Angst and Aimlessness in Agnostic Youth

Cultural Observation Project

Location of Observation: Shopping mall

Youth 201-Section # Observation:

Write at least two full pages of an observation response as to what you saw from your first field assignment experience. Use the first field assignment suggestions as some suggestive points to this response. This is more of an analytical "objective" observation (from the head).

The shopping mall site that I selected meets the criteria of a secular well-attended local teenage (ages 12 -- 18) "hot spot" because it contains attractions that are designed to draw young people to mall and keep them engaged in activities at the mall for relatively long periods of time. Like many shopping malls today, the site I chose rubs shoulders with a movie complex. Teenagers congregate on the "apron" just outside the theater before and after seeing movies. And from the movie theater, the teenagers walk into the mall to investigate other sources of entertainment.

It is relatively easy to pick out the "clicks" of friends as the groups of teenagers tend not to mingle much. The groups stay pretty much to themselves, although they may occasionally call out to friends that they see nearby. The girls are especially likely to move briefly from group to group, and they seem fond of giving each other hugs as part of their greetings. There is a lot of joking and laughing going on, and the teenagers of both genders make comments about clothing, jewelry, tattoos, and hairstyles. When a group moves to the parking lot, the comments seem to be mostly about the type of cars they are driving and where the teenagers want to go next.

The teenagers seem most relaxed -- and less concerned with how they appear to their peers -- when they are eating. The mall has ample options for fast food: pizza, pretzels, burgers, wraps, frozen yogurts, and blended beverages. It is easy to see how teenagers can hang out at the mall for long periods of time: they don't go hungry. After the groups of teenagers have eaten, they must feel energized because they start to move about more in the mall. When stores are open, they go inside. But they never stay long as their objective does not seem to be making purchases. In fact during my two-hour observation, I didn't see a single teenager buy anything other than fast food, beverages, confections and popcorn at the theater, or movie tickets. The shopping mall is not a place to shop for the teenagers I observed; rather, it is a place to hang out -- to see and be seen.

Being seen by peers often entails getting boisterous, loud, and silly to the extreme. There is some unwritten, unspoken contest going on that only the teenagers understand. Note that thee groups of teens are quite heterogeneous. Diversity is the rule in these groups, although I did observe that some of the groups were predominantly one gender, or one race, or one ethnic group. But almost without exception, the groups were a diverse blend of friends. What did create a semblance of homogeneity was their dress. Some groups favored fedoras and big jewelry and makeup, while other groups leaned more toward grunge. As one would guess, the more diverse the dress, the less mingling that occurred. Yet, during the entire time that I observed, I did not see any group of teens single out any other group in what would be considered a mean or aggressive way. There was a lot of activity, but there was no violence or name calling. Also note that the presence of security guards was very evident. Three guards with walkie-talkies roamed the shopping mall, and they seemed to regard the groups of teenagers studiously -- almost as though they were memorizing the faces of the teens or looking for familiar faces of teens who were frequently seen to hang out at the mall.

2. Write at least two full pages of your personal response as to what you observed. Please be specific. This is more of an emotional "subjective" response (from the heart).

With Matthew 9:35-38 running through my head and impacting my heart, indeed, it did seem that the groups of students wandering the mall were "weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd." The teenagers at the shopping mall and hanging around the theater seemed so aimless and rudderless to me. The most productive thing that the groups of teens did was to select and go see a movie with their friends. After they had accomplished that, there didn't seem to be any purpose to their being together. Is suppose one could think that they were experiencing a fellowship of sorts. A sense of belonging is important to all of us, and the teenagers sure seemed to have that down pat. Everything they did while they were in their large and small groups seemed designed to affirm that they belonged to the groups they were in.

I kept expecting the large groups to get out of hand, especially when they left the theater and began roaming inside the mall. There was a sense of aimlessness that I thought could easily slip into vandalism or aggression in some ineffective attempt to give their occupancy at the shopping mall a purpose -- to them, give it some meaning. Interestingly, only twice did I notice a single teenager leave the groups. The other teenagers seemed undisturbed by their leaving and no one called attention to the teen as they left. I appeared not to be of interest, as though the teenagers were aware of the life circumstances of those two single mavericks who marched to their own drummer. Or perhaps they just understood and dealt with the archaic notion of a curfew, or what they would view as overly protective parents. The important thing to me was that they didn't deride the teens who left, in fact, they made a point to say their goodbyes -- and in more than one instance, to delay the departure of the teenager who had to go (apparently) home. This struck me as being almost chivalrous. I found myself drawing parallels with faith-based youth groups that are also focused on fostering a sense of belonging in their members -- the primary difference, of course, is that the members of faith-based youth groups "belong" because they believe. The gap between these different kinds of groups seems even wider when thinking about this. While youth in both groups dressed like the others in their group, and followed the etiquette particular to their group, a huge gap exists for the teenagers in the shopping mall groups. One wonders if they are aware of this, or if they know but choose to ignore the hole that they must fall into day after day.