The deviant behavior of adolescents can rightly be called one of the major problems of the twenty-first century. The number of children aged from 13 to 18 exhibiting abnormal behavioral patterns at different periods of their lives has remained high over the years. It may be explained by the peculiarities of the adolescent age period. In consideration of the ongoing separation processes from parental family, teenagers seek to establish their behavior models. Conversely, the adolescent psyche remains immature, ready to adopt behavioral patterns of peer groups or any other associations which deem authoritative enough to assume their role models.
Moreover, it usually takes a long time for social norms to be established. Taking into consideration the usual generation gap between adolescents and adults, it is highly likely that, to adolescents, conventional models may seem outdated. This phenomenon may be at the core of adolescents’ unwillingness to adhere to traditional norms. Deviant behavior of adolescents can take many forms, including anti-social behavior, accentuation, and more severe crimes such as shoplifting, mugging, theft, drug use, aggravated assault, or even mass shooting. Some of these deviations can be easily corrected, while others require serious work with specialists. In all cases, prevention may be the best alternative since adolescents are young and may easily be influenced for good or bad.
Anti-social behavior usually manifests itself through unwillingness to adhere to conventional norms, disruption of social institutions, and the desire to satisfy one’s own immediate needs disregarding the wishes of others. Accentuation is a minor deviation from expected behavior. One trait of character, primarily negative, prevails in the individual’s communication with others. For example, one may repeatedly use insulting or abusive language communicating with teachers or parents. If ignored over a long period, such behavior becomes a habit, which, together with some other traits of character, may one day lead to more serious trouble.
Adolescents most often start taking drugs when they get under the influence of gangs or drug dealers. These people masterfully play on the need of this age group to be recognized and exploit adolescents’ desire to be different in their aims. The adolescent psyche is immature, and they are as likely as not to start using drugs out of rebellion against social norms. The promise of new sensations also plays a part here. Sometimes teenagers start taking drugs under the influence of peers since the need for recognition at this age outweighs the notions of good and evil.
Adolescents who practice theft are usually children from low-income families. They are not ready to wait for years until they can honestly earn a decent living and want to satisfy their needs here and now. When children are left to themselves practically all day, inadequate parental supervision may also be a factor. The criminal past of one or both parents adds to this problem, for children may idealize their mother or father and see these crimes as exciting adventures.
Shooting, usually at school, and any other violent activities are generally a result of deep psychological problems or mental illnesses which were not recognized in time. Many of these teenagers had been victims of bullying in school, which made them want to take revenge on their classmates and teachers. Often, they have a list of grievances caused by other people on whom they want to take revenge. Search for notoriety is another reason for violent behavior at schools.
All the above-mentioned factors play a role in shaping abnormal behavioral patterns. Potter examined in depth the reasons for criminal activities among adolescents and young people. According to his findings, some risk factors increase the odds that teenagers will commit crimes. These factors include peer group pressure, inadequate parental supervision, low family income, and troubled home life. Among other aspects, poor educational attainment, truancy, school disorganization, and school exclusion (Potter 28-43). Thus, it is clear that education plays a vital role in pinning down models of behavior of adolescents.
Many people argue that schools should give knowledge and help develop critical thinking, essential for determining one’s place in society. It has long been established that people who think critically are less likely to fall under the influence of gangs or drug dealers than those who do not. Also, they are more likely to choose professions and lifestyles according to their interests. While contented people usually contribute to the prosperity of society, dissatisfaction and disappointment often lead to deviance and crimes.
Over time, several approaches have been adopted to address the problem of adolescent deviant behavior. The use of disciplinary social control, which includes surveillance, normalization, and examination, developed by Foucault, remains one of the most common methods of dealing with the problem (Foucault 60). Foucault understood surveillance as a means through which government could see activities of citizens and normalization as a process of establishing certain norms and ranking an individual performance depending on the completion of these norms. The examination was seen as the combination of normalization and surveillance, through which government could see an individual’s performance. Foucault argued that the aim of social control was to make citizens obedient. (Foucault 60-68). The method described presupposes correction through surveillance and punishment.
Two more methods of social control include the use of sanctions, positive or negative, to modify an individual’s behavior, and the new penology strategies of social control, developed by Feely and Simon. New penology strategies suggest dividing people with deviant behavior into groups according to the levels of threat they may pose for society. Offenders may be put under surveillance or on probation depending on the level of risk they represent (Feely and Simon 181-190). These methods rely on surveillance and reward or punishment as well.
While the above-described methods may be effective for some groups, in others, the repetition of abnormal patterns can be seen over a long period, notwithstanding the measures taken by the government or society. The problem with the above-mentioned approaches is that they do not consider adolescents’ desire to be different and the innate protest of this age period. Instead of bringing adolescents to conformity norms at all costs and suppressing their protest moods, the use of sociological imagination allows them to work on these feelings and benefit from them.
The notion of sociological imagination was first introduced by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in his book The Sociological Imagination. Mills defines it as “a quality of mind that will help [people] to use the information and to develop a reason to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves” (8). The notion is now used to denote the interaction of an individual and society at all levels; addressing criminal activities of individuals and their deviant behavior within a community is not an exception.
Applying sociological imagination to adolescent deviance has many benefits compared to disciplinary social control or sanctions. The notion of sociological imagination presupposes that not only society shapes a person’s norms or values, but the process is reciprocal (Mills 12). Thus, an individual can transfer their values to society, the conventional norms under this influence may begin to change. Naturally, it usually takes more than one individual’s wish to change these norms, but they are not stable. Social norms change at all times. Confronted with this approach, adolescents tend to think of their place within society not only in the context of conformity to the existing behavior models, for the violation of which there will be a punishment. Teenagers think more of contributing to ongoing societal changes or goals by changing these or those norms.
In his article Learning Cultures, Reflexivity and Creative Subversion, James describes an experiment he conducted in two groups of undergraduate students. Students of the first group studied sociological imagination, and the students of the second did not. After a month of studies, a series of tests was conducted to discover whether students have a high level of critical thinking. The results showed that the first group students had a much higher level of critical thinking and social awareness than students of the second group (Matthews et al. 39-55). Thus, learning sociological imagination helped the students take things with a grain of doubt which is a sound basis for developing their own opinions on different subjects. Besides, the odds are that if these young people decide to contribute to changing conventional norms, they will do it through consensus and compromise rather than falsehood and violence.
This paper argues that teaching sociological imagination to adolescents would improve their behavioral patterns and prevent many cases of drug abuse, violence, robbery, illegal purchases, and other crimes. Since critical thinking presupposes an understanding of social norms and individual’s place within society, it would likewise enhance adolescents’ desire to work on changing models of social interaction they dislike instead of drastically subverting them.
The basis for this hypothesis lies in the fact that sociological imagination helps to build upon inherent expectations of this age group by allowing them to be different. It meets their demand for maturity by recognizing them as full-fledged participants of the social interaction system. By including teenagers in changing social environment and allowing them to ponder on changes that may later be adopted by society, sociological imagination addresses adolescents’ need for recognition, which otherwise may be fulfilled by criminal activities.
The research methods used in this work for testing the given hypothesis are comparative methods and case studies combined with quantitative analysis. The number of adolescents exhibiting deviant behavior before and after their studies of sociological imagination will be measured and compared in different areas. Thus, it will be seen how behavioral patterns change due to developing critical thinking and realizing one’s position in society. I shall also try to trace the connection between studying sociological imagination by adolescents and improving their behavior patterns by analyzing statistics and cases available for my research.
Gathering statistical data on a number of adolescents familiar with the sociological imagination before they developed abnormal behavior patterns will also benefit my research. Comparing this number against the number of teenagers not acquainted with sociological imagination, who later developed abnormal behavior patterns, will help see whether teaching this discipline may be beneficial for preventing deviation among adolescents.
Works Cited
Feeley, Malcolm M., and Jonathan Simon. “The New Penology: Notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and its implications.” Crime, Inequality and the State. Routledge, 2020, pp. 181-190.
Foucault, Michel. Power: the essential works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Penguin UK, 2019.
James, David. “Learning Cultures, Reflexivity, and Creative Subversion” Teaching with Sociological Imagination in Higher and Further Education: Contexts, Pedagogies, Reflections, edited by Matthews et al., Springer, 2018.
Mills, C. Wright. The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Potter, Gary. “Organized crime and the sociological imagination.” Explorations in critical criminology in honor of William J. Chambliss. Brill, 2019, pp. 28-43.