Consuming Youth: Leading Teens Through Consumer Culture (YS Academic)

Today’s relentless, consumer culture—dominated by popular media’s emphasis on bigger, better, and more, and catering to teenagers’ every want and desire—is leaving our youth adrift in a sea of conflicting messages. Messages that youth workers and faith communities need to decode and redirect from consumption as the primary purpose of youth. Consuming Youth explores the shifts needed to move from the fragmented, isolated and consumer driven story for youth and towards a more compelling story of meaning, purpose and a life lived differently than the one served up by consumer culture. If you’re involved in the lives of teenagers, whether as a youth pastor, youth worker, volunteer, church leader, parent, or students of youth ministry, you’ll want to read this book to discover how a culturally invented and socially accepted version of adolescence, sustained by consumer culture, has shaped youth work and through the suggestions offered work together to discover ways in which you can re-imagine youth ministry and what it means to be a teenager.