Monkey see, monkey do

In today's YOUTHink section in The Straits Times written by Yen Feng, the writer illustrates the life a typical Singaporean teenager and how they fall into a certain type of conformity. Below is the full article.

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He drinks Coke, eats McDonald's, wears Nike and uses Gatsby in his hair. His favourite band is Click Five. When he's not listening to music, he's surfing YouTube or watching a movie. He does not care for fancy cars but hopes for a good job that'll pay the bills. His greatest fear: To faill ill or to go war.

This is the portrait of the young Singaporean, drawn from a survey of 728 youth, aged 12 to 19. A report on the survey was released this month by Sulake, a Finnish company. The company is best known for creating Habbo Hotel, a virtual world populated by teens who chat, interact and play games online. Ninety per cent of its 9.4 million registered players are teens aged 13 to 18.

The Singapore survey was part of a larger effort by Sulake to track the spending habits, values and attitude of the young. Overall, 58, 486 teens from 31 countries across Europe, South America and Asia were interviewed in October and November last year.

The 2008 report also compared the values of Singapore youth against a global average. It found that youth here are 15 per cent more likely than foreign youth to be religious, and are 12 per cent less likely to support tough sentencing for criminals. They are also 13 per cent more likely to defend computer piracy, and 10 per cent less likely to be patriotic. These numbers support the results of a similar survey conducted by Sulake in 2006 among youths here.

In that report, Singaporean youth also ranked music, computers and movies top among their interests. It concluded that young people here were "more positive towards computer piracy", and "most religious" compared to youth in other countries.

Young Singaporeans interviewed by The Straits Times generally felt the survey results were on the mark - except for one. Steven Yang, 17, a Singapore Polytechnic engineering student and cell group leader at his church, said: "I don't drink Coke anymore. I prefer Coke Light."

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I see informal social influence and normative social influence in this homogeneous trend in young Singaporeans. Teenagers especially are easily influenced by their peers, those around the same age. They do what their friends do. They play the hottest computer games recommended by their peers, they download the latest songs their friends tell them, and they watch what others are watching.

Just because.

That is informal social influence. The idea that everyone else is doing it, so it's not wrong to follow what they think is right. Normative social influence, on the other hand, is taunted by the power of media mostly to make teenagers feel a need to belong.

This sense of keeness "forces" teenagers to possess and use branded materials. Teenagers who carry such possessions are envied by others and "encourage" their peers to obtain the exact items to be admired by their friends as well. As a result, it is not surprising that the statistics are consistent in the local context. The thoughts and actions of teenagers are shaped by one another.

Such conformities do not stop at the adolescence stage. It persist through adulthood too. As long there are others around us, there will always be confirmity. It's simply human nature.