Young people’s groups in churches and Agism

[Inthepews]

I think something happened over the past 15 or so years. Well I got 15 years older sure, but I noticed a group of 20 something’s have gotten super judgmental based upon their age. The “YPG” kids will only associate with others their age group. And it is a very narrow age group, an example, only socializing with 21-24 year olds. Or they only associate with 26-29 year olds and everyone else is too young or too old to matter.

It never used to be this way, or at least not so extreme. It is Agism. Or the young people behave as if a person who is 33 is “too old”. Things like that.

I even see it at bars in my city. There will be public bars that are packed with kids that are in very narrow age range as an example: there will be 150 people in a bar and they are all in the age range of 23-26. A weirdly narrow age range and it is not an invite only party because my city has people of all ages and every nationality.

What I’m saying is it was not always this way.

It does go the opposite direction too. Like in Florida they have age segregated neighborhoods called 55+ only for residents. Which is blatantly discriminatory but in Florida nobody thinks so for some weird reason, it’s written in real estate laws so it’s okay. But it’s not okay to tell the 55+ crowd that age based housing laws are discriminatory. It just flies over their heads.

The point on this thread is just to point it all out, and to highlight that something happened with this in the past 15+ years. When I was a 20 something we never really did that. It was considered immature to not associate with people of all ages, but today the 20 something’s behave as if someone who is 37 is “too old” and doesn’t belong or even that they wronged their 20 something’s cliques. It’s a bit of weird injustice.

Also I noticed how 20 something’s have jumped the line within the employment ladder. These 20 something’s jump out of college and their first jobs they expect to have a grown up job that is a Manager or they expect to be supervising workers when it’s their first job. It was only 15+ years ago people generally had to do lower level jobs and manual labor was generally done by males. Today these kids do not start doing any grunt work, they just go through college (which is the easiest and most privileged cake walk in the world) and then their first job they are the Managers. Without ever earning the experience.

Something’s happened that these 20 something’s have jumped the line and in the process they behave like they’re oppressed by older people. And it is not that I am 15 years older observing this as some old married man with kids now. It’s that something structurally changed in the social contracts.

Anyways. Another point I want to make is that YPG’s (young people groups) are a toxic element in churches. It self segregates people in bad ways. YPG’s are an abusive young persons dream and the abusive types always want to become a leader of the YPG cliques to yield social power over others. So they can select or reject people and be these decision makers about who’s in and who’s out. It’s just stupid to keep having YPG’s because it divides church and creates more immaturity than necessary.

My suggestion is that church’s stop YPG’s from forming all together.

[Doom]

What is YPG?

[Tired]

I think he identified it as Young People's Group. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Keep teaching, keep improving people's awareness.