Young people and Society

It is said that youth is the nicest time of one´s life. As a young person you are fit, strong and have enough energy to face problems. In fact you do not think about any problems, but look forward to every day in which you may try something new and challenging, and people around you tend to tolerate your faults because of your lack of experiense.

When speaking about young people we should be aware of the fact that there are two different groups of young people: teenagers (13 to 19 years old) and those between twenty and thirty. Both groups have something in common, but there are also differences between them.

Teenagers are a special group. They are not children any more, yet neither are they adults. They are strongly influenced by their friends, reasonably ingluenced by their parents and partly influenced by their teachers, but there are also youth culture ingluences that may be important.

As teenagers grow up, they inteact with people outside their homes, each becoming an individual person with his/her own ideals. Teenagers want to live inepedently and oppose the older generation so they often have conflicts with their parents antd teachers. Most of them attend secondary schools and prepare themselves for their future profession. They spend most of their time at school or studying for the following schiool day. In their leisure time they like getting together with friends, listening to music, playing computers game and going to parties and discos. Most of them live with her parents, have to help around the house and are given some pocket money to spend on casettes, cosmetisc and small luxuries. Those teenagers who want to have their own money try to find a part-time job, especially during school holidays. Working in the afernoons or at weekends could be very useful, since it may help them to prepare for their future (adulthood). Some teenagers, especially in the USA but also in other European countries, leave their family at the age of eighteen and live with their friends in retend flats. Parents usually do not object because living on one´s own may help young people become responsible. Some people say it is better than any parental advice.

Young people between 20 to 30 years old are a bit different. Most of them have finished school and have found a job, so they are earning a living. Their problems are differnet from those of tenagers. They are adults and so they have to find a place to live. Many get married and have children so they become more aware of social problems. They are more concerned abouot the global problems of poverty, disease, the pollution of our enviroment, racial discrimination, nuclear and chemical weapons and terrorism. They organize demonstrations for peace and fight for equality. Many of them work for charities, and NGO´s help the disabled and homeless or collect money for starving people in Africa an Asia.

Only a small number of young people join radical youth movements like skinheads propagating fascism or fight against international companies like antiglobalists. These groups may become dangerous in the future but nowadays their ingluence on young people is relatively small.