Loneliness, alienation, boredom can make kids go bad

By LARRY MITCHELL - Staff Writer - Enterprise Record

Look behind youth violence and often you'll find deep loneliness, said sociologist Wayne Wooden, author of the book "Renegade Kids, Suburban Outlaws."

Many teens who commit violent acts live in beautiful homes in lovely neighborhoods, but "they don't see anybody," he said. Both parents work, and the kids are "alienated, lonely and bored to tears."

Violence is "their cry for help," he said. "An act of violence is a culmination of many other issues going on in a person's life."

Wooden, a professor at Cal Poly Pomona, spoke to about 50 people Thursday at Chico State University, the campus from which he graduated in 1965.

His talk was part of a year-long series of events at Chico State called Building Bridges. The program, which started this month, aims to foster tolerance on campus and in the community.

Wooden sees hopeful signs. Some community planners are trying to "bring back the front porch, so that people will walk around and talk to each other," he said.

And since Columbine, successful programs have been developed to reduce tensions among groups of students, he said. The best programs "decrease the social distance between the cliques."

The idea is to "get the kids talking across the groups - to say, ‘This is what's going on. Let's talk about it.' "

A lot has been written about the impact of the Baby Boom generation, but another group that will soon become teen-agers is much larger, he said. Called "Generation Y," these children will start becoming teens in 2002.

Sociologists who are asked to predict what sort of "youth culture" Generation Y will produce might answer differently, Wooden suggested.

According to one school of thought, each succeeding generation of teens tries to outdo previous ones in behavior that disturbs many adults, he said.

But another theory says youthful fads and behaviors follow cycles triggered by conditions a generation of youngsters faces, he said. There seems to be a pattern, where a "calamity" affecting society triggers a swing toward left-wing politics and rebellious behavior. This is followed by a period of reaction - years when the affected group of people becomes much more conservative. Finally, there is a turn toward a state of moderation.

In his own time, he said, the assassination of President Kennedy was a calamity that shook young people's foundations. It was followed by the political dissent and rebelliousness of the '60s and '70s, and then by a time of conservatism - the Reagan and Bush period of the '80s. Now, America is in a milder period, like the 1950s, he said, noting that both major-party presidential candidates fit that "centrist" tone.

If history proceeds evenly - if America maintains stability and prosperity - Generation Y may move through its teen and college years fairly calmly, he said. But a disaster could trigger a new round of rebellion.

Wooden spoke about his student years at Chico State and his work as a sociologist. He's studied and written about the lives of prison inmates, rodeo cowboys, and gang members in Cuba.

"My idea of doing sociology is in the field - in the real world," he said.