The World Congress of Families passes on this excerpt from Fred Lynch and Jonathan McKee's Dare 2 Share article, "What's a Fo' Sheezy? Slanguage: An Insight into Youth Culture Today,""And let's be honest. A lot of kids out there don't necessarily know the MOST current terms, but they are familiar with slanguage. The media keeps them current. I'm not just talking about hip hop; I'm talking about mainstream TV and movies. Even in Disney movies and other popular cartoon movies... the Zebra walks up on the beach and says to the lion, "What's crackalackin'?" So now, many home schooled kids are familiar with some of those terms. And kids that watch MTV... they watch shows like "pimp my ride" where slanguage is a staple.
Most kids have easy access to slanguage through these forms of media. 64% of teenagers have a TV in their bedroom. 69% of them view it on cable. The average time that an 8 to 18 year old watches TV or movies per day is 3 hours 51 minutes. The media keeps them current.
...I'd say two thirds of our youth culture listens to hip hop. As a matter of fact, according to Kaiser's most recent study, hip hop is the most popular music genre. 65 percent of 7th - 12th graders listen to hip hop, where second place to hip hop is alternative rock which is 32%. Below that there is country and other stuff. If you'd like to see for yourself, pop onto Billboard.com or iTunes and check out the top charts and top downloads.
Now, some people think, "Oh well, are you sure that's all kids? What about white kids?" That's what I love about most of these studies, including that particular Kaiser study. It is detailed by race. Check this out: 60 percent of WHITE kids listen to hip hop each day, where only 38 percent of them listen to alternative rock, then country... And you've got to realize that when kids are averaging 6 1/2 hours per day of media exposure, which is what that same survey reports, this is a lot of influence. So when this video that Fred's talking about comes out, most kids... actually... let me reiterate to be completely accurate, 65% of kids are current with that term within a week."
