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Youth’s Social Participation as a Changing Participation Mechanism
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
• development of compatible and improved sense of identity
• improvement of loyalty and sense of belonging to the community
• acquisition of occupational and community roles with social context
• establishing strong network of relationships and social structure.
Youth Social Participation and Views of Youth About the Issue
Personal relationship between adults and young people is seen as an important indicator
of a healthy social structure. In transition to adulthood, young people need to connect
with many adults outside their families, and these relationships include experiences that
will be supported by adults on the path to gain social capital (Benson, 1997; National
Research Council Institute of Medicine, 2002). These experiences represent the process
of making decisions that can affect the lives of the individuals who have not yet entered
the adult life and their involvement of the social life.
Transferring experiences to youth should be seen as a valuable “investment” for the fu-
ture. This investment is not only a step in the path of individual development but also a
provider of values that play a major role in creating a healthy social structure and keep
the participation mechanism dynamic. Within the network of relationships young people
acquire the ability to adapt to shared social norms, acquire meaningful social roles and
lead within local communities (Putnam, 2000; Wynn, 1996; Zeldin, 2000). Contrary to this
situation, the disconnection and / or weakness of the connection between adults and
young people in the society cause negative beliefs, habits and behaviors.
Even if these negative effects do not occur in the best scenario, the disconnection in the
relationship can cause the youth to be distrustful of adults and to be abstracted from the
society (Camino, 2001). Therefore, this issue emerges as one of the major problems to be
solved in the study.
In order to present their views on social participation in this framework, ten questions
were asked about the nature of sociality, social participation and social participation th-
rough the help of semi-structured interview forms.
It was seen that during the interviews, the young people were deprived of the social
awareness necessary for this issue. In order to be able to participate in collective society,
first of all this consciousness should be formed and the importance of the unity of society
should be explained within this consciousness. So, first solution proposal is the transfer
of social awareness of adolescents to adulthood.
The definitions of social participation given by the participants were not on productivity,
contribution and a better future, but only on supporting and protest. In this context, the
second solution that we proposed is the reintegration of the primary meanings about
social participation in the minds of young people.
Lastly the negative perceptions of young people in their minds can be clearly seen in
their comments the influence of social participation. Abstinence and disbelief were clearly
seen in their comments what they would do when given the opportunity to contribute to-
