Friendship

In this chapter, White mentioned the various things about friendships in America and in Japan. I was interested in two points about Delinquency. First, one of the delinquencies was using alcohol. According to the report in this book, most of these young people who were habitual drinkers came from middle-class homes, but they were alone at home for many hours of the week. In other words these young people had somewhat education, but they tended to turn to delinquency, because they lack of the control by their parents and they spent a lot of time with their friends then they were influenced by the peer pressures. I agree with this opinion. I’m sure that people in adolescence need to spend their time to some extent with their family, because young people can’t do self-control. Parents have to lead to the young people. In my case, my parent was such a strict and they tried to lead me, so I escaped becoming the habitual drinkers and avoided losing control of myself. Second, there was prostitution as one of the delinquency. White insisted the reason why some schoolgirls did prostitution was to be eager for a thrill and pocket money. I disagreed with this mention. In Japan, sometime we can see these school-girls. In fact, in my high school two girls did it. They seemed not to be in trouble with money and they were not the character that they were eager for a thrill. These two girls were quiet and reserved. However they seemed to lack of something. Maybe I’m sure it was the attention of family. They were ignored by their family, so they must have been lonely and they tried to get attention from their parents with doing prostitution.
I believe that there is strong connection between the delinquency and the relationship of family. Even though children hate that family’s intervention, family needs to pay attention about friendships of their children. At least, I appreciate now that my parent did it.

Material Child
Market Research and Trendsetting
This Chapter 5“Materialism” is main theme in this book. There are a lot of aspects of materialism. Especially I would like to focus on the topic of the way of marketing. White mentioned about marketing industry, Hakuhodo and Dynax, tried to get close to teens themselves. I was interested in the methods that these industries used in order to getting information. Dynax gave telephone party to teens. In this telephone party teens could share their personal problems and issues. Teen calls Dynax and then they record their questions. Other young people call Dynax, they listen to these questions and they give some comments to these questions. Dynax checked these questions and answers, and then they could understand what young people want. I was surprised to find the way that Dynax did. This book was written about 10 years ago, so this method was allowed. However now the situation has changed, internet and cellular phone have become popular. Almost of all young people have each cellular phone and they can use the internet. Marketing industry takes advantage of this situation, they try to get close to young people more and more. For example, there is a fashion show named “TOKYO GIRLS COLLECTION”. In this fashion show audience can buy the item on the spot through the internet of cellar phone which the fashion model in front of the audience is wearing. The data that what kind of clothes audiences buy is totaled, and then marketing industry refer to this data and make the decision about what young people want. Marketing industry give young people feedback about what people want. Thus the trend is formed. I’m sure that materialism is made by both of young people and marketing industry.