Teenagers...what images and words come to mind? If you are like most People, the first houghts will be negative:wild,irresponsible,immoral,violent. For generations People have complained about young people, but today the intensity of concern and the level of fear seems deeper than the “when I was young” lessons of our grandparents.
Much of the public’s critique of teens revolves around parents’ perceived inability to be involved with their children and teach them the right values. It is not just the elderly who question the lack of values they see in our youth; parents of teenagers share the same concerns.
The Current Environment for Youth
As we begin a new millennium, the mood of the nation is optimistic. Most public opinion polls show high consumer confidence, strong satisfaction with the country, and a belief that the nation is on the right track. At the same time, people are very worried about the nation’s youth. “Education” has been consistently ranked as the top issue facing the nation, and the few polls that ask about children and families show a high level of concern for them.
Adults have questioned teens’ values for generations and there is certainly a wealth of public opinion data that looks like generational griping. For example, in 1989, adults were asked to compare the youth of the 1980s to teenagers twenty years prior, and adults responded that “today’s youth” were much more selfish, materialistic, and reckless than a generation before.
A decade earlier, in 1976, only 24% said they had a great deal of confidence in teens “facing up to their own and the country’s problems in a responsible way.”5 Going back one more decade, in 1965, when asked the open-end question “in what ways would you say teenagers are different today than when you were a teenager” overwhelmingly the top response (41%) was “more irresponsible, too wild today, , more independent, less restricted, freer in actions.”6
So its easy to understand that it is not the teen agers that are to be blamed but the generation gap that effects people on seeing the negatives of today’s teens.
Even if I agree with most of the adults , then they should alswo see that today condition way difficult and teens are really trying hard to co[pe up with the expectatios led out for them