Parenting, Pesticides and Adolescent Psychological Adjustment: A Brief Report

Pesticides used to control insects, such as pyrethroids, are neurotoxicants, yet adolescent researchers often overlook their potential role in adolescent psychological adjustment. This brief report is guided by bioecological theory and considers the possible independent and interactive effects of environmental pyrethroid pesticide exposure for adolescent depressive symptoms. Self-reported adolescent appraisals of the parent–child relationship and depressive symptoms were obtained from a convenience sample of impoverished, predominantly Latino urban youth (n = 44). Exposure to environmental pyrethroids was obtained from wipe samples using a standardized protocol. Parent–adolescent conflict was higher in households with bifenthrin than those without, and adolescent depressive symptoms were elevated in homes where cypermethrin was detected. In addition, the presence of bifenthrin in the home attenuated the protective effects of parental involvement on adolescent depressive symptoms. The current results suggest that adolescent mental health researchers must consider the synergistic combinations of adolescents’ environments’ physical and social features. Given the endemic presence of pesticides and their neurotoxic function, pesticide exposure may demand specific attention.

Fostering Youth Sociopolitical Action: The Roles of Critical Reflection, Sociopolitical Efficacy, and Transformative Student Voice

Critical pedagogies often prioritize critical thinking and social awareness at the expense of preparing urban youth for social action. Though sociopolitical efficacy is argued to bridge critical reflection and social action, this relationship is undetermined. We argue that critical reflection and sociopolitical efficacy are independent predictors of sociopolitical action. We surveyed 158 high-school students and found that critical reflection and sociopolitical efficacy were positively related to sociopolitical action. Additionally, participation in transformative student voice (TSV) and classroom leadership opportunities positively influenced sociopolitical efficacy. We argue that educators and community organizers should promote leadership development and TSV activities to encourage youth sociopolitical efficacy and action.

Urbanization, the Youth, and Protest: A Cross-National Analysis

Demographic changes associated with the transformation from traditional to advanced economies are the basis for many of today’s theories of violent and non-violent protest formation. Both levels of urbanization and the size of the “youth bulge” have shown to be reliable measures for predicting protest events in a country. As these two processes result from modernization, it seems logical to hypothesize that the combined effect of the rise in urbanization and the increase in the youth population, urban youth bulge, would be a more relevant predictor for protests. Our tests on cross-national time-series data from 1950 to 2010 for 98 countries reveal that the combined effect of the two forces is an important predictor of anti-government protests. It may seem that the role of the urban youth bulge would appear to be an issue of the past as in more recent decades the proportion of the urban youth tends to decline in most countries of the world. However, this factor tends to be very relevant for many developing countries where both youth bulges have been growing for several decades and the general urban population is on the rise.

Key Identity Features of Urban Youth: The Case of Krasnodar Krai

This article is devoted to the study of urban youth local identity in a large and medium city. This identity is manifested in everyday interaction with the urban community, its socio-political institutions and visitors and affect the level of public and political participation, the presence of constructive civic practices. The aim is to identify and describe the main components and place of local youth identity in the system of social identities in large and medium-sized cities of Krasnodar krai (Krasnodar, Novorossiysk, Sochi and Armavir). The empirical basis of the study was made up of focus group transcripts conducted with various groups of young people (schoolchildren, students, and working youth). To verify the conceptual model a modified version of the Kuhn-McPartland method was used. On the basis of the conducted empirical research, the place of local identity in the system of urban youth social and territorial identities was revealed. The dependence between the size of a city and a cohort of young people and a local identity was shown. Such components of young people local identity as awareness of the city and its socio-political life, attitude towards representatives of other communities, a sense of their involvement in city life, the desire to stay and live in the city, the will to work for the benefit of the city, to participate in its socio-political life. The study made it possible to identify the valence of youth identity (negative, neutral, positive). The trajectories of young people spatial mobility that affect the degree of actualization and valence of local identity were also described. The dependence between the strength of youth local identity and participation in public and political activity for the benefit of the city and the region, participation in the activities of public and political organizations has been revealed.

Changes in the time of COVID-19: a quality improvement initiative to maintain services at a youth sexual health clinic

ObjectivesAdolescents and young adults (AYAs) face difficulties accessing sexual and reproductive health services. These difficulties were exacerbated for a variety of reasons by the COVID-19 pandemic. We document strategies and outcomes implemented at an urban youth sexual health clinic in Florida that allowed uninterrupted provision of services while protecting against spread of COVID-19.MethodsThe plan–do–study–act (PDSA) model was used to implement COVID-19 interventions designed to allow continued service delivery while protecting the health and safety of staff and patients. This method was applied to clinic operations, community referral systems and community outreach to assess and refine interventions within a quick-paced feedback loop.ResultsDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, changes made via PDSA cycles to clinical/navigation services, health communications and youth outreach/engagement effectively responded to AYA needs. Although overall numbers of youth served decreased, all youth contacting the clinic for services were able to be accommodated. Case finding rates for chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis and HIV were similar to pre-pandemic levels.ConclusionsQuality improvement PDSA initiatives at AYA sexual health clinics, particularly those for underserved youth, can be used to adapt service delivery when normal operating models are disrupted. The ability for youth sexual health clinics to adapt to a changing healthcare landscape will be crucial in ensuring that under-resourced youth are able to receive needed services and ambitious Ending the HIV Epidemic goals are achieved.

Volunteering in Russia: History and attitudes of the contemporary youth

The article considers the issue of the youth participation in volunteering as a form of social activity and at the same time the direction of the youth policy. The analysis of the empirical data follows a short review of the history of volunteering in the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods. The authors explain this movements contradictory nature by the social-political trends in the development of civil society and by the organizational influence of the authorities. The contemporary Russian volunteering is presented on the basis of the online survey data on two cohorts of the adult urban youth - 18-24 and 25-34 years old (N=705 and N=714). The samples represent the social-demographic and geographical features of two groups. The mathematical methods of analysis allowed to identify the scale of participation and the types of volunteer activities for both cohorts, social attitudes and real involvement in the volunteer movement, and an expected gap between them, which can be explained by a complex motivation for volunteering. We identified the following motivation models: the promotion model implies mercantile and career motives, the capital model - the growth of human and social capital, and the value model - beliefs and expectations of public recognition and respect. The second model is especially relevant for the younger cohort. The survey revealed the opinions of the youth as a social group about the factors that hinder participation in volunteering. Young people were critical of their group, and named social indifference as the first problem, then comes the lack of time, insufficient encouragement and public recognition. The research proved that the potential of volunteering is much higher than the youths participation in it. The development of this activity together with overcoming its bureaucratization can become an incentive for reducing the youths social apathy.

The Liminal Leisure of Disadvantaged Young People in the UK Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The global COVID-19 pandemic has created, exposed and exacerbated inequalities and differences around access to—and experiences and representations of—the physical and virtual spaces of young people’s leisure cultures and practices. Drawing on longstanding themes of continuity and change in youth leisure scholarship, this paper contributes to our understandings of ‘liminal leisure’ as experienced by some young people in the UK before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do this, we place primary pre-pandemic research on disadvantaged young people’s leisure spaces and practices in dialogue with secondary data on lockdown and post-lockdown leisure. Subsequently, we argue that existing and emergent forms of youth ‘leisure liminality’ are best understood through the lens of intersectional disadvantages. Specifically, pre-existing intersectional disadvantages are being compounded by disruptions to youth leisure, as the upheaval of the pandemic continues to be differentially experienced. To understand this process, we deploy the concept of liminal leisure spaces used by Swaine et al Leisure Studies 37:4,440-451, (2018) in their ethnography of Khat-chewing among young British Somali urban youth ‘on the margins’. Similarly, our focus is on young people’s management and negotiation of substance use ‘risks’, harms and pleasures when in ‘private-in-public’ leisure spaces. We note that the UK government responses to the pandemic, such as national and regional lockdowns, meant that the leisure liminality of disadvantaged young people pre-pandemic became the experience of young people more generally, with for example the closure of night-time economies (NTEs). Yet despite some temporary convergence, intersectionally disadvantaged young people ‘at leisure’ have been subject to a particularly problematic confluence of criminalisation, exclusion and stigmatisation in COVID-19 times, which will most likely continue into the post-pandemic future.

Victimization experience does matter: Testing the effect of different types of victimization on fear of crime among adolescents

The aim of the present study is to thoroughly examine the relationship between adolescent fear of crime and a wide variety of offences which commonly affect children. The analysed data comes from the Urban Youth Victimization Survey conducted among 9th grade students in the Czech Republic. The results unequivocally demonstrate that victimization experience, when measured properly, substantially affects adolescent fear of crime. All analysed types of victimization are associated with fear of crime, though the strongest effects were found for cyber-victimization and bullying rather than conventional violent and property crimes. Furthermore, a poly-victimization scale was revealed to be a highly effective tool for capturing overall victimization by using a single summary measure.

Understanding the urban life pattern of young people from delivery data

Young people are the backbone of urban development and an important pillar of social stability. The growth of young floating population in China has given rise to urban land expansion. Understanding the urban life pattern of urban life for young people benefits rational and effective land expansion. In this article, we introduce food delivery data into the process of exploring behavioral patterns of urban youth in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. The dynamic time warping (DTW) distance-based k-medoids method is applied to explore the main activity areas and activity patterns of the urban youth population. The results indicate that many young people from Hangzhou work in Internet companies, and most of work hotspot areas are observed in high-tech parks. The existence of overtime work is proved. Combined with the housing price data in Hangzhou, it is found that young people consider both housing prices and education environment when choosing where to live. The analysis combined with road network data reflects the planning characteristics of the city, also looks into differences between the actual city functions and the planning map. The proposed methods can provide useful guidance and suggestions for city planning.