Americanization: Influence on Danish Youth

Americanization is a word, which we have been using more often these few years than before, and there are many reasons for that, one could be that it has started to be seen all over the world and Denmark included. Americanization is when a countries population or some group of people starts living after the American culture instead of their own, or are just including some element from the American culture to their own culture, such as the way to text, the holidays and so on. Some of the holidays have already been included in our culture, such as Halloween and Valentines Day. The Americanisation’s influence is particularly seen at the younger generation such as the teenagers but also the children are influenced by the Americanisation, but where do all the influence come from?

Denmark is a country with a population of about 5-6 million people, and those people can probably tell several things, which we have from America, such as MC Donald’s, IPhones, TV-shows and so on. A lot of children and teenagers watch television and a lot of the influence have come from there. The reason is, that we in Denmark have a lot of TV programs, who are from America which we show in our TV stations, but with no changes beside including subtitles, and a lot of the younger generation (the children and the teenagers) sees how the American “culture” is from the programs and tries to act and include some of the elements to their own daily life. Past these few years children and teenagers have started to include some English words to their own writing, an example of that could be the way they have started to text and SMS. Instead of writing, “how are you?” they have now started to write “How RU?” they are now writing in English instead of Danish, and are now making the words shorter. The change of the way they spell and write, can have consequences, and these has been seen recently from the younger generation because they have begun to write their sentences in essays shorter, and they have also started to make a lot of abbreviations too. The Americanization is not only seen in the television but also in the way we dress and our idols. A lot of the younger generation wear clothes such as Levis and so on, that is from America, they do also have idols which is from Hollywood (America). America has an influence in a lot of countries, at a lot of different ways, by their TV programs, their stars, their companies (Apple), their history as a superpower and a lot of other things, and because of all those things America have got a big power and influence, but they has stated to get some competition from another country, China, not by the Chinese culture but at the market and their products, in the future China will get a power and maybe one day, it would be the Chinese culture who are influencing the other countries instead of the American one.