German Teenagers Research Articles

Change and Inequality in German Teenagers’ Typical Time-Use Sequences Between 1991 and 2013

How children spend their time is widely regarded as a key factor shaping their development and wellbeing, as well as the intergenerational transmission of socio-economic and gender inequalities. While there is much evidence on the aggregate amount of time teenagers spent on different activities, we know little about how teenagers’ activities unfold during a typical day. We use social sequence analysis and data collected in 1991/92, 2001/02 and 2012/13 via high-frequency time-use diaries of teenagers aged 12-16 in Germany to provide a fine-grained description of teenagers’ everyday time-use sequences. We identify and visualize a typology of teenagers’ time-use during weekdays and weekend days, respectively, which groups teenagers into clusters of typical time-use sequences. These typical time-use sequences change in prevalence over time, and are stratified by teenagers’ socio-economic background, gender, and age. Our findings reveal the sequential structure of teenagers’ time use, provide new evidence corroborating theories of the social stratification of teenagers’ time use, and complement existing evidence on teenagers’ aggregate time-use. Our identification of teenagers’ typical time-use sequences forms the basis for future research to examine their causes and consequences, as well as their role in the reproduction of social inequalities.

Change and Inequality in German Teenagers’ Typical Time-Use Sequences Between 1991 and 2013. Online Appendix

How children spend their time is widely regarded as a key factor shaping their development and wellbeing, as well as the intergenerational transmission of socio-economic and gender inequalities. While there is much evidence on the aggregate amount of time teenagers spent on different activities, we know little about how teenagers’ activities unfold during a typical day. We use social sequence analysis and data collected in 1991/92, 2001/02 and 2012/13 via high-frequency time-use diaries of teenagers aged 12-16 in Germany to provide a fine-grained description of teenagers’ everyday time-use sequences. We identify and visualize a typology of teenagers’ time-use during weekdays and weekend days, respectively, which groups teenagers into clusters of typical time-use sequences. These typical time-use sequences change in prevalence over time, and are stratified by teenagers’ socio-economic background, gender, and age. Our findings reveal the sequential structure of teenagers’ time use, provide new evidence corroborating theories of the social stratification of teenagers’ time use, and complement existing evidence on teenagers’ aggregate time-use. Our identification of teenagers’ typical time-use sequences forms the basis for future research to examine their causes and consequences, as well as their role in the reproduction of social inequalities.

Jugendsprache: bahasa remaja Jerman pada akun Instagram Funk

German youth language or Jugendsprache is a language style used by German teenagers and young adults in their daily communication. This language style is adopted by a German content network named Funk in its Instagram account posts to gain attention from its audience, which specifically targets people aged between 14 to 29 years old. The purpose of this research is to investigate the forms of Jugendsprache used by Funk in their Instagram posts. The design of this research is descriptive qualitative. The data corpus in total of 288 sentences was acquired from Funk’s Instagram account. The results unveiled that there were 177 lexicons, 55 word formations and 28 semantic shifts found from the data. Anglicism, in total of 112 data, is the most dominant lexicon phenomenon compared to the others. Another significant process are 29 composition data in word formation and 23 extensions of meaning data in semantic shift. From this research, it was found that English is widely used in Funk’s contents, either in the form of words, phrases, sentences in full English or English words adopted into the German morphological system. Funk utilizes English to make their contents interesting for its’ target audience, the young people.

New insights into the genetics of mandibular retrognathism: novel candidate genes.

Mandibular retrognathism (MR) is acommon skeletal malocclusion in humans with astrong genetic component. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes encoding epidermal growth factor (EGF) and EGF receptor (EGFR) could be involved in the etiology of mandibular retrognathism. Therefore, in this study, we investigated whether SNPs in the genes encoding for EGF and EGFR are associated with MR in German teenagers. This nested case-control study evaluated German orthodontic patients, aged 10-18years. DNA, which was isolated from buccal epithelial cells using two cytobrushes, was used for genotyping analysis and digital pretreatment lateral cephalograms were examined to calculate SNB and ANB. Patients with aretrognathic mandible (SNB < 78°) were included as cases, while patients with an orthognathic mandible (SNB = 78-82°) were included as controls. Four SNPs in the genes encoding for EGF and EGFR were chosen and genotyped using real-time PCR. Allele, genotype, and haplotype frequency were compared across groups (α = 5%). Finally, 119 patients were included in this study (45orthognathic mandible, 74retrognathic mandible). The minor alleleG in rs4444903 (EGF) was statistically more frequent in individuals with an orthognathic mandible (p = 0.008). The haplotype formed by the mutant alleles for rs4444903|rs2237051 (EGF; G|A) was statistically more frequent in the orthognathic mandible group (p = 0.007). The SNPs rs4444903 and rs2237051 in EGF, and rs2227983 in EGFR were statistically associated with adecreasing risk of developing aretrognathic mandible according to univariate and multivariate statistical analysis (p < 0.05). SNPs in EGF (rs4444903 and rs2237051) and EGFR (rs2227983) were associated with MR in our German sample and could be genetic biomarkers for early and individualized diagnostic identification of retrognathic mandibular development by means of genetic screening tests.

Personal Bible Reading and the Faith Formation of Teenagers in a Digital Age

Abstract History shows that the use of the Bible by Christians has changed over the centuries. With the digitization and the ubiquitous accessibility of the Internet, the handling of texts and reading itself has changed. Research has also shown that young people’s faith adapts to the characteristics of the ‘age of authenticity’, which changes the role of normative institutions and texts in general. With regard to these developments this article deals with the question: How relevant is personal Bible reading for the faith formation of highly religious Protestant German teenagers? Answers to this question are provided from previous empirical surveys and from two qualitative studies among highly religious teenagers in Germany. The findings indicate, that other spiritual practices for young people today are more important as a source of faith than reading the Bible. The teenagers interviewed tend to seek an individual affective experience when reading the Bible, so that the importance of cognitive grasp of the content takes a back seat to personal experience.

Empirische Arbeit: A non-randomized controlled effectiveness study of a smoking cessation intervention for adolescents

Despite a remarkable decrease of smoking prevalence among German teenagers over the last 20 years, a substantial number of adolescents report current cigarette use, especially youth with low socioeconomic status. This study investigated the effectiveness of a school-based psychosocial adolescent smoking cessation intervention under real-world conditions. Methods: The intervention consisted of six sessions of school-based group counseling, using motivational enhancement and cognitive-behavioral content, along with 4 weeks of follow-up care by text messaging and phone calls. A total of 47 smoking cessation classes were implemented in secondary schools all over Germany. The intervention group (IG) consisted of 272 currently smoking students nested in 41 schools, and the control group (CG) comprised 240 currently smoking students nested in 10 schools. Assignment to IG and CG was non-randomized. Logistic regression analyses (complete case, intention to treat, and full-information-maximum-likelihood) were conducted to test group differences in past 30-day smoking abstinence at 6-month follow-up. Baseline differences between IG and CG and intraclass correlation were accounted for in the analyses. Results: There were no differences in school characteristics between IG and CG schools at baseline. At 6-month follow-up, the IG had a significantly higher abstinence rate than the CG (Intent-to-treat analysis: 14% IG vs. 5% CG; adjusted odds ratio=2.73; 95% confidence interval: 1.19–6.27). Results were consistent for complete case and full-information-maximum-likelihood analyses. Conclusions: Results suggest that school-based psychosocial interventions can be feasible and effective for smoking cessation among adolescents in schools with a higher proportion of youth with low socioeconomic status.

French and German teenagers in multicultural cities: Religious indifference as a paradox of secular societies

This article discusses important issues concerning the place of non-engagement and indifference in the studies done on secularism, and answers the following questions: how is it possible to be indifferent to religion in multicultural cities? Can non-engagement in religious conflicts be a solution to the life in such contexts? This article is based on a study carried out with 200 French and German teenagers that is grounded on a mixed method, i.e. research cross group interviews and quantitative questionnaire. The data analysis was realized within the frame of sociological phenomenology. The author distinguished three types of indifference: cognitive indifference, existential indifference and protective indifference. Those three types of indifference form a paradox in the secularization process because they are spreading out in multicultural societies among which religious plurality and its inherent conflicts are omnipresent.

Electronic cigarette marketing and smoking behaviour in adolescence: a cross-sectional study.

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between exposure to electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) advertisements and use of e-cigarettes, combustible cigarettes and hookahs.A cross-sectional survey of 6902 German students (mean age 13.1 years, 51.3% male) recruited in six German states was performed. Exposure to e-cigarette advertisements was measured with self-rated contact frequency to three advertising images. Multilevel mixed-effect logistic regression models were used to assess associations between exposure to e-cigarette advertisement and use of e-cigarettes, combustible cigarettes and hookahs (ever and past 30 days).Overall, 38.8% of the students were exposed to e-cigarette advertisements; ever-use of e-cigarettes was 21.7%, of combustible cigarettes was 21.8% and of hookahs was 23.2%, and poly-use of all three products was 12.4%. Exposure to e-cigarette advertisements was positively related to ever and past 30-day use of e-cigarettes, combustible cigarettes, hookahs and combined use.We concluded that a considerable number of German teenagers are exposed to e-cigarette advertisement. There was a clear exposure–behaviour link, indicating that advertising contact was associated with different kinds of “vaping” and also smoking behaviour. Although causal interpretation is not possible due to the cross-sectional design, findings raise concerns about the current tobacco control policies.

Study Results of the Russian and German Schoolchildren's Psychological Features and Social and Psychological Adaptation Features

Abstract This article deals with the complex psychological study, which includes the study of the psychological features and social and psychological adaptation features of the teenager migrants and Russian teenagers in Russian general education institutions having a mixed ethnic composition; behaviour's psychological features and those of the teenager's intercultural competency in Russian and German teenagers in Germany who study at monoethnic schools; teenagers migrants who study in German schools having a mixed ethnic composition (Russian-speaking migrants from the CIS countries), as well as the Russian pedagogues participating in the education process in Russian general education schools having a mixed ethnic composition. The complex study includes the psychodiagnostic examination of teenagers with the subsequent evaluation of their social and psychological adaptation levels and components.

The Impact of Host Family Relations and Length of Stay on Adolescent Identity Expression during Study Abroad

AbstractThis study focuses on the relationships between host family success, social integration, length of stay and acquisition of adolescent language by students on extended international homestay programmes. Degree of adolescent language acquisition and integration is measured by use of two hallmarks of adolescent language: markers of approximation (e.g. “and stuff”) and intensification (e.g. “like”). Participants are 26 German teenagers on either a 5- or a 10-month exchange to Australia. Their use of approximation and intensification markers is measured quantitatively before arriving in Australia and then after 5 months of living in the host country. Host family relations and levels of social integration are measured qualitatively by analysis of interview content and responses to a Language Contact Profile. Results indicate that there is a direct link between host family relations, social integration and acquisition of markers of adolescent language. Additionally, exchange students on a 5-month exchange use fewer of those approximation and intensification markers most associated with Australian adolescent language than students on a 10-month programme. This can be explained by lower investment and integration in the Australian adolescent community.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Worlds apart? English in German youth cultures and in educational settings

ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on German teenagers and their contact with English in two different contexts: in free‐time activities typically involving the mass media, and in institutionalised language learning settings at school. It draws on an empirical study carried out in German secondary schools. Its mixed methods approach combines a questionnaire study and focus group interviews with 15‐year‐old students and English teachers. The main aim of the enquiry was to find out how teenagers experience learning English in school in the light of their exposure to the language in their free time. Another focus lies on the teachers' perceptions of their students' contact with English outside school and on their practice in the classroom as to whether and how they use this experience in class. The data suggests that out‐of‐class contact with English is often not integrated into the EFL classroom. Thus, the classroom and the students' free time seem to be, by and large, two separate spheres, involving different methods of exposure to English in terms of text types, topics, activities, and language varieties.

Longitudinal Study of Exposure to Entertainment Media and Alcohol Use Among German Adolescents

Entertainment media exposure may predict teenager alcohol use, but few longitudinal studies have been reported. A longitudinal study was conducted of 2708 German adolescents aged 10 to 16 years who had never drunk alcohol. Each adolescent was surveyed at school about daily television use, whether they had a television in their bedroom, and their exposure to movie alcohol depictions. Adolescents were resurveyed 12 to 13 months later (retention rate: 85%) to determine onset of drinking alcohol without parental knowledge and binge drinking (>/=5 consecutive drinks). Overall, 885 (33%) students initiated alcohol use without parental knowledge (17% in quartile 1 movie alcohol exposure), and 387 (14%) initiated binge drinking during follow-up. After controlling for baseline covariates, exposure to movie alcohol use significantly increased percent initiating alcohol use (to 24% in exposure quartile 2, 33% in quartile 3 and 34% in quartile 4) and percent initiating binge drinking (to 8.6% in exposure quartile 2, 12% in quartile 3 and 13% in quartile 4). Having a television in the bedroom also predicted both outcomes, but daily television use did not. Movie exposure and having a television in the bedroom are both independent predictors of onset of problematic alcohol use among German teenagers. Media restrictions could play a role in prevention.

Dr. Mabuse: Terror and Deception of the Image

In his classic study of Weimar cinema, From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer presented an interpretation of Dr. Mabuse that has become critical canon: the villain belongs among procession of tyrants (79) of the German screen that prefigures the ascendancy of Hitler. More recently, Tom Gunning has examined Mabuse's place in Fritz Lang's oeuvre and argued that the doctor is the grand enunciator (87) of the impersonal forces of destiny that pervade the director's work. This essay seeks to strike balance between Kracauer's psycho-sociological analysis and Gunning's immanent critique in order to examine Mabuse as refraction of climates of fear throughout the 20th century. Germany, where Mabuse enjoys iconic status, provides the immediate frame of reference, but this framework has material support that extends beyond national borders and strict historical periodization. Norbert Jacques invented Dr. Mabuse in novel originally published in serialized form, Dr. der Spieler (1921-1922). Almost immediately, Fritz Lang transformed the literary material into two-part film with the same title (1922). Both versions of Mabuse enjoyed tremendous commercial success and created villain whose career reached new heights ten years later in another film, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (on which Jacques, Lang, and Thea von Harbou collaborated). The story does not end there: Jacques wrote three more Mabuse books (Ingenieur Mars [1923], Mabuses Kolonie [a fragment] and Chemiker Null [1934]), and Lang made another Mabuse film, Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse (1960). The doctor quickly became German and even an international Kulturgut, the subject of numerous other books and films. In recent study, David Kalat cites poll finding that 95 percent of German teenagers in the mid-1980s recognized the name Mabuse (282). The doctor is not only a bona fide pop culture phenomenon (6); he is modern myth.1 This essay concentrates on Lang's 1922 and 1932 films against the backdrop of Mabuse's sinister and giant profile in German culture. The first section explores the differences between the literary and film versions of Dr. der Spieler to show how Lang's treatment exploits the properties of the cinematic medium to create an adversary of singular stature. A paradox runs throughout the film. Mabuse is hypnotist and master of the Evil Eye, but despite his ability to mesmerize others, his criminal ambitions flourish precisely to the extent that he avoids direct personal involvement in his schemes. The second section of the essay examines how the villain's seeming ubiquity, which the 1922 film establishes, develops in the 1932 sequel. In Testament, Mabuse does not himself appear where he intends harm. He drafts document outlining campaign to be executed by others, and this program can be carried out even after its author's death. Consequently, Mabuse takes on supernatural aspect that further refines the impression that he is everywhere and nowhere. Testament, which Kracauer's authoritative opinion deems the lesser of the two films (cf. 248-50), is in fact the more significant work because it describes simple mechanism of terror that possesses potentially limitless scope and extends far beyond the historical moment in which the film was conceived. A concluding section reads 1000 Augen as logical development of the dynamics outlined in Testament and argues that Mabuse, name that points more toward alterity than identity,2 refers 21 -century viewers not so much to 1930s Germany, but to opacities in their own world. The instant success of Mabuse in print and on-screen in the early 1920s owed much to the fact that the villain embodied the turbulence of the political and social situation in Germany. Jacques's novel and Lang's film took widespread fears of armed threats to the young republic's stability from the right and the left, the persistence of war-time traumas, and concerns about economic chaos and ascribed them to single agent. …

Not Nationalists: Russian Teenagers' Soulful A-politics

IN THE LATE 1980S, as the USSR began to fracture along its republics' faultlines, a tide of fear washed across Western media about what was perceived as an alarming rise in nationalist sentiment in Russia. In 1987 the organisation Pamyat' was formed on the rallying cry of Russia's return to its Slavic roots and a call for the eradication of unhealthy foreign influences from its culture and territory.' Because some of the most virulent nationalistic phrases came from the eloquent mouths and prolific pens of prominent members of the intellectual elite,2 and because patriotic group demonstrations attracted crowds of thousands, the possibility of 'popular sentiments' becoming state-wide sanctions against non-Slavic individuals was not to be ignored.3 At the same time, Soviet Russian observers and those from the West expressed concerns about the impact of glasnost' and globalisation on the young. Reports of the Lyubery, young men from Moscow's working class exurbs who sought out hippies, ethnic minorities and other non-conformists for violent confrontation, fanned the fires of this anxiety. A ready explanation for these attacks was that they were xenophobic reactions to the new national policy of 'openness' and fears of the unknown. Igor S. Kon warned parents and educators of young people's 'social inertia' and their propensity to be swayed by strident ideologies should they fail to develop critical thinking and a solid foundation of democratic values.4 Even after the Lyubery disappeared from the youth scene, a strong distrust, even fear of youth persisted in the Soviet Union as it changed course.5 Some social analysts, mainly British and American, pointed positively to the flurry of young people's stylistic experimentation and cultural production.6 The Russian sociologist Tatiana Zaslavskaya and the American educator Deborah Adelman lauded teenagers for shrugging off political apathy,7 but most others reported less happily on their single-minded pursuit of kaif, or fun.8 In the main, Soviet-Russian journalists and academicians decried what they perceived as the new money-oriented 'moral vacuum' that sucked teenagers into its anti-social vortex and led them to peddling, prostitution and worse.9 Leaving behind the specifics of Russia for a moment, social psychologists have long proclaimed that it is during adolescence, a time of 'betwixt and between' or 'storm and stress', that individuals are prone to challenge the foundations of their society and seek alternatives. Examples from recent history, including the spectacular rise of the Komsomol in the early years of the USSR, the almost mystical attraction of the Hitler Youth for German teenagers during the interwar years,10 and the power