Here’s what 187 youth workers call there young people…

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What to call the collective age group that youth workers minister to can be an hotly debated issue. When you mix the world of polly-correctness with adolescence-driven chemicals and egotistical youth workers, getting the terms right can be a real thing.

So, we asked 187 youth workers the following question:

‘What you think the most respectful way of referring to ‘young people’ is? (plural).’

There were a few given options* with space to add alternatives. Here were the results:

  • 148 said ‘students*’
  • 14 said ‘youth*’
  • 6 said ‘teenagers*’
  • 5 said ‘young people’
  • 2 said ‘young men and women’, ’the beast’, ’kids’, ‘super saiyans’, and ‘yall’
  • 1 said ‘you’ins’ and ‘young church’
  • 0 responses for either ‘children’ or ‘adolescents*’

Here were some of the additional comments:

“I can’t stand ‘young people’.”

“My SP says ‘Young People’ – even when he speaks at Youth Group. Drives me nuts.”

“Personally, I think Students is a much better term. It’s the precedent for whoever comes into your ministry that we are students of God. Youth has such a negative tone in most places today.”

“I see it as holding them up by calling them students. They’re on the cusp of adulthood and I want them to feel respected and that we recognize where they are. Calling them youth (or even kids) is accurate but a little demeaning when they want to be seen as more grown up. Plus, as students in my group it conveys the importance of why they’re at youth group: to learn the Bible, God, maturity, each other, etc.”

 “In seriousness though I would still choose students. Students still has a younger connotation and I could see adults being offended by it for themselves like youth being offended by being called kids.”

Now, these responses came almost exclusively from American youth clubs, which is less helpful for us here in the UK, but it does still provide some interesting questions and contrasts.

I tend to use the phrase ‘young people’ when talking about, but not necessary talking to. It’s descriptive and accurate, and – I think – doesn’t contain the condescending undertones of other terms.

It’s also worth adding to the discussion that the Bible uses the words ‘Youth’ (בְּחֻרִים), ‘young man’ (בחור) and ‘the young’/‘youths’ (ילדות) – as distinct from children or adults.

So, perhaps not massively important – or even helpful – to a UK context, but it is still interesting to think about. Our next venture will be to ask this same question to British young people and see what they say.

Are you a British youth worker? We’d love to know your thoughts on this!

7 Ways to Support Anorexic Young People

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Last night my wife and I watched the BBC2 documentary with Louis Theron on Anorexia, which has prompted this post.

Youth ministries can be rife with all kinds of eating disorders – and classically we respond to this epidemic by simply talking about self image and inner value. As if we could convince them that they are beautiful, then they’ll suddenly get better and start eating normally again. Messages on identity are genuinely important, but rarely do they adequately address the needs of a young person dealing with a diagnosed mental disorder like anorexia.

And that’s where we should start. Diagnosed anorexia is treated in mental health departments. It is often wrapped up in anxiety, paranoia, and other chemical vulnerabilities in the mind. This means that the condition, the symptoms, and the treatments are dramatically different depending on personality.

  • For some young people, anorexia means a pathological and carnal phobia of food, and what eating does to their bodies.
  • For others, it is a form of self-harm or punishment; a painful response to inordinate guilt or a denial of things they feel they don’t deserve.
  • For some it is a response to trauma or tragedy – a way of making change happen to be more acceptable to themselves or others.
  • For again others, it creates a numbness that enables them to deal with other painful or overwhelming feelings.

Thus you will find young people who are filled with shame about how they deal with eating and exercise – and they will hide from you. You will then find others who are proud, and even militant about their sense of confused piety and discipline. Some will have no intention of recovery, and others will have no acceptance of their problem. More than likely, however, several of these things will exist together in a constant state tension and battle.

Anorexia – like any mental health problem – is never clean lined or simple.

It also comes with all kinds of misunderstandings and resentment. ‘Why don’t you just eat more?’ or ‘Don’t you know that you look better with more meat on your bones!’ As if they could just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and think suddenly objectively or rationally.

Anorexia smothers rational thinking. It comes with intense feelings of guilt, fear, judgement and social anxiety – and it proffers its own destructive solutions.

So what do we do about it as youth leaders?

1. Remember that we are not doctors.

We’re not psychologists, psychiatrists, key-workers, or mental health nurses. Our job is not treatment, or job is support.

We should remember to work with professionals and to recommend or report to them to do what we can’t.

2. Treat them like distinct and individual people

Mental health needs a fuller understanding across the board. I’ve tried to demonstrate above some of the many different ways young people might experience this condition. Each of them will need a different response and will play by a different set of rules.

We can’t learn broad responses – we need to work with them individually.

3. Ask them what they need

Allow them to speak into their own condition, and to help you understand what language they need. This will also help you be able to look out for their triggers and provide for the care of those triggers in your projects.

4. Love them unconditionally

It’s easy to get frustrated by conditions that we can’t understand. But our job isn’t to fix young people – it’s to lead them to Jesus. There are few things that do this better than creating a safe place of love and security in your ministry.

5. Don’t enable

Make sure you know enough of them, and have spent enough time with their family – and maybe even nurses or social workers – to be able to help them recover. This means creating similar boundaries within your projects for them as they’ll be experiencing at home.

6. Be for their recovery

Show that your proud of them when they’re doing well and when they’re working with doctors. Mental health conditions tend to come with a pathological suspicion of treatment. Help them with encouragement that they’re doing the right thing by getting help.

7. Don’t minimise their experience

Whatever kind of grip eating disorders have, or whatever form they take, they are always destructive. Be careful not to demonise or trivialise conditions like anorexia in how you joke or talk. Always here young people out and take them seriously about what it is they’re feeling – whether or not you can relate.

Finding new volunteers: Appeal vs Approach

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Finding and developing teams of volunteers is the bread-and-butter of youth work. When the team works – it works really well, and when it doesn’t – everything has to work around it.

I’ve just arrived home after a month away to find that my team had been brilliant. They had run and grown all the projects in my absence like pros. This is the first time in 13 years of youth ministry that I felt comfortable enough to leave for an extended period, knowing the young people we’re in good hands. It’s fabulous when a team just works!

But when you don’t have the volunteers to run your projects or (sometimes worse) you have the wrong volunteers in a project things can get very heavy and very stressful very quickly.

The Appeal

For years I ran appeals for help. Letters in news sheets, notices from the front of church gatherings, and direct mail-outs to hundreds of people. Every time I did this I noticed three things:

  1. Hardly anyone responded

The ratio – however I did it – came back at something like 1-2 in 100.

  1. The wrong people responded

I often get sent offers to help from people with ulterior motives who would either be massively unhelpful – if not dangerous – to vulnerable young people, thus would need constant supervision.

  1. I’d wasted ministry capital

I want my churches to read everything I give them, and listen up when I speak. This works less when I’m constantly begging for help from the front. No one is inspired by the sinking ship!

The Approach

I recently attended a training session led by the leaders are a large and thriving Children’s Church. Unfortunately I found them quite odd, and took very little of what they said on board. However, they did get one thing very right – which is to approach potential help directly.

I’d suggest this has five stages: Identify, Encourage, Clarify, Invite and Followup.

Identify

Sit down and make a list of people in your context that could work for your project. They don’t need to be perfect, but they do need a couple of skills to start with, and some space for you to develop others. It’s not your job to decide whether or not they have time at this point – just make up a wish list.

Encourage

Seek them out and tell them why you have identified them specifically. This conversation is all about them. Tell them what skills they have and why you think those fit and tell them why you would love your young people to be served by them. Leave this with them for a week.

Clarify

Followup with them and start to tell them the basics of what is required. One of the key reasons people don’t respond to appeals is that they are too vague. Tell them what is expected from a leader, and how they will be developed and supported to thrive.

Invite

Invite them to the project for a no pressure, observation only session. Let them see and have a look at what you do – right from the setup time to the debrief. This lets them picture what it is they would be doing.

Followup

Soon after (ideally within the week following) have a coffee with that person. Give them your application forms and initiate the formal process. Get them onto to rota in a supervised position until the process is complete.

This takes the same – if not actually much less – time as an appeal process. Although it doesn’t work every time, my experience has been that you have more responses, better fitting people, and a better beginning for your volunteers.

Have you had success with appeals or approaches? Do you have any other ideas? Send us a message or leave a comment – we’d love to hear from you! 🙂

How is blowing your nose like youth work?

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So I have acute rhinitis, which is medical code for ‘my nose is always full of snot.’ Here are four ways to release that snot, with pertinent ramifications for youth ministry.

Don’t block the dam

When you blow your nose with your hanky, don’t block the nostrils. Allow the flow of air to leave your nostril easily; allowing the snot to move freely and gently in the right direction. Plugging your nose holes while trying to simultaneously blow snot out just doesn’t work. Instead you cram bogies into your brain.

Jump up and down

Some gentle jumping up and down the spot, all walking heavy footed around the streets – all the time humming through your nose – will break the finger holds of the tendrils of your mucus. Making your subsequent blowing far more effective.

Stay lubricated

The more you drink, particularly of water and non-caffeinated hot teas will soften and dilute mucus – helping the snot flow freely. Basically, give your snorter waterslide.

Stay off the pain meds

Snotty noses are often accompanied by headaches – usually because we have blocked our nostrils when blowing our noses, so have crammed bogies into our brains. Popping headache pills that have codeine in them, however, will dry the snot up. Basically you just gave your bogies crampons, and locked them in place.

So how is this like youth work?

Don’t block the dam

Don’t hold things too tightly, don’t stick your fingers into the proverbial nostrils of your youth ministry. Allow enough room for other people to have genuine input, for young people to be involved, and for the Holy Spirit to move. Blocking the movement, then trying desperately to blow life into it is likely to backfire.

Jump up and down

Sometimes you need to be a loud and awkward voice that stands up for those adults who don’t tend to listen to. Take opportunities to show your respect for young people by making sure their struggles are heard and their needs are met.

Stay lubricated

Constantly take in the good stuff. Spend time with God yourself, get into the Bible, be in church services where you’re not doing anything, and make sure you’re teaching from a place of personal learning and growth.

Stay off the pain meds

Don’t fall into the trap of being the complainy, gossipy, grumbly youth worker. It there’s a problem or a conflict, go and resolve it properly. Simply grumbling about how hard your youth ministry is will just dry you up and lock your problems in place.

Free the snot!

Free the youth ministry!

Dear Pastors, please protect your youth workers

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Over the last few years I’ve been collecting stories of youth workers who have had terrible times in their job because the pastor didn’t know how to properly mediate between themselves and the church.

A year or so after first starting full-time youth ministry, I had my very own initiation to this issue. I had run my first very large holiday club and someone on the team had decided to create, distribute and compile people’s feedback of the event. That was a good idea!

What this person actually did, however, was to take in the feedback forms, distill all the ‘good’ feedback into 4 very clipped bullet points, then proceed to berate me personally across 10 pages of ‘negative’ feedback. It was deeply personal, it was heavily exaggerated, and frankly it was legally slanderous.

To make matters worse, this heavily biased feedback report was then circulated to 40 members of the church leadership and holiday club team which included several young teenage helpers.

It wasn’t sent to me. Instead, I found out about it when three young people came to me incredibly upset, saying they never wanted to serve in that church again. They didn’t just disagree with the feedback, they were shocked that a Christian could speak so ungracefully about another person.

As a 21-year-old youth worker, I was totally broken. I took this to my two Senior Pastors who were equally shocked and dismayed. They went through the tirade with me point by point, to see whether there were actually some genuine areas that needed to be improved upon. Mostly it simply came down to producing earlier communication, and trying to print T-shirt logos straighter.

What didn’t happen, however, was any conversation with the person that compiled the feedback. They were not challenged or rebuked. There not held accountable to what they produced, and no further communication happened with the 40 recipients of the report.

I was left totally confused and vulnerable.

Not only did I feel abandoned, but the lack of response gave the person who made the report free license to continue to make my life difficult in the following years. They served in a position on the church council, and continually destabilised my work personally.

This was 10 years ago now, but it still smarts. There’s no closure and nothing that can be done about it. It needed a firm, and properly directed response from the person charged with my car. But to maintain decorum, and out of fear, I was left without protection.

This comes up now because recently I’ve heard three more stories similar of youth workers who have lost health, security, and jobs because the Pastor failed in one of their most basic tasks.

Dear Pastors…

I know you have a very difficult job, but get your priorities straight. Your first task is to be responsible for those under your immediate care. That’s your family, and then your team. Youth Workers have it hard. They are often young, inexperienced, with new families, and thin skin. Don’t train them to defend themselves from the congregation they need to integrate within.

Sometimes, Mr Pastor, you have to be the bad cop, and take the very special care of those charged was looking after the most vulnerable members of your congregation.

7 volunteer leaders that your youth ministry could do without

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I love working with volunteers – its one of the best things about being a youth worker. Volunteers are there because they want to serve, and they usually come without the baggage of entitlement demands and complaints. Volunteers blow me away all the time because of the energy they give to projects while expecting so little in return.

I’m hugely blessed right now to have an awesome team. All of my volunteers are a total credit to themselves and to the God they serve. The young people love them, and they support me in more ways than they know.

It hasn’t always been this way though. I’ve managed teams of volunteers for over a decade, and I totally understand the pressures of constantly needing more help. There are, however, just some volunteers that you could do without.

I’m a big believer that your ministry should match your resources, and that you should steward what you have, before you try and do more than what you can manage. Youth workers, however, are under constant pressure to grow numerically. This means a bigger team. Then begins the desperate pleas for help in the notices, and the increasingly lax expectations and requirements from your volunteers before they serve.

My volunteers go through a process which includes an application form, interview, references, police check, and probation period. Here are some of the potential volunteers that I turn away.

1. Just there to make up numbers

Occasional willing help to keep young people safe by bolstering ratios is an ok thing to do. Having a volunteer on team, however, that doesn’t want to be there, but are simply worried that the youth group might collapse without them is just not helpful. They ooze disinterest and will more than likely be a limp member of the team.

Better a smaller youth group with a devoted and committed team, than a big one with disinterested and unengaged leaders any day.

2. No servant heart

One of the reasons that I love my team so much is that they get stuck into everything. They’ll commit prep time in the week, they’ll clean up without being asked, or they’ll arrive early and move chairs.

Volunteers who only come just wanting to be the spiritual big shot are simply not worth your time. Starting with a Christlike servant heart should the foundational basis that anyone wanting to serve in ministry.

3. Not teachable

When I look for a new volunteer, I keep my eye out the people that display faithfulness, availability, and teachability. A teachable person asks more questions than they give answers. They listen carefully before making judgemental statements, they respond well to ideas and corrections, and they respect the authority of the leader.

An unteachable person is often cynical, loudly opinionated, vocally dominant and undermining. They can be argumentative and they can foster gossip. If a volunteer cannot demonstrate teachability, then they will do little to help the wise development of your young people.

4. Empire builders

We’ve all heard that we shouldn’t build empires we should build kingdom, and it’s true. A kingdom-building volunteer comes on to a team to serve Jesus in that ministry and to see how they can fit within it uniquely. An empire-building volunteer comes on expecting the ministry to serve their own aspirations.

An empire builder often talks about how they would do better, and how they started because they could fix what you were doing wrong. Even if they’re right about areas that need to change, their attitude will sink the ministry long before you can make any healthy changes.

5. Unreliable

I have a busy team of people who lead full lives with jobs and family. For that reason I do my best to set realistic expectations and develop rotas that work for them individually. Leaders who often don’t show up when they say they will, or are consistently late are quickly taken off our rosters.

An unreliable team means an unreliable youth ministry; meaning the young people can’t trust it. It’s important that each volunteer signs a contract of expectations at the beginning of their time, and are then held accountable to it. Just because volunteers are not staff, does not mean they don’t have to keep to agreed expectations – especially when it affects the security of vulnerable young people.

6. Called to other ministries

Sometimes brilliant volunteers show up with fantastic attitudes, but it becomes clear that really they are called to a different ministry. Although it may be heartbreaking and gut-wrenching to let them go, you too are called to build the kingdom and not your empire.

Making sure that you have regular supervision sessions with your volunteers should help you understand if there is a better fit for them elsewhere. If you release them, God will honour and provide.

7. Haven’t earned it

One of the most obvious places to get new team members from is graduating young people when they become legal adults. I love this life cycle and believe it’s essential to develop young people eventually into adult team members. However, if they did not demonstrate a servant heart, if they were not teachable, and if they were constantly disrespectful towards the acting team – then I will not allow them to volunteer without some clear evidence of change.

We should set realistic, but high standards for our team. We’re not looking for perfect people (look at the disciples!), but faithful, available, and teachable people who are properly committed, servant-hearted and know where to place their priorities.

I’m totally blessed by my team today after a long time of cultivation and development. It was really worth the effort and the hard conversations. Does your team need some work?

You mean I’m not God? A 10 step guide to the youth worker power trip.

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Let’s be honest kids, being a youth worker can give you a delicious feeling of power.

As the cool teacher, relatable counsellor, replacement parent, uber best-friend, and sassy sage figure, its easy to come away from interacting with your young people feeling all powerful. I mean, you get to teach what you want, give poignant advice to hormone-ridden and desperate young people, while simultaneously beating them at all their favourite games, and letting off an all-knowing air.

You can shape theology, guide political affiliations, and even mould dreams and aspirations. You can cut down with a word and build up with a look. You can even design exactly what you think God should look like to them.

This is the responsibility of a teacher for sure (James ____) but it’s more than that. A youth worker is put into a much broader, potentially life-shaping context with the most vulnerable and impressionable people imaginable. It’s easy to make yourself their sole spiritual, mental and emotional guide.

So, here are ten easy things to remember next time you start coming over all Gody:

  1. Just don’t.

Let God be God, and you be the big arrow that points to God. When that arrow starts turning inward, run away screaming.

 

  1. Let other people teach

Allow other voices to speak into their lives; don’t let it all come down to you.

 

  1. Be accountable to people who know how to hold you accountable

Don’t have yes-men mentors. Look instead for people who know how to ask you the uncomfortable questions like, ‘have you been acting like God today?’

 

  1. Don’t set up teachers for failure

Don’t start every sentence with ‘your teachers don’t know what they’re talking about because…’ On some occasions that’ll be true, but don’t pretend you know everything about everything, especially when the teacher isn’t there to defend themselves.

 

  1. Don’t set them against their parents

Very similarly, make sure that you are working with parents and not against them. Parents are not always perfect, but it’s not doing anyone favours by gossiping about them to their kids to make you look coolers.

 

  1. Say you don’t know

Don’t waffle and make stuff up when you don’t know what you’re talking about. ‘Always have an answer…’ in PETER ___ doesn’t mean pretend you know everything. You’re not all-knowing; say you don’t know and ask what they think. Explore together.

 

  1. Keep tight control of your boundaries

Don’t be omniscient – by which I mean always available. Keep to your working hours and days off.  Keep your personal numbers personal, and don’t drop everything to be available.

 

  1. Point to other resources and connect to other people

Your job is to facilitate the young people within the Body of Christ, so do just that. All roads should not point back to you, but they can converge on you as you help them connect to awesome resources and people that can do what you can’t

 

  1. Remember who your God is

Keep your relationship with God fuelled and growing. Keeping yourself in humble perspective with Him should help you stay in the healthy human zone.

 

  1. Don’t be an ass

When things don’t go your way, deal with it like a person, not an overly-justice-obsessed wrath mongerer. You’re not perfect, nobody is. Conflicts will happen and mistakes will too – get on with things. Apologise, forgive, move on, and be that big arrow that points back to God.

Exploring Emotional Health – with Liz Edge

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It was through adolescence that I began to feel a void in dialogue between my Christian faith, and being diagnosed with anxiety and depression. No one seemed to want to talk about emotional health and God in the same conversation; it was as if they simply didn’t mix.

Over the years, I was convinced that others out there must be thinking similar thoughts to me. I couldn’t be the only teenage Christian living in the void. As I got older, I would ask myself;

Why am I so anxious all the time, even though the Bible tells me not to worry?

Does God still love me, even though I self-harm?

How can I be a Christian and be diagnosed with depression?

As I gained more insight into the area of mental and emotional health, I realised Christian’s aren’t exempt from experiencing poor mental health. Being a follower of Christ is a lived experience, and that includes living with illnesses of all kinds.

If we pause, taking a moment to look at the reality people are currently facing, we’ll see that:

  1. Globally, an estimated 350 million people of all ages suffer from depression and it is the leading cause of disability worldwide. (WHO, 2015)
  2. In the UK, anxiety disorders are estimated to affect 5-19% of all children and adolescents. (NHS, 2014)
  3. The majority of people who are reported to self-harm are aged between 11 and 25. (Mental Health Foundation, 2017)

Here we have three statements that show a snapshot of the many challenges adolescents face in our society today.

The encouraging news is that research shows teenagers want to talk about these challenges with trusted adults; they want to break the silence and no longer identify them as ‘taboo’ topics. Whether it is because young people are facing these adversities themselves, or because friends/family are struggling, they want to talk and therefore we must listen.

So, for those of us working with young people, we’re left with a conundrum: How do we even begin to effectively support the young people we engage with in exploring their emotional well-being and Christian faith? Where does the conversation begin in this vast arena?

Exploring Emotional Health: six workshop outlines for youth leaders will enable you to begin these vital conversations. It is a practical resource which breaks open the void in exploring these challenges with teenagers. The book covers six key topics and even includes ready to go workshops on: self-esteem; anxiety; depression; self-harm; identifying and coping with emotions.

Each chapter presents an essential understanding of every topic so you are equipped to run the creative workshops. The flexibility of how they’re written means they could used as a series during term-time or simply as a one-off at a residential weekend.

A decade since my personal experience, there are still teenagers today asking the same questions. By using Exploring Emotional Health you’ll be helping to close the void in openly discussing emotional health and Christian faith. Don’t wait for someone else to talk to them – be the one to start the conversation today.

Exploring Emotional Health can be purchased for £9.99 from various Christian book shops, including KevinMahyew.com.

References:

Mental Health Foundation (2017), Self-harm [online]. Available at: <https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/s/self-harm> [Accessed 7 February 2017]

NHS (2014), Anxiety [online]. Available at http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/anxiety-children/Pages/Introduction.aspx [Accessed 27 June 2017]

World Health Organisation (2015), Depression [online]. Available at: http://www.who.int/topics/depression/en/ [Accessed: 30 October 2016]

 

Liz Edge is a professionally qualified Youth Work Practitioner holding a First-Class BA (Hons) Degree in Youth Work & Ministry. She is the author of Exploring Emotional Health and has contributed to the work of local and national organisations; these include Romance Academy, selfharmUK and Premier Youth and Children’s Work.

As a freelancer, Liz is able to offer a wide range of youth work through education, training and intervention. Her practice is made authentic by drawing from her own life’s adversities, including living with depression and anxiety for over a decade.

In all her pioneering work, Liz’s ethos is to provide holistic support to adolescents in their relationships and to promote positive wellbeing; with themselves, with others and with the wider world.

You can find out more about Liz at Liz-Edge.co.uk and can follow her on Twitter @LizEdge_ and Facebook /LizEdgeYouthWorker – she’d love for you to say Hi!

An open letter to Nitin Passi CEO of ‘Missguided’

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Missguided HQ
Missguided Ltd,
75 Trafford Wharf Rd,
Trafford Park,
Manchester
M17 1ES

@Missguided
@Missguided_help

 

06 Aug. 2017

Dear Nitin Passo, CEO

I am a youth worker with over a decades’ professional experience working with teenagers and vulnerable young people.

I was horrified to learn that your brand store in Bluewater Shopping Centre, Kent, has a large neon sign reading ‘Send me nudes X.’ It may be that you’re ignorant to either the sexual pressures of young people, or the law regarding sexting culture.

Young people are under enormous pressure to produce and send sexually explicit pictures of themselves via the internet and on their smart devices. Childline, the NSPCC, and the The UK Home Office classify pressuring young people to ‘send nudes’ as abuse.

Legally, asking a young person to ‘send nudes’ is asking them to engage in the creation and distribution of child pornography. Your sign, thus your brand, is complicit in that.

Legality aside; if you had spent any real time with a sixteen year old consumer who had followed your advice to ‘send nudes’, then you would witness first-hand the destruction that such a simple act creates. You would see the wake of broken relationships, emotional havoc, and intense bullying. You would learn about moved schools, social service involvement, police case numbers, and court hearings.

You would see childhood robbed in a moment of poor decision making. Your sign, thus your brand, is complicit in that.

As a brand marketing to the 16-35 year old female consumer bracket, having such a sign on your wall is simply shameful and reckless. You have a responsibility to liberate the girls to which you sell your clothing, helping them to feel empowered and stand against the abusive peer pressure they increasingly face.

Please. Remove this sign, and consider the awesome influence you have on the lives of young people.

In the meantime, I will continue to work with the young people you are treating so cavalierly, helping to pick up the pieces. I will also use my own influence to encourage young people to boycott your brand and affiliates.

Tim Gough

Young people, porn, and pop-psychology

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Porn addiction is a serious thing, and the very last thing I want to do on here is to minimise or trivialise it. It genuinely messes up minds, and mangles marriages. Addiction (rather than just habit or compulsion) rearranges your neurological pathways and replaces your body’s natural abilities to release chemicals like dopamine. It is a big deal.

However…

You don’t need to have had a massive childhood trauma to want to watch porn. You don’t have to be from a poor background, have messed up parents, have been abused, or be a closet sexual deviant. There’s not always ‘a deeper reason’ beyond that fact that porn is just easily accessible, rarely challenged and it really feels good.

Can we just let that sink in?

Porn is readily accessible, growingly acceptable, and it feels good.

I’m sorry for the condescending tone but I recently asked a huge group of professional, career youth workers about their strategies for helping young people through porn habits, and it was like I’d turned on the pop-psychology button.

“There must be a deeper reason behind it.”

“Something must be missing from their life, can you find out what it is?”

“They’re probably clinically depressed.”

“Do you know what it is they’re trying to escape from?”

“Maybe they’re homosexual, and are looking for an identity outlet.”

That last one might have been my favourite.

Now all these things could be, can be, might be true. But first off, what are we doing diagnosing clinical disorders and conditions? Secondly, what if we are missing something much much simpler because we’re too busy searching for the obviously buried deeper reason. It’s actually pretty easy to convince young people that there’s a deeper reason through this kind of insistence – then you’ve created all sorts of problems.

Sometimes we should seek out reasons behind the reasons, and we should always be alert to the potential for hidden issues. Sometimes, however, porn is just accessible, acceptable, and feels good. Does that make it ok? No, of course not! But the way of addressing it is entirely different than going Dr. Phil on them.

Addiction is a big word. It’s a medical word. So is depression btw. Let’s be careful with our throwaway comments and start by looking at what is right in front of us.

Even just 15 years ago (when most of us youth workers were teenagers), accessing porn as a teenager was hard work, you had to really make an effort for it. If you were going to go to so much trouble then the likely chance is there was a deeper reason.

Today? Not so much.

Porn is no trivial thing. We must work together to see it less accessible and acceptable, and point young people to things that both feel good and genuinely are good for them. But let’s dial back the Dr. Phil a little ok? My kids are getting sick of it.

Thanks! 😛