The World is Changing - Liceo Sesto Properzio

Youth culture: then and nowby Marlene TRASCHL (1996), Lisa TSCHECH (1995), BORG Krems/AustriaRacing around in the garden, playing with dolls and doing the household chores…That´s the way young people see the everyday-life of their parents´ youth. Unimaginable these days. Instead ofenjoying the fresh air in the outdoors, the young prefer slumming in front of the TV/PC. Even though there mightbe some exceptions to this lethargic way of life, it is still true that young people become lazier and lazier thesedays. Parents appear to adopt a very relaxed way of handling theiroffspring and they allow their teenage kids to stay out as long as they wantin the evenings. One consequence of this ´trend´ is that the age whenyoung people first try cigarettes and alcohol is continuously gettingyounger. Going out at the weekend you can see scores of 13-year-olds –and they’re mostly not sober! Young people and girls in particular, seem togrow up much earlier and have lost some of their childhood.There is no doubt that the freedom to choose your own style is a goodthing. Yet, ever so often this also leads to conflict between some stylegroups and lots of prejudices. All those perfectly thin and ethereal beautiesparading on the catwalk around the world represent an ideal that isimpossibly hard to live up to. What is more, this beauty craze of recent years is certainly at the basis of bulimiaand anorexia. Sometimes clothes and brands are very important for youth. Those who don’t follow fashion trendsget labeled as outsiders and are bullied. These kinds of attacks can lead to brutal violence and suicide. In recentyears the number of suicides among young people has risen dramatically.Respect is a foreign concept to many young people, not just respect for other people, parents and teachers, butalso for nature. A lot of them don´t care about the environment and throw their waste on the ground and aren’taware of the extreme situations in other countries.In spite of these problems, girls have more opportunities for education and equality. In former times, girls wereexpected to have families. Nowadays, they pursue a good education and a good job. It’s not a problem if a girlwants to attend university. Indeed, they are mostly supported by their parents. They can go their own way andmake their own decisions.On the whole, we can see that the youth have more freedom nowadays and childhood definitely starts earlierand ends later.posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011by Agnieszka TWARDOSZ (1995), 8LO Kraków/PolandMarch 4th, 2012 at 3:02 pmYou are totally right. A lot of things have changed since our parents were teenagers. Maybe that’s why we argueso often with them. I also think that we should be more careful of how we proceed with people and theenvironment, because every action has a reaction.by Anna MACHNIK (1995), 8LO Kraków/PolandMarch 10th, 2012 at 3:11 pmYou’re right. Who would have thought in the past that there would be so much freedom for the youth nowadays?All the children and teenagers in the past were used to listening to their older and more experienced parents andhelping them in everything they were asked for. They had to respect the elderly, and so they did, I guess.These days some adolescents don’t really care what their parents say. They believe that they’re the wisestpeople in the world, and they don’t need any help or advice. They start taking drugs, drinking alcohol, tryingcigarettes. But of course, not every teenager is such a rebel.Indeed, some people may call our generation ”spoilt”, but in my view it’s unfair to say that the whole generationis bad. It’s true – some teenager’s behaviour is definitely unacceptable, but usually adolescents make stupidmistakes, and only later do they realise they did something wrong. It’s like that: first, they do something andlater they think about it. I’d say we’re only young and naive, we still don’t know what’s good or bad and so wewant to check it ourselves.We all learn new things by making mistakesby Hanna ERNSTBRUNNER (1995), BORG Krems/AustriaMarch 12th, 2012 at 5:54 pmI liked this article a lot. It is a pity that so many kids spend their life in front of the computer instead of meetingfriends and having fun in the fresh air. The fact that kids try alcohol and cigarettes at such an early age is sadindeed. Though, from my point of view, group pressure is the strongest reason (besides the unsuccessfulupbringing of the parents) why they try these “drugs”. After reading this article I’m very glad to have had acompletely different childhood which included playing in the garden with loads of other friends – everythingwithout a mobile phone or a computer. And I am proud of it.n° 9/2013, page 29