Youth Culture Today with Walt Mueller

It’s been said that when it comes to fashion and style, what goes around comes around. And, in one of the most mind-boggling recent fashion trends, today’s teens are proving this to be true. In a recent article in of all places Country Living Magazine, writer Katie Bowley throws this headline at us: “Cracker Barrel’s Grandma Sweatshirts Are The Newest Gen Z Trend.” Yes, you heard that right. Teena...

One of the best tools at your disposal for tracking changes in youth culture is the dictionary. That’s right, the dictionary. I say this because the rate of cultural change is now so fast that those who publish dictionaries are constantly removing words deemed irrelevant and no longer usable, while adding words that reflect cultural change. Earlier this month, the folks at the Oxford Dictionary ac...

Since today is the day that we celebrate Christmas, I thought I would take some time to share one of my favorite Christmas scriptures. In the Gospel of Luke, we are told that eight days after his birth, Jesus was brought by Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem to be circumcised. While there, they took Jesus into the temple where an upright man by the name of Simeon took the infant in his arms. God had pro...

Some of my greatest and most treasured childhood memories revolve around Christmas eve. In our house, Christmas eve was a time of great anticipation. Yes, we would be opening presents the next morning so there was certainly plenty of excitement about what would show up under the tree. The house always smelled great as my mom would be already working on preparing our Christmas feast by baking cooki...

In just two days we’ll be gathering with family and friends to celebrate Christmas. This is the day when we celebrate the amazing grace of God in the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer. I’m assuming that most of us will benefit from the reminders to not allow all the distractions of the season to keep us from understanding and truly celebrating the Incarnation. I know that I ne...

Today, we’re concluding our look at marketing’s influence on our kids. One result of the marketing push is that we’ve got a culture of kids locked into consumer debt. The message they get from advertising is that life is about consumption, and whether it’s their money or a credit card company’s money they are borrowing, they are entitled to spend whenever the urge hits them. Many of today’s kids w...

Today we’re continuing to look at marketing’s powerful influence on children and teens. The glut of advertising to kids can lead them to understand life in economic terms. Each and every one of us, including our kids, has been created by God, for God, and to be in a relationship with God, living His will and His way under his reign. But advertising consistently sends the message that “it’s all abo...

Today we’re continuing our look at how marketing influences children and teens. As materialism takes root and grows, kids become more impulsive, buying without evaluating or thinking about the difference between wants and needs . Kids wind up wanting to acquire products they really don’t need, but they want them for the perceived emotional and quality of life benefits they promise. Marketing has a...

Today, we’re continuing our look at how marketing influences our children and teens. As I’ve studied teen marketing over the years, it’s clear that there are short and long-term effects and results of advertising. Parents must think about how these results and effects square up to who our kids should be as followers of Christ. One result is that materialism is becoming more deeply embedded in our...

Take a look around and you’ll quickly notice that advertising is everywhere. It’s especially pervasive in the lives our teenagers, who are, by the way, the most targeted market segment in the world. Consequently, marketing functions as a map that sits unfolded in the laps of vulnerable teens who are looking to find their way from childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood. Advertising’s 24...

Several decades ago, media and communication theorist Marshal McLuhan was warning us that the technological tools we create and embrace have long-term effects that are not always positive. He said, “first we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.” Now that the smartphone has been present in our culture and lives for over seventeen years, we are seeing how our lives and relationships are cha...

Russell Kirk was a twentieth century social critic who back in 1992 said something very important regarding the changes taking place in culture as it slides further and further into secularism, and what needs to take place. Kirk said, “If a culture is to survive and flourish, it must not be severed from the religious vision out of which it arose. The high necessity of reflective man and women, the...

Parents, are you aware that the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning parents, educators, caregivers, teens, and children about the growing tide of online dangers that they say may lead to the solicitation and enticement of minors to engage in sexual acts. Known as “sextortion”, this danger involves a perpetrator coercing a minor to create and send sexually explicit material. If...

Our friends over at the First Things Journal recently passed on some interesting words from Gen Z writer, Freya India, that she had posted on her Substack online newsletter. Her take on Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, is insightful. “It’s hard to put this into words but I think, in some ways, what we actually want is to be humbled. People say we crave belonging and connection, but what if...

Because we have been made for relationships, it’s important that our kids develop healthy friendships where they learn how to relate to others, how to play together, and how to solve conflicts. The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health recently asked the parents of six to twelve year old children about their children’s friendships. Nineteen percent of parents report that...

I recently read an article in Scientific American by Melinda Wenner Moyer, all about the role of unstructured play in setting kids on a course for healthy child development. Moyer cites the story of twenty-five year old Charles Whitman, who back in 1966 climbed to the top of tower on the campus of the University of Texas and proceeded to shoot forty-six people, killing seventeen. The killing spark...

C.S. Lewis once said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, but shouts to us in our pains.” Those words capture a truth that the Scriptures put forth from Genesis to Revelation. It seems that whenever God would do his greatest work in the lives of those he loved, he would bring about great spiritual growth and increased faith through the gift of pain. In today’s world, we are taught to avoid pain...

I’ve been reading with great interest some articles in Salvo magazine that have been written by Dr. Bruce Woodall. In his encounters with young patients who are questioning their sexuality and gender, Dr. Woodall carefully and compassionately addresses their questions and confusion by pointing them to God’s good design for sex and gender. He writes, “I am concerned that youth are receiving a cultu...

From time to time I tell you about the power that marketing has over our kids. Marketing not only peddles products, but it also sells and promotes a world view. Yes, marketing shapes the way that our kids look at and live life. But our kids aren’t the only targets that marketing so effectively hits. Marketing also shapes us adults. It’s for that reason that I want to sound a warning that relates t...

Today I want to talk to you about how my beliefs have changed over the years regarding high school graduates and higher education. When I graduated from high school, I lived in a culture where it was assumed that the next step for anyone who hoped to be responsible was to go immediately on to college, and then to graduate in four years. But a changing culture, economic realities, college debt, and...

Inhalants are a class of drugs which are easy to obtain, inexpensive, and popular, especially among younger teenagers who have difficulty obtaining alcohol and other drugs. They’re one of the most widely used classes of drugs among our middle school kids, and even those who are younger will experiment with them. Known for years as “huffing” and now known as “chroming”, sniffing common household pr...

Today we celebrate Thanksgiving. Many of us have gathered to enjoy a day filled with conversation, an abundance of food, and perhaps some football. If you’re like me, many of these long-held holiday traditions could wind up filling the day so full that we actually forget to pause and give thanks to God for His many blessings. This year, I’ve resolved to spend some time alone to pause and give than...

Precocious puberty, also known as early puberty, takes place when a child’s body begins to change into an adult body too soon. In today’s world, puberty usually begins for girls around age eight, and around age nine for our boys. In recent years, there has also been research showing that in general, our kids are reaching puberty at earlier and earlier ages. There have been lots of different theori...

As a baby boomer, I’m part of a generation that believed that adulthood began at age eighteen, which usually coincided with the time a teenager graduated from high school and went into the work force or off to college. For generation z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – there’s the belief that adulthood doesn’t begin until sometime around the ages of twenty-seven to thirty. Researchers found tha...

Here’s an interesting strategy to consider as you think about how to lead the teenagers you know away from a culturally-influenced self-centered lifestyle, to a God-centered lifestyle: pray for crisis to enter their lives. Self-centeredness with no room for God plays and advances well in a youth culture that feeds the beast of self-absorption from a deep well of luxury and wealth. Sometimes it’s n...