Ephebiphobia is the fear of youth. Coined as the "fear or loathing of teenagers",Astroth, K. (1994) Beyond ephebiphobia: problem adults or problem youths? (fear of adolescents). Phi Delta Kappan. January 1, 1994. the phenomenon is recognized today as the "inaccurate, exaggerated and sensational characterization of young people" in a range of settings around the world.Hoffman, A.M. and Summers, R.W. (2001) Teen Violence: A Global View. Greenwood Press. p 2. Studies of the fear of youth occur in sociology and youth studies. It is distinguished from pedophobia by being more focused on adolescents than prepubescent children.
Lexicology Coinage The word ephebiphobia is formed from the Greek éphēbos, meaning "youth" or "adolescent" and phóbos, meaning "fear" or "phobia". The coinage of this term is attributed to a 1994 article by Kirk Astroth published in Phi Delta Kappan.Gough, P. (2000) "Detoxifying Schools." Phi Delta Kappan. March 1, 2000. Today, common usage occurs internationally by sociologists, government agencies,European Union's Stop Discrimination website - Glossary on age and youth advocacy organizations that define ephebiphobia as an abnormal or irrational and persistent fear or loathing of teenagers or adolescence.Grønnestad-Damur, W. & Pratch, L. (n.d.) No Ephebiphobia Here! Edmonton: Edmonton Public Library.Clark, C. (2004) Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers (Youth, Family, and Culture). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.
Similar terms Analogous labels
The term paedophobia has gained popular acceptance in Europe to describe the aforementioned "fear of youth".Childhood is changing, but "paedophobia" makes things worse Institute for Public Policy Research. 22 October 2006.Waiton, S. (2006) The Roots of Paedophobia. Online. Pediaphobia is the fear of infants and children. Hebephobia (from the Greek , hḗbē, "youth, puberty") has also been proposed. Similar terms include adultism, which is a predisposition towards adults that is biased against children and youth, and ageism, which describes discrimination against any person because of their age.
Juvenoia In the context of the 21st century, the neologism juvenoia has been used by publications such as The Christian Science Monitor to describe distaste and/or fear of the social culture associated with young people. The psychological distancing is prominently tied to advancements in technology and the exposure it facilitates to material that violates traditional values.
History The fear of youth, along with fear of street culture and the fear of crime, is said to have been in Western culture for "time immemorial". Machiavelli is said to have realized that a fear of youth is what kept the city of Florence from keeping a standing army. Ancient Greece and medieval Venice are also said to have had floundering public policy because of their fear of youth.
Early American Puritanism has been seen as reliant on a fear of youth, who were seen as embodying adventure and enlightenment, and therefore were viewed as susceptible to "decadent morality".Meily, C. (1911) Puritanism. C. H. Kerr & Company. p 118. During the Industrial Revolution, Western European and North American popular media was particularly driven to propagate the fear of children and youth in order to further the industrialization of schooling,Gatto, J.T., (2001) The Underground History of American Education. Oxford Village Press. and eventually to remove young people from the workplace when their labor became unnecessary due to mechanization and the influx of new labor.Savage, J. (2007) Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture. Viking Adult.
Post-World War II France was said to have been stricken by concern for mal de jeunesse when they created policies that reflected their fear of youth. "Send them to summer camps, place others in reformatories, the rest should have some fresh air, build some athletic fields..." were the intentions of youth policies in that era.Jobs, R.I. (2007) Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France After the Second World War. Stanford University Press. p 230 Following World War II the United States military identified the growing number of youth in the Deep South as a problematic scenario for national security. Analysts have suggested the upswing in the popular culture's fear of youth may be attributed to defense policies created in response to that threat.
"In the 1990s public fear of adolescents mounted", caused by the "increased youth access to handguns, the syndicatization of territorial youth gangs into illegal drug cartels, racist stereotyping of urban youth, academic and political pandering, media frenzy, and a spate of high-profile school shootings of students by their fellow students".Rosenheim, M.K., Zimring, F.E. and Tanenhaus, D.S. (2002) A Century of Juvenile Justice. University of Chicago Press. p 282. The Seattle Weekly specifically cited the fear of youth as the driving factor behind Seattle, Washington's now-defunct Teen Dance Ordinance.Parrish, G. (1999). "Fear of Youth" , Seattle Weekly. February 29, 1999. The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced the Anti-Social Behaviour Order in 1998, which has also been attributed directly to a fear of youth.Street-Porter, J. (2005) "The Politicians Fear of Youth Culture ", The Independent April 7, 2005.
Causes
Media, marketers, politicians, youth workers and researchers have been implicated in perpetuating the fear of youth.Fletcher, A. (2006) Washington Youth Voice Handbook . CommonAction. p 11. Retrieved 6/3/08. Since young people in developed countries are expected to stay out of the workforce, any role for them outside that of consumer is potentially threatening to adults.Sternheimer, K. (2006) Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions about Today's Youth. Rowman & Littlefield. p 140. Selling safety to parents and teachers has also been a driving force, as home security systems, cellphones, and computer surveillance usage is marketed to parents; and X-ray machines, metal detectors and closed-circuit television are increasingly sold to schools on the premise that young people are not to be trusted. These steps are in spite of the fact that experience consistently shows that monitoring youth does little to prevent violence or tragedy: the Columbine High School massacre occurred in a building with video surveillance and in-building police.Sternheimer, K. (2006) p 146.
The very creation of the terms youth, adolescence and teenager have all been attributed to the fear of youth.Savage, J. (2007) Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945. Chatto & Windus. As the western world became more industrialized, young people were increasingly driven from the workforce, including involuntary and voluntary positions, and into increasingly total institutions where they lost personal autonomy in favor of social control.Gatto, J.T. (2001) The Underground History of American Education. Oxford Village Press. p 306.Breeding, J. (2002) True nature and great misunderstandings: On How We Care for Our Children. Virtualbookworm Publishing. p 10. Government policies outside of schools have been implicated as well, as over the last forty years curfews, anti-loitering and anti-cruising laws, and other legislation apparently targeted at teenagers have taken hold across the country. Courts have increasingly ruled against youth rights, as well.Lauter, P. and Howe, P. (1971) The conspiracy of the young. Meridian. p 304.Epstein, R. (2007) The case against adolescence. Quill Driver Books. p 323. Before the 1940s "teenagers" were not listed in newspaper headlines, because as a group they did not exist. The impact of youth since World War II on western society has been immense, largely driven by marketing that proponents them as the "Other". In turn, youth are caused to behave in ways that appear different from adults. This has led to the phenomenon of youth, and in turn has created a perpetuated fear of them.Palladino, G. (1996) Teenagers: An American perspective. BasicBooks. p 247.
Effects The fear of youth is thought to exist throughout the entire Western world.Konopka, G. (1983) Social Group Work: A Helping Process. Prentice Hall. p 40. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg has attributed the generation gap and the "increasing segregation of youth from adults in American society" to "adult estrangement and fear of youth".Oldenburg, R. (1999) The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons. Marlowe & Company. p xx.
At least one major economist has proposed that the fear of youth can have grave effects on the economic health of nations.Gray, D. (1999) Negroponte: Europe's Net development held back by fear of youth, risk taking CNN. September 15, 1999. A growing number of researchers report that the fear of youth affects the health of democracy, reporting that the consequential vilification of youth has in the past, and continues to presently undermine public,Jones, P., Shoemaker, S. Chelton, M. (2001) Do It Right! Best Practices for Serving Young Adults in School and Public Libraries New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers. social, political,Lawrence Grossberg, (2005) Caught In The Crossfire: Kids, Politics, And America's Future (Cultural Politics & the Promise of Democracy) New York: Paradigm Publishers religious,Rice, W. (1998) Junior High Ministry: A Guide to Early Adolescence for Youth Workers. Zondervan Publishing. p 15. and culturalGiroux, H. (2004) Take Back High Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the post-Civil Rights Era New York: Palgrave participation among current and future generations.
As it affects young people themselves, ephebiphobia has been recognized as a barrier towards successful academic achievement,Butts, P.M. (2000) Beyond Ephebiphobia: Overcoming the Fear of Middle & High School Students; A Program for Public Librarians. Macatawa, MI: Macatawa Public Library. a barrier to successful social intervention programs, and as an indicator of the ineptitude of many adults to be successful parents.Coontz, S. (1999) The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms With America's Changing Families. New York: Basic Books.
Social discrimination "Today citizens as a whole as well as people who work with children live in fear of youth in our homes and schools and on our streets".Bender, S.J., Neutens, J., Skonie-Hardin, S., et al. (1997) Teaching health science: Elementary and middle school. Jones & Bartlett Publishers. p 7. While "society loves their attractive bodies, youthfulness and commercial firepower", we also "vilify adolescents as a noncontributing drain on the economy and our democracy". In the mainstream media, young people are most often portrayed as self-absorbed and apathetic, uninterested in the common good or in advancing social goals.Jee, K. and Sherman, R. (2006) "Youth as important civic actors: From the margins to the center" , National Civic Review. 95;1.