Teens in the 50's are a Thing of the Past.

Remember those filthy old computers I hauled out of the Jenny Craig? Well they're still in my car. Except one which I brought up into my apartment after scooping out the dander and human fur from inside. And what a diamond in the rough! Squirreled away in a safe place deep within the bowels of Windows 98 (first edition) was a folder chock full of personal MS Works documents.

Below is my favorite, in its entirety: a fascinating and meticulously-credited research paper entitled "Research Paper" that pulls no punches as it lays bare the differences between parents and teens of today and those of the mid-century.

In the 1950’s music consisted of mostly jazz, blues, and rock and roll. We still listen to those styles of music in 2005, but along with new music we have expanded our choices of style and have also expanded to new ways of listening to it. Being a teenager of 2005 is superior to being a teenager in the 1950’s because of the premium technology of CD players and IPods which have replaced the record player. The availability of these machines, where you can listen to the music, and what you can listen to has greatly improved since the 1950’s.

Records were 10-12 inches and easily breakable.(Gale, “45 RPM”) They sold for 4 to 5 dollars per record. CD’s are roughly 15 to 20 dollars each, but contain larger amounts of music and are a better quality. These CDs are much more compact than records are. The phonograph was a large piece of equipment as well. Because CD players can be quite small, it isn’t abnormal to seem them being stocked in local stores whereas a phonograph takes up a sizeable amount of room and was sold in very few stores. The internet has also helped the availability of CD players. In the 1950’s the internet was a thing of the future so phonographs couldn’t be advertised like CD players are now.

In the 1950’s listening to music was a family affair. The phonograph was usually like a piece of furniture. It was kept in the drawer of a cabinet in the living room inbetween the t.v. and a coffee table.(Pelham) The parents had control of when you were able to listen to music. Teenagers rarely had their own phonograph. The parents owned it and decided when you could or couldn’t play it. Their children wouldn’t be able to listen to music in their own bedrooms like teenagers today do. It is common for teens to own a stereo, walkman or even an ipod of their very own. This would allow teens to listen to music wherever they felt like, but teens of the 50’s were confined to listening to their parents music in their own living room.

Parents are more lenient with what they allow their children to listen to now than in the 50’s. As long as the parents of today don’t have to listen to what their children are listening to they don’t mind it. In the 50’s, since the phonograph was generally in the living room, parents had control over what their children listened to. If they didn’t like what they were listening to they just had to turn it off. If teens wanted to listen to something deemed inappropriate by their parents they wouldn’t be able to listen to it in the 50’s. The teens of 2005 have a better chance of listening to what they want to listen to with the technology provided. With headphones in their walkmans and ipods their parents would never know what they are listening to.

With the advantages of technology on the side of 2005’s teens it would be much better to be a teen now than one in the 50’s. CD players and CDs are much more available to teens now than in the 50’s. Today teens also have a larger variety of musical styles that they can listen to and with the invention of walkman they can listen to it wherever they’d like. Teens in the 50’s are a thing of the past.