Someone wrote an anonymous letter to the Shropshire Star recently and said the reason that underage drinking is such a problem is that teenagers have so little to look forward to in life, writes our Teen Blogger Rhian.
It also said that instead of treating them as second class citizens and calling them names, we should be doing more to integrate them into society.
I thought it was a good letter. It attracted both positive and adverse comments online and I certainly believe it is a subject which we should be debating.
A look back at the Britain of fifty years ago shows that there were youth clubs and organizations, works social clubs and the church, not to mention national service, strong families and the lack of commercialism and personal wealth, which all helped to influence young people to become good and social minded citizens.
Then look how different things are today. Commercialism has changed work patterns meaning people have less time to dedicate to social activities, let alone contend with all the Health and Safety, and insurance red tape.
There’s no national service, the decline of the manufacturing industry has closed works sporting and social clubs and the church has been widely chased from schools by multiculturalism.
Today, ‘heroes’ are mostly sports and music stars who earn more than the Prime Minister, covet materialism and often set a very poor example to young people.
Teenagers today are much more likely to be influenced by negative impressions than by positive ones and whilst there are a growing number of modern marital breakdowns, poor parenting alone is not the problem.
The children of lords, headmasters and police officers can be just as prone to falling into drug and alcohol abuse as can the children of a single mum.
It’s the nature of the selfish, fragmented and materialistic society we live in and I don’t like being pessimistic normally, but I despair that our politicians will ever have the courage to carry out the reforms and innovations that would be necessary to effect any changes for the better.
2 Comments
Plus everything now is about health and safety so you cant do anything without someone rushing over to stop you. Even the apple days are now in danger because of concerns about health and safety! I wonder in the youngsters today disregard the law because there are so many of them that you cant actually do much anyway so you might as well break the law anyway!
I think many youngsters have had a shame drilled into them from when they are young. They are allowed to publicly celebrate any culture as long as its not their own. Its as if people are ashamed to be w….. and b…. (I can’t cant even say those two words together!!!!!) So many kids (from that particular background anyway) are regarded as bad people anyway since everything from colonialism to war to global warming is blamed on them anyway so who cares what anyone thinks anyway?
Somewhere along the line the baby was thrown out withh the bathwater…
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I absolutely guarantee that it would make your life a whole lot better if you gave up right now the belief that that our politicians will ever have the courage to carry out the reforms and innovations that would be necessary to effect any changes for the better.
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