Youth problems (3)

Youth is a beautiful time. The faces of young people, the young souls and young love – everything is beautiful. We can describe all the amazing attractions of this only period in life, which is usually remembered during all lifetime, but many youngsters say that their life is followed by numerous troubles.

Really, there is no life without problems, but we can’t make little account of youth problems.

Unfortunately, most of the problems are connected with family relations. Moms and dads say that teenage rebels just growing up normal. Their parents said it, just as parents say it today. “Damn kids these days”.

This phrase is the fad of the adults of all times.

To my mind, each new generation of kids receives negative reviews because of two entwined social dynamics: surliness and rebellion in youth; fear and loathing by parents, whose youth has passed them by. It’s called the generation gap, which pits the impertinence of youth against the attitudes of people over 30, who forget what a pain in the butt they were as kids.

If you look at history, youth has always looked bad from the adult perspective. Sometimes it’s because they don’t remember all the stupid, dangerous things they did as kids. Adults always tend to glorify their own past. It explains the reason why they often look down their noses at the next generations.

Basically, what these critical adults are saying is, “why can’t these kids be like us.” It is amazing, but every generation goes through this. I’m deeply convinced tat if some parents are ready to write off the next generation, they should remember how they behaved as young teenagers and recognize rebellion as a sign of growing up. But we should admit, there are some dangerous temptations of the youth and only parents can preserve their children from such social evil as alcohol, smoking and even early sex and killing oneself by using drugs.

For

example, the former Soviet Union admitted that it had over 200,000 drug addicts. Because of this the government opened several special hospitals for these addicts. There’s a big anti-drugs campaign in the country’s schools too. Usually drugs come from several places including Western Europe and Afghanistan. Also, some addicts use glue or steal medical drugs from hospitals.

This problem is closely connected with gang-violence. As well as gangs of punks, rockers and hippies, there are ultra conservative gangs, too. They want to stop “the dangerous” influence of teenage culture in our country.

But actually they follow the ideas of nationalism and even fascism.

One more acute problem for many young people is smoking. Millions of teenagers know it’s bad for them, but they still do it. I think it is rather easy to withstand the influence of those who smoke. We should be simply strong enough to say “no”. Many people offer their way out.

Some of them say that teenagers should not be let to the discos because of the danger of drugs; others say that young people should be given more money and more freedom, because everything that is forbidden astonishes. But in my opinion, one thing is clear: after decades of silence in the Soviet Union we face a lot of urgent problem, which should be solved as soon as it is possible.