What is happening to young people in British Society?

dwww.lbc.co.uk...

I have just seen the above article on breaking news. Police are looking for a young black girl who hit an 87 year old lady on a London bus yesterday. Some have asked if this is seen as racism because it is a black girl hitting a white lady, they have said if it was the other way round it would be called out as that. However, this isn't why I have posted this comment I am more interested in talking about young people in general and why it is things like this are becoming more common place in today's society.

I am nearly 50 and in my era this would have been headline news. I'm at the age where I am turning into my Mother and talking about "the youth of today". My mum is 88 and says this is just because I am getting older and it has always been like that when talking about the next generation. To some extent I agree but then when I see things like this I don't.

When I was a teenager I wasn't the best, I was quite rebellious with my mum and went slightly off the rails (I like to call them the lost years). However, the damage I did was to myself and to my own self-esteem rather than affecting anyone else (other than my mum). I was bought up to give a seat up to an adult on public transport (I still make my child do this). I was bought up to say please, thank you and pardon, just basic manners and I would never have spoken to an adult in a cheeky manner or been disrespectful. I would have been too frightened to in case it got back to my mum.

Maybe that's the reason why young people feel they can act like this girl. When I was younger everyone knew who I was in my area. All the children played out and so parents knew who other children's parents were etc. These days my child can't play out where I live because of traffic and although I know children live in other households close by I don't know them and I certainly don't their parents. I don't think that fully explains everything though. Maybe its because parents these days are too ready to jump to the defence of their children if anything negative is said. Maybe its because parents themselves don't have basic manners, swear in front of children, maybe that's the problem. Or is it because schools are no longer able to give out proper punishments to children?

Is it all to do with the sickness in our society on a greater scale. I was witness to an horrific incident last year in my local park. It was a beautiful summers day and the park was packed. My little boy was playing on his scooter and from nowhere a lad fell to the floor and I realised that about 15 youths were jumping on him. I started to scream for them to stop and looked around at all the people (men) in the park just watching on but doing nothing. Then I saw the youths had a claw hammer, knives and a machete and I grabbed my child away. How the boy didn't die I will never know, but what frightened me more than anything was the fact that people just sat and did nothing and for all intents and purposes they could have been witnessing a murder. In fact the Police said to me after he had fractured his skull and the doctors had said if it had been another mm he would have died.

Why have we become like this as a society and what can we do to change this. If we don't start to look at the problems and realise where we are going wrong with our children by the time my son is 50 this act on the bus could become full blown murder with everyone watching on.

What do people think is causing this total disrespect in our young people and is it the same in every Country or just here in Britain?

maybe i am oldschool, but i believe it has a lot to do with not being able to hit your kids.
Try to lay a hand on them, and if they tell that to someone you will end up in jail.
Granted i am not saying to take your day out on your kids, but "back in my days" parents would smack their kids. i got a few slaps/spanks from time to time, when deserved, like most of us probably did.
Now kids are treated like some sort of endangered animal, and they grow up with the arrogance of thinking they can just do whatever they want because of this constant state of protection they have.
We act like kids (and for some reason, 20 somethings are also seen as kids in some places) are never really responsible for their actions, like they are incapable of thinking things through.
Bullpoop.
Lots of them are jerks because they know there are no consequences.
A smack across the head would fix that in no time

At a guess we have a generation growing up with an altered reality through social media, the internet and video gaming. Back in my day, I was surrounded by real one on one relationships and ghe thought of talking to a random person across the other side of the world was not a thing id even contemplate d.

The status driven social media reeks of pushing a persona out there to be more popular, with little grounding in terms of the people around you seeing the company or activities you take part in.

Ive lost count of the number of kids who have unrestricted internet access but parents seem to be oblivious to what gets fed to youngsters through it.

We are becoming more desensitised to violence, people feel dissconnected from once solid communities and fear stes in, in taking action.

I don't smack my child but wherever he goes, with or without me, I am told his manners are impeccable and what a lovely kind nature he has. However, in saying that he is only 8 years old and I haven't as yet had to endure the teenage years. I don't smack him because if I was to smack him it would mean I had completely lost control. I've never really got to the point of wanting to (except on maybe two occasions). I am fortunate that I seem to have perfected the voice and the look and he knows when enough is enough.

In saying that I am not one of those people who is against people smacking their children. I was smacked by my mum and I haven't grown up damaged in any way. What I would say though is I was frightened of my mum (I still am!) and it is more than just thinking I am going to get smacked. Obviously at nearly 50 she isn't going to be smacking me but I still have that fear of her which is hard to explain. A lot of my friends say the same about their parents. Its a fear of her disapproval. Maybe kids these days don't have that fear of disapproval. Maybe we aren't disapproving enough of their behaviour. I have noticed more and more parents don't seem altogether bothered about basic manners. Like ask their children to give their seat up to an adult. It very rarely happens these days. Most parents seem to be of the view well I have paid for the seat for my children so they have a right to it. Maybe its just because we have become too much about ourselves and extremely selfish and we are passing that to our children.

Also, you mentioned young people in their twenties are still treated as children. It has gone too far. At 16 because I didn't want to go to college I was forced to find work within two weeks of leaving school. Whereas, a neighbour close to me has a son who is 22. He still hasn't found work and she gives him £100 a week spending money. She works long hours every day and her privets and garden are overgrown. I have commented to my mum if that was my son I would expect him at the very least to sort out things like that in the home if he genuinely couldn't find work. My neighbour used to have her mum coming every day when he was at college, to get him out of bed and to drive him to college which is about 20 minute walk!!! He is very immature for his age and as I said to my mum she isn't doing him any favours by not forcing him to look for work every day. Soon he will get to an age where he won't be able to find work because he will be too old and have no experience.

I do believe with schools as well it has gone overboard. At my child's school there is no competition on sports day. Everyone wins. Its just ridiculous. There is competition throughout life, even with things like going for a job interview. Its not realistic to tell children they are the best at everything. When I was at school there was still corporal punishment and I do believe it made a difference. There were still the really rebellious kids but nothing like there is now.reply to: IShotMyLastMuse

a reply to: anxiouswens

Used to have the Church's iron rod of discipline and morality. People, by choice, have abandoned this and other ways of life have influenced British society as its people have become acquainted.

Also, people are very spoilt nowadays. The media knows that violence sells big time so aggressive amoral games, movies, etc are thrust upon the young who gobble them up like zombies to supper time. The status quo does not want people to be too gentle and sensitive because they will moan and groan about the horrible things that the state does sometimes to far away places (and to its own even) and of course at the very top of the league, the ARMS TRADERS - and they certainly don't want people moaning and groaning about the torment these ruthless businessmen inflict upon the world.

It is not just one thing. It is like a rollin' stone gathering momentum as it comes crashing into the fortress of genteel civilization.

This and so much more. Look out as it is only going to get worse because the causes are being encouraged by the those who shape society; ravenous exploitative capitalism with no silly Jesus to get in the way with pesky stumbling stones like ethics.

Growl and rage you beast! Your time will be brutal and short lived. I'm looking into the distant horizon to a time when all the stupidity of today has been dealt with by the coming teachers of BITTER experience.

Cheerful chap, aren't I!

All you have to do is take public transport to see the state of Britain.

originally posted by: rossacus
All you have to do is take public transport to see the state of Britain.

I took a bus ride for the first time in many years, what struck me was when once all faces were looking forward as I got on, now all heads are bowed down, glued to smart phones.

Oh I agree. My child has a xbox but he is only allowed to play on the Lego games and Minecraft and it is in my living room where I hear and see everything when he is playing with friends on Xbox Live. A lot of his friends though have their xbox in their bedrooms. Only a few weeks ago one of his friends had someone keep sending her message. She is only 8 and he was 19. I stepped in and told her not to answer any more messages and to go and tell her mum immediately. She did but her mum wasn't even aware of it because she was in her bedroom.

David has also said that at school a lot his friends (8 years old) talk about playing on Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty. I just can't understand why any parents would want or allow their child to play on such games. I haven't even seen GTA but I've heard enough about it. How can parents think it is acceptable for a child of 8 to be playing such games. I don't think I would be too happy with David playing such games even when he is in teenage years. Playing games like that are bound to desensitise you to violence etc.

My child isn't at the stage for Facebook etc but when I see some of my friend's children who are in their early teens it frightens me. a reply to: ProleUK

There was always an element of this among certain delinquent groups.

I do think that never being shown where the line in behaviour is can have an impact.

A lot of parents struggle enough with work and debt etc and fail to enforce punishment for smaller things. This just grows and grows until the kid does something truly awful, by which time, it's just too late.

Thing is, despite all the fluffy stuff about how kids raised by single parents aren't at any disadvantage to others, I do think that it makes a difference when there is a father figure around, if nothing else, getting your dad mad is often a more scary proposition than getting your mum mad. I know my kids sit down and shut up when their mum threatens to wake me early after a night shift due to their behaviour. ( I don't beat them or anything, but I guess they think I may snap and go batsh1t) :-)

Still, there's no one answer, really. Some people are just bad 'uns and ideally ought to be removed from the gene pool.

a reply to: anxiouswens

I believe there are several factors playing into this situation.

Yes, social media plays a part, and yes, it is hard to discipline some individuals without using some sort of corporal punishment. However, I believe that the issue is also effected by leadership. In this country, we have been lead by disreputable swine of one flavour or another, for the entire time that I have been alive. We see them getting away with awful acts in war, in home affairs, corruption, backhanders, social engineering and turning the screws on the defenceless and powerless, and no one appears able to prevent that continuing.

We approach dystopia with every step we take, and every day that passes. I believe that the reaction we see from the youth, is just as much an unconscious reaction to how very unjust and unfair our nation has become of late, as it is to anything else. Now, it must be said that to a degree, a bit of corporal punishment may seem like a good way to offset that understandable and undefinable feeling in the youth, that something is wrong and that the only response is to become wrong themselves. But I believe that if this nation is lead by honourable persons, who act in all things in a way which benefits the people directly and immediately, who value and protect the honour of our nation by behaving in a way which all persons in the UK would see as just, fair, and honourable, then the youth would not be nearly as prone to vile acts.

Why do I believe this?

In a nation which looks after their people correctly and fairly, disunity and disharmony will be reduced, which will result in people feeling safe and secure in their persons and their property. This in turn will reduce negativity in upbringing, disenfranchisement in the young, and anger in the streets. Put simply, a government doing its job correctly provides university places for all students with the potential to succeed, and prevents them being financially indebted as a result of trying to make the best of themselves. It prevents the weakest and least powerful in society from being trodden underfoot by circumstances beyond their control. It prevents the powerful from controlling the powerless, prevents the minority from dictating to the majority, prevents the majority from endangering and discriminating against the minority, and in all things achieves balance.

There is no balance in society, and young people know, although they may not have a sophisticated understanding of the causes of these geopolitical elements, do understand the writing on the wall. At the moment, the writing says that all a person can rely on these days, is credit on their cards and cred on the street, and that total bastards get ahead in life, and everyone else is screwed. Either be the bastards, or be screwed.

These are lessons they are learning from many sources, but those lessons are backed up by government right now, who are, by way of austerity politics and increasingly disturbing policy choices, making things much worse for the youth of today, their prospects, their future. These kids are at war, war with the future. They are terrified on a subconscious level, because for all their physical violence and anger, they know they are functionally powerless to prevent a harrowing future for themselves, and they have no control over their fate worth a damn. They do not know, in their conscious minds, what drives them to behave as they do, and all of them will have slightly different paths to madness to recount, but all of them have the increasingly dark future being created these days, to look forward to. They know, on a primal level, that they were scapegoated and cast aside before they were even born, by the actions of men and women who sold their future for temporary financial stability.

They may not know the detail, but they can feel it all falling down around them, and want to be on the top of the rubble, not under it, when the collapse is complete. They have been given no better tools than those they wield, to ensure they get there in one piece. That is how I see the situation.

a reply to: anxiouswens

A lot of what you said in your very own post is the cause. The way we handle a situation is based on a number of things such as upbringing, cultural, subcultural, external/internal environments etc. When it comes to younger people acting out it is most usually due to not only how they were raised by their parents, but by society as well. Nowadays parents are to busy to actually look after their kids so they have the T.V do it, and the schools, and then the kid hangs out with friends. When the parents do spend time with their kids sometimes they're agitated from work, or from any number of factors and may lash out at their children or whatever.

The point is as children we are presented with the world in many different ways and if the world seems like a threatening place then we act accordingly. In this circumstance she may have had a rough life and this is why she "chose" to act the way she did.

Teenagers have been robbing and killing people of all ages for years - it has sod all to do with "social media", "computer games" or whatever easy-to-blame drivel you want to dig up and is simply down to bad parenting, poverty and poor education, like it always is.

In fact, historians who have looked at "Youth Crime" in the UK have found that nothing much is new at all, even if people perceive it to be.

Here is a quote from one 60 year old woman called Charlotte Kirkman by historian Geoffrey Pearson:

“I think morals are getting much worse... There were no such girls in my time as there are now. When I was four or five and twenty my mother would have knocked me down if I had spoken improperly to her”

That was said in 1843.

What is also worth noting is that while the crime stats would suggest youth crime has got progressively worse, it is in fact the manner in which they are recorded or reported:

More generally, criminal statistics do not tell the whole story of youth crime. In particular, definitions of criminal behaviour change over time. One example of this is that police are increasingly becoming involved in the management of incidents that once upon a time would have remained a matter for schools and parents. In 2004, the BBC reported that a 12-year-old schoolboy was “arrested, DNA-tested, fingerprinted and formally reprimanded” after throwing a fork at a girl during a playground argument. The casual violence and petty crime of the Edwardian slums, by contrast, took place largely away from police eyes.

www.historyextra.com...

So, it would seem that we are actually guilty of the the exact same things our parent's, their parents and their parents before them - thinking that we lived in some "golden age" where kids respected their seniors and this wouldn't have happened, which is just bollocks.

Yes, the crime itself was disgusting etc etc, but it is nothing new and there is nothing "happening to our young people" any more than what previous generations went through.

Also, it is worth pointing out the vast majority of "young people" are well behaved. Don't let the behavior of some poorly educated, badly brought up yob tarnish your view of all "young people"....

a reply to: SprocketUK

I concur on the "dad" thing...

My missus (or even my ex with my eldest daughter) can threaten to deploy "the DAD" as if it's some secret weapon to counter unruly behaviour by my sprogs..

Quite often, I am unaware of either my imminent deployment or even the reason why, but it's 9/10 more than enough to curtail the behaviour which led to me being on the launchpad, ready to go...

a reply to: anxiouswens

You have a valid point about parents allowing their kids to play age-restricted games, but that isn't the cause of bad behaviour. That's a symptom of bad parenting though.

When I was 10, we used to sneak round my mates house and watch Nightmare on Elm Street (an 18 rated film) while his parents were out.. It didn't make us violent.

My 5 year old plays on the XBOX, same as yours - Minecraft, LEGO, Forza, FIFA.. I have GTA V and Dying LIght yet he knows not to play them. The same for my PC, he knows what the "grown up games" are won't even try to sneak a play, because he knows the boundaries and is well brought up.

The kids that are allowed to play these games, however, are not being set these boundaries. It isn't the games making them misbehave, but rather the lack of proper parenting generally.

I agree with you stumason.

"Later, in the fourth century BC, Plato was heard to remark: "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"

Similar remarks were even found inscribed in 6000 year old Egyptian tombs!

www.theguardian.com...

And listening to some of my Dad's tales I can tell you the lads he speaks of were no better (if not worse) than youth today.

Having said that, I do acknowledge that methods of discipline have changed over time but I am not sure this has had the effect many think it has when you take into account the fact that kids who are physically punished are more likely to use violence themselves.

I do think there may be a bit of a void where physical punishment is no longer acceptable (rightly so) but folk do not have experience of, or tools to employ alternative techniques (where the child learns the reasons certain behaviour is unacceptable and we try to understand the reasons for them acting out).

a reply to: Scouse100

While I have never been against physical chastisement, I've rarely (if ever) actually used it beyond a slight hand tap or bum pat as toddlers.

I find it far more effective to remove privileges from them, such as the aforementioned XBOX or TV rights. My 5 year old boy has just started getting pocket money - it is brilliant at bringing him under control if I threaten to remove it for that week.

a reply to: anxiouswens

So one video of kids acting like assholes is supposed to be an indictment of the entire generation? I see old people grumbling about young people still exists.

a reply to: stumasonYes you are probably right the parents who let their kids play on these type of games are probably the ones who do it for a quiet life.

I know at my child's school they said they have a problem with children starting school unable to talk properly. They believe it is becoming more prominent because a lot of parents spend their time looking at mobile phones, tablets etc and therefore don't engage with their children and speak to them, sing nursery rhymes etc. They ran a course last year at my child's school to discuss children's feelings etc. One of the teachers said how important it is to young children for a parent to say goodbye, kiss them etc and at the end of the day to smile when they come out of school and ask how their day has been. I would have thought these kind of things came naturally as a parent but she said they have young children coming into school quite frequently upset because a parent hasn't even said goodbye to them because they are too busy looking at their mobiles phones, same after school they don't even look up when their children come out of school to say "Hello, how has your day been". Really sad. Maybe that's why some are growing up and carrying out actions like this. To get attention, plain and simple!

No where have I said an whole generation. I said things like this are becoming more common! I have grown up nephews and nieces who wouldn't dream of acting like this. I have friends whose children have grown up who wouldn't dream of acting like this. As I have already stated my mum says it is just a matter of me getting older perceiving things as different. There have always been rebellious teenagers, I was one myself. I am simply saying things like are becoming more common in our society. If this had happened when I was younger people would have stepped in to stop it. Not videoed it. Same with the incident I spoke about in the park. Everyone just sat there.

I have seen it in Manchester when youths have been fighting. Adults stood around with their mobile phones videoing it. That wouldn't have happened years ago people would have got involved and stopped it. So I am on about society in general. Many adults fear the gang culture and are more reluctant to get involved because of them carrying knives etc. I think that is why some young people think they can do these sorts of things because no one is going to stop them.a reply to: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: anxiouswens

I see old people grumbling about young people still exists.

You know it, bro.