Pop Idol Worship

LIBERAL STUDIES


Title:
The causes and impacts of pop idol-worship among teenagers in Hong Kong


  1. Introduction
Nowadays pop idol-worship has become increasing prevalent in Hong Kong and it nearly turns to be part of the life for many teenagers. I have found that there are many newspaper articles that are related to pop idol-worship and some of the cases shown in the newspaper have even turned to extremeness. Referring to a survey conducted by the City University of Hong Kong in 2007, the top ten most popular idols in Hong Kong, eight of them are pop idols. Also, a survey from the Centre for Youth Research and Practice shows that 56% of teenagers have experienced pop idol worship. The figure has come to my awareness that the phenomenon of pop idol worship has turned to commonness.
Self-identity and peer influence are considered to be important in this enquiry. According to Erik Erikson, teenagers are in adolescence. They will have the struggle to find a balance between developing a unique, individual identity while still being accepted and "fitting in." Thus, youth must determine who they want to be, and how they want to be perceived by others. Therefore, they tend to seek for role-models that they can follow after and give them the “uniqueness” which make them feel different from the others. Also, individuals in this stage become more susceptible to peer pressure, due to the shift in emotional dependence from parents to peers. That’s why peer can easily influence the predilections of teenagers.
Some teenagers would also think of their idols even at school since the behavior of worshipping idols could not stop at a point but is a successive behavior instead. Also, parents may not support them to worship the pop idols. In this way, their academic performance and family relationship would be affected. Therefore, I would like to find out the causes and impacts behind this problem in depth that still has a great chance to deteriorate in the future....