival: Spectacle as Contested Terrain

This paper is based on a four-year concert fieldwork study of some of the most transgressive, shocking, and otherwise explicitly carnivalesque bands increasingly making it into the mainstream (e.g., Eminem, Marilyn Manson, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Cradle of Filth, Insane Clown Posse, GWAR, and Mindless Self Indulgence). The dis-alienating attractions of this music for an increasingly heterogeneous fan base are described in rich ethnographic detail, challenging Arnett's earlier work on heavy metal and adolescent alienation. The multi-faceted carnivalesque qualities and symbolic significances of shock music carnival are delineated in a lengthy application of Bakhtin's carnival-grotesque, a festive liminal medium for asserting and expressing human-equalizing realism. The general significance of the paper, as extensions of Kellner and Ritzer's works, is a demonstration of how shock music carnival is not simply spectacle as domination (or the commodification of dissent), but also spectacle as resistance (or a `time outside time' or `second life' in which fans escape and resist a disenchanted and duplicitous world of commercialization, and express everyday rage from living in a “nothing” world of global capital). This paper contributes to cultural Marxism by providing an empirical and ethnographic account of a proto-utopian critique of consumer society.

Adolescent Alienation

Adolescent alienation is a difficult problem facing many U.S. schools. A better understanding of the parameters and defining factors of student alienation could provide useful information concerning needed school modifications. This article defines alienation, discusses the constructs of alienation, suggests questions educators can ask if they suspect a student is feeling alienated, and discusses strategies/interventions school staff and educators can use to decrease student alienation.

Adolescent Alienation: its correlates and consequences

Summary This research is into the experience of alienation amongst British adolescents. The study had three major aims: firstly to investigate potential differences across various dimensions of alienation on the basis of gender, ethnicity and religion. Secondly, to establish a relationship between alienation, self‐esteem and selected undesirable school behaviours. Finally, there is an attempt to evaluate the use of alienation scales as a research tool in education. The study involved 254 participants aged between 13 and 15 years attending large, multi‐ethnic comprehensives. The findings show that reported levels of alienation were influenced by religious orientation but only minimally by gender or ethnicity per se. Reported alienation negatively correlated with self‐esteem but was positively associated with truancy, exclusion and disruptive behaviour. The authors conclude that, whilst alienation remains a useful concept for educational research, it is unhelpful to see it as an inevitable consequence of deprivation or membership of certain social groups.

Alienated Adolescents: How Can Schools Help?

Summary Although the actual causes of alienation are complex and perhaps situation-specific, recent research clearly demonstrates connections between adolescent alienation and the school environment. With public concern over increases in teenage suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, pregnancy, and violence, schools must find ways to decrease students' feelings of alienation, if possible. Proposed here are nine interventions that address many of the issues surfacing in research on alienated adolescents' perceptions of the school environment. All nine can be implemented fairly easily; the resources are available to nearly every school in the country. There is little that we, as educators, can do about students' socioeconomic status, ethnic affiliation, or academic ability. What we can change, however, is the school setting—students' relationships with each other, teachers' relationships with students, the learning experiences provided in the school, and the attention given to student concerns.

Contrasting creativity and alienation in adolescent experience

Study of general society and the adolescent population indicates that alienation, its components, variables, and consequences are common to both groups. Adolescent alienation is made more difficult, however, because, where the personal predisposition or the societal motivation for separation may exist, they are placed in conjunction with developmental patterns which of themselves necessitate intense involvement and work on the part of the individual. Thus, the adolescent, who under normal circumstances is in transition, when also alienated to the extreme experiences even greater discrepancy between his or her desired levels of interor intra-personal involvement. For this individual, the perception of a sense of powerlessness, the assessment of limited meaning in life, the development of a negative self-concept, the experience of isolation from one’s peers and larger community through variables that are difficult to grasp or change, all serve to increase the effects of an already fragile and liminal point in time. Clearly, this threshold provides opportunity as well as confusion. Wherever there are polarities, there are possibilities for equilibrium. Thus, inherent in this discussion is the assertion that discrepancy may be balanced through engagement and commitment; differentiation may be weighed against integration. From a sense of paralysis and fragmentation, the alienated individual may be brought to a greater sense of freedom and individuation. What abides within these implications of competence, engagement, intrinsic valuing, and communal integration is a sense of the untapped creative potential of the individual: that which simultaneously nurtures self and society. Review of literature on alienation yields a series of five commonly present factors: (a) powerlessness, (b) meaninglessness, (c) prevailing negative self-image, (d) cultural estrangement, and, most important and pervasive, (e) a sense of discrepancy between desire and reality (Estelle, 1986). The theme of powerlessness is found recurrently in the study of alienation. What separates one most completely from self and society is a sense of lack of control over the most personal aspects of one’s life. Rarely is this external perception given objective identity by the alienated; it holds a subjective, almost ominous ability to leave one impotent and unproductive. This diffuse impression of lack of personal power leads to a distrust of oneself and of one’s environment, which makes interactions limited and, in extreme cases, impossible. Meaninglessness correlates with the time perspective experienced by the alienated individual. Even for those who are chronologically mature, patent mistrust of adult values, decision-making capabilities, and affective modeling may lead to a vague longing for the past and an idealized fusion within the mother/child relationship (Keniston, 1965). This, combined with the sense of powerlessness, produces a distinct orientation to the present, to a denial of what the future might offer, and to a rejection of adulthood itself. For the alienated adolescent in particular, this type of orientation leads to an abandonment of hope and

Adolescents and Their Music

During adolescence, teenagers are expected to develop standards of behavior and reconcile them with their perceptions of adult standards. In this context, music, a powerful medium in the lives of adolescents, offers conflicting values. The explicit sexual and violent lyrics of some forms of music often clash with the themes of abstinence and rational behavior promoted by adult society. Identification with rock music, particularly those styles that are rejected by adults, functions to separate adolescents from adult society. Some forms of rock music extend well beyond respectability in fulfilling this definitional role. Total immersion into a rock subculture, such as heavy metal, may be both a portrait of adolescent alienation and an unflattering reflection of an adolescent's perception of the moral and ethical duplicity of adult society. Physicians should be aware of the role of music in the lives of adolescents and use music preferences as clues to the emotional and mental health of adolescents.

Reducing Adolescent Alienation: Strategies for the High School

The strategies that follow are suggestions, says this writer. Taken singly, their impact may be minimal. Taken as an integrated system, they may make a significant difference in the lives of students, teachers, and administrators.

Preventing Adolescent Alienation: An Inter-professional Approach

Promoting Adolescent Health: A Dialog on Research and Practice , edited by Thomas J. Coates, Anne C. Petersen, and Cheryl Perry (conference, Baltimore, November 1980), 483 pp, with illus, $39.50, New York, Academic Press Inc, 1982. Preventing Adolescent Alienation is a compendium of the proceedings of a 1981 conference on Prevention of Adolescent Behavioral Problems. Distinguished contributors include Pulitzer prize winner, Robert Coles from Harvard; former head of the US Children's Bureau, Edward Zigler of Yale, and others. The topics addressed deal with adolescent alienation and consider prevention of related problems in areas such as sex, school, delinquency, suicide, chemical and substance abuse, and the development of values. While the book is about problem prevention and is addressed to the helping professions, it is written at a level that could be understood by, and perhaps would be more relevant for, parents than for the professionals themselves. For example, it discusses stages

Dimensions of Adolescent Alienation

A review of the psychological, sociological and educational literature indicated that the various conceptualizations of "alienation" could be fitted into five tentative categories appearing to have con siderable overlap. An item pool developed to repre sent these categories of alienation was screened by expert review and pilot testing in the 9th grade and then administered to 500 "normal" adolescents in 9th-grade classes in four diverse communities in Minnesota: a rural area, a suburban area, and working class and inner city areas of a large city. Factor analysis identified three coherent dimensions in student responses, which were labeled "Personal Incapacity," "Cultural Estrangement," and "Guidelessness." Simple cluster scores constructed to represent these dimensions had internal-consis tency reliabilities of .80, .70, and .67 respectively. Patterns of significant differences shown by anal yses of variance among groups defined by commun ity type, socio-economic status, ability, and sex, compared well with hypothesized patterns; the few exceptions were tenable. The scales provide con crete measures of alienation that may enable more meaningful investigation of its incidence, correlates, and causes.

Adolescent Alienation and Youth Policy

Adolescent Alienation and Youth Policy