Adults might think, “Why don’t you ever stick with anything long enough to really know if it’s for you?" Their peers sure aren’t saying that to them.

A Networked Culture

Obviously, this is a huge shift in young teen culture. The fact that most young teens (not all of them) have cell phones that instantly connect them with parents and friends is a whole new world of networked relationships. Text messages, MySpace, Facebook and other social networking tools have created a middle-school culture that exists in bits and bytes.

This is a fascinating shift. While relationships are as important as ever, these relationships are more dependant than they have ever been—or in all of history, for that matter—on the written word! Friendships are no longer primarily dependant on physical proximity, audible vocalization and listening. Friendships and social networks of middle schoolers are more dependant on networks played out over transmitted data.

As such, the idea of “who’s in your network?” question of identity and affinity is more than a company’s marketing tag. Young teens leverage online and text as the foundations and the buttresses of their relational cathedrals.

A Driven/Sedimentary Culture

This is an interesting, paradoxical tension in today’s middle-school culture. On one hand, the pressures on middle schoolers haven’t been as great in recent years as they are now. Today’s young teens are often driven in ways that are almost scary. Some of this driveness comes from their own choosing, but most of it is an external driving that comes from parents and schools.

Not all kids play sports, but for those who do involvement in sports is less and less about having fun and getting exercise and more about the future. What doors will this effort open in the future? Sports are seen in a utilitarian sense, as a means to get somewhere in life. In other words, the pursuit of the American dream (of financial freedom and career success) is more competitive and fleeting than ever. Sports are seen as one of many Lego pieces that will build an edge over others, increasing the likelihood of “success.”

Sports is only an example. We see this driven reality play out in the lives of countless non-sporting middle schoolers. The message seems to be: You must be the best at something if you hope to be successful in life.

This plays out academically, also. Not every kid is college-bound, but the pressure to succeed academically permeates much of teenage culture. We’re pretty sure there was no such thing as SAT-prep for middle schoolers when we were that age.

With all of this pressure and driveness, there’s an odd tension at play in their lives; and it’s this: They are more sedentary than ever. They don’t move as much. They watch more TV, sit at computers, sit in their rooms and text friends, sit in front of gaming systems for hours on end. The notion of a pick-up game of stickball in the street has an old-timey Norman Rockwell vibe these days.

So? As middle-school youth workers, we have to “exegete culture,” just like a good preacher exegetes a Bible passage. We’re called to minister to young teens in the midst of the real world in which they live. So these little ruminations are just my attempt to put into words some of my attempts to understand the world of the kids with whom I’m working.

Portions of this article are excerpted from the author’s upcoming book, “Middle School Ministry” (Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2009).