Teens Who are Incorperating Foreign Cultures Into Their Lives

Many teens nowadays are reading,looking,or listening to things from other countries. As two examples, I’m sure American teens are reading the ever popular “manga” that originate from the oriental culture, or some Japanese teens are listening to some American music on their Ipods or on their computer. They are attempting to adopt the foreign culture into their own.

This is not a real problem, but why is this facination with the other cultures works so prominent with teenagers? I don’t think many children (5-10) do this, it also doesn’t seem to appease to the mature audience either. It only seems to focus on the teenagers of countries.

Don’t take this wrong, exploring other cultures is a rich experience, giving the opportunities to meet with new people and learn new languages and religions. But exploring other cultures by reading “manga” or “doujinshii” doesn’t give the right idea to teens how the other cultures operate and the people who live there. Along with american music, some teenagers in other countries may hear a country song from America, and may think that all americans listen to is this “country” music.

 Seeing this, unless the teenager actually visits said country, they may start forming sterotypes about them, such as “All americans are red-necks”, which can be quite detrimental in the future as to interacting with them and believing for so long in that stereotype that its uncomfortable to disbelieve it in the face of real concrete proof.