Youth Ministry Lessons from the Teen Choice Awards

After watching the 2013 Teen Choice Awards, it became quite clear to me that the individuals responsible for media campaigns targeting adolescents would have no problem engaging youth ministry researchers like theology professor Dr. Chap Clark in a lengthy conversation concerning youth. (I can’t help but think they’ve read Clark’s book “Hurt 2.0.”) If mass media is redefining its understanding of young people, should youth workers do the same? Here is what youth workers can learn from the Teen Choice Awards and the marketing around it:

Deep Down, Adolescents Know They Need Adults.  

This understanding led the contact company Acuvue to create a series of commercials that paired aspiring musicians and athletes with celebrity musicians and athletes. (Back in the day, we called that mentoring.) Acuvue also created much longer YouTube videos that showed the interactions between the adolescents and the celebrities. Throughout human history children have learned to become adults by observing, learning from and imitating adults. Indeed, this is still how things are done in many places around the world. In the United States, however, adolescents are learning how to become adults from and alongside other adolescents. It’s a classic case of the blind leading the blind. This cultural shift should be lamented by youth workers. (I believe that it is subconsciously lamented by adolescents.) Acuvue seems to believe something similar.   

Deep Down, Adolescents Long to be Truly Known and Unconditionally Accepted by Adults.

When actor Ashton Kutcher was awarded the Ultimate Choice Award (something like a lifetime achievement award), great effort was made to describe him as an adult who genuinely cares about adolescents "without looking down on them." Kutcher kept with the theme, at the beginning of his acceptance speech, sharing a personal secret. He revealed that Ashton is actually his middle name and that his first name is Chris. I don't know how intentional it was, but Ashton sent a clear message; "I am real with you; you can be real with me. I really care about you."  If youth workers can follow Ashton's lead, they have the opportunity to have a big impact on adolescents.  

Deep Down, Adolescents Want to Learn from Adults (Who Accept Them)

Ashton Kutcher felt he could do just that: have a big impact on adolescents. Because he felt accepted by the young people around him, he assumed that he had "earned the right to be heard."  Kutcher’s acceptance speech was not a speech at all, just some sound advice. He had three points to share with the teenage audience.  First, "opportunity looks a lot like hard work"; second, "The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart, and being thoughtful and being generous" and finally, "Everything around us that we call life was made up by people that are no smarter than you." While his advice falls well short of the Gospel message, it was, in my opinion, the most positive thing that came out of the night, and the young people in attendance were hanging on every word.  

If the brains behind the Teen Choice Awards were running your youth group, they would work hard to connect the youth to adults, show them that they are known and unconditionally accepted, and be taught by adults who accept them. There was a lot about the event that I disagreed with, but the bottom line is this: it connected with today's adolescents.