- At the outset, let all the concerned people take a minute to look around, comprehend, digest, dissect, and pause to consider how the modern-day generation is coping with the increasingly pressure-filled atmosphere prevalent. A generation back, children were brought up in an atmosphere where parents’ inputs, guidance, counseling, and guidelines mattered utmost without much questioning emanating from the other side. Of course, a rebellious streak is always to be found in any generation but not to the extent witnessed during present times. The information technology-driven modern-day advancements mean the present generation is connected to the world in more than one way, primarily through the digital mode. Is it safe? No.
PC: Mind and Body Counseling Associates
- Yes, the conflict between the parents and their wards always exists but has ascended a couple of notches of late. Alarmingly, what is more concerning is the heinous crimes by children underlining the limits of adult understanding and control. For discerning, the idea of childhood as a special stage of being shielded from the challenges of grown-up life, continues to be elemental to modernity. Parents, teachers, and governments are meant to devote all necessary resources to nurture children into health, happiness, and a bright future. This task, as always, remains a work in progress. But per one indicator, instead of progress, a particularly grievous regression may be underway. There is an uptick in serious crimes by minors, mostly teenagers under 18.
PC: LiveLaw
- Take for instance Delhi reporting around 40 murders by juveniles every month. There is an extreme level of brutality in several cases. Last year, a teenager was booked for stabbing a youth over 50 times and then dancing over his lifeless body. Yes, you read it right. It’s macabre. Violent robberies, shootings, stabbings, rapes, and even gang rapes – minors committing such crimes regularly make the news across the country. The issue also receives a lot of attention from experts. Different stakeholders, including police, educationists, the child mental health experts, are very much on the job of trying to understand what is going on, and how to find solutions. One oft-quoted gloss is that minors commit crimes because they think they will get lenient treatment from the law.
PC: WSU Insider – Washington State University
- And even the record of their crime will be erased. But surely this cannot suffice to explain why a minor carries out a heinous act when most children and teenagers are repulsed by the very thought of it. The fact is that all those who make the decisions about the lives of older children do so with a lot of gaps in their knowledge. From early onset puberty to social media-impacted brains, the changes underway are fundamental. Fixed frames of teenagedom at 13 and adulthood at 18 are inadequate. By the time adults figure out some slang usage, many new ones have replaced it. If that’s happening with language, how much more complex is whatever’s happening in teenage minds? Worryingly, for many adults now, what and how teenagers think is unfathomable.
