“Your ideas are outdated. You are old-fashioned. We are in the digital age.” These are all too common assertions of adolescents to older generations in our current societies. Of course, parents, teachers, counselors, guardians, pastors as well as youth leaders must come to terms with the fact that contemporary times have witnessed more dramatic changes than the old times. Both old and young people have encountered drastic sociological changes. The older generation must understand this condition in order to be able to meet the needs of the younger generation.
There have been attempts to tutor husbands and wives on family life responsibilities even before marriages take place. Marriage counselors also wade into family crises to proffer solutions the best possible ways. But the parenting of teenagers, like that of children generally is often taken for grated by parents and adults alike. The best we have has been an older generation that wields self defense as a weapon that only aggravates young people. Parents and adults must humble themselves enough to study and try to understand the impact of age growth and development as well as the pressures of contemporary advancements on the teenagers so as to succeed with guiding them.
This ignorance is compounded by the rapid changes orchestrated by rival technological advancement by world powers. Specific countries of the world peep into the curricular of other countries who have managed to push beyond the ordinary frontiers of science, engineering and technology. This rivalry boils down to changes in curricular of schools resulting from pressures mounted by parents on their young once to brace up for the virtual competition among the nations of the world. From rocket science to space science and now to computer science and information and information technology sciences. The pressure on young people is terrible heightened by the demands ignorant parents are placing on their children to be among the scientific and technical giants of contemporary times.
In addition to pressure on teenagers, there is an astronomical increase in the volume of body of knowledge to acquire. From scientific to geographical to historical to international relations and politics, teenagers have expanded frontiers of knowledge to grapple with. It has become such a tall order for the teenagers that causes them mental indigestion!
Money has assumed higher value and wages have increased in value unlike what obtained earlier than contemporary times. Even students who engage in part-time jobs have a good earning on them to squander. This affects teenagers in no small measure. Teenagers’ earning capacity and opportunities bring with them pressures that tug them in between opinions whether to study or to work, or even combine work with study.
Population explosion has brought with it changes in living conditions and patterns. There is equally sustained migration from rural to urban and suburban areas of living. Teenagers who migrate to urban cities lose the thrill of rural healthful conditions and enjoyable cultural settings. Security issues arise for families that move around searching for higher incomes and better living conditions. Families nowadays have shallow cultural roots often posing language challenges to migrating children with rapid changes in locations of sojourn.
Home lives suffer from the constant hustling and bustling invoked by the modern societies. Both parents may be engaged in work outside their homes leaving them little time for interaction with childre who equally spend much of their times outside their homes. It has become usual for parents and children to shuttle to and fro far distances to work or school on daily bases. There is hence very little time, if any, for family “togetherness”. Some crowded urban schools run dual sessions between morning and afternoon, daily, thus leaving student that close while parents are still at work roaming the streets and sometimes engaging in obnoxious extra-curricular activities like gambling.
Change in mobility has also affected teenagers in contemporary times. A good number is students are able to own and drive cars to schools. The high cost of maintenance of such cars as well as insurance pressure such student car owners to take up part-time jobs to augment their expenses on car maintenance. This results in keeping the young people away from home most often. Such student car-owners often run into gangs of other young people known and unknown to them in real terms riding with them.
Obviously, it is hard for parents and other adults to keep up with these rapidly changing times. It is also hard for them to know exactly when it is proper to apply strict rules and regulations or when to ease such strict rules. But parents and other adults must face up to these changes and take the challenge to look for newer and better ways to work with as well as guide these bewildered youths.
Comments
Post a Comment