When S's sister and her family were here last week, I could have been a rich woman if I had a nickel for every time she said, "There are so many outside influences now for teenagers." She was talking about her oldest son, who is 15 years old.
Of course I nodded along because when S's parents or older sister decree something, it is like gospel & thou cannot disagree with gospel. As much disdain I have for his brother, his brother doesn't decree things like that and is a tad bit more open-minded. Not as open-minded as S though.
Over the past week, I kept thinking about the statement as decreed. And I still disagree with it. In the last 20 years, I think the only significant "outside influence" changes are 1) the Internet and 2) cell phones. Cell phones shouldn't really count because we had telephones back then, but I'm including it for the sake of the texting ability.
Let's review the other "outside influences" for teenagers then and now:
drugs - had 'em
underage drinking - had it
porn - had it
video games - had 'em
cable - had it
gangs - had 'em
"bad" music - had it, remember Tipper?
cliques - had 'em
I'm probably forgetting some, but I think I got the main categories. Still, even after a week of pondering, I can't come up with any new outside influences in the 20 years that have passed. I think the Internet can certainly be dangerous for kids if they start talking to older child molesters and such. But you have to weigh the downsides of the Internet with the upsides of the ease of finding information, communicating more easily, and such.
I suppose it comes down that if you raise your kids right, then they will be able to withstand these "outside influences." I think S's sister is doing an excellent job raising her kids, so I don't even know why she made such a huge issue about outside influences at all.
S's parents raised S & his brother and sister overseas, so perhaps she's talking about her upbringing where she didn't know of the above outside influences. Perhaps those are new outside influences to her. I dunno, just trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. Because in my neck of the woods, all of them were there.
Even when I was young, I remember all those older people muttering, "Kids these days..." I don't want to become that muttering person because it sets the tone that society devolves continuously, and it seems to shift the blame on the younger generation. I want to remind the people that mutter about kids today that they are the ones who raised the kids of today, so look in the mirror if you want someone to blame.
1 comment:
Though I agree that every generation has many bad influences on kids, you have to admit that the Internet (especially combined with web access on cell phone) is pretty encompassing. For instance, at Vacation Bible School, we had several teen helpers that spent more time "texting" their friends and updating their fb sites than talking to the kids they were there to work with. That wasn't possible in my day. Back when we were kids, if you were somewhere with your family, you had to wait to get home to call your friends. Now many of them are never far from their cell phones and rarely spend more than a couple minutes without texting someone. That's a pretty big outside influence if you ask me.
On the other hand, I agree that a strong family foundation is still the best remedy. I also think parents need to be more cautious about letting their kids have cell phones and Internet access constantly. Along with that, they need to think about making sure their kids have "breaks" from those sources so they can truly have "family time".
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