Teenagers Today
Let us dive into teenagers and their environment
As someone who has professionally worked with teens for an extended period and has also been a father and mentor, I have a thorough understanding of the many challenges that young people face today.
How many teenagers deviated due to a lack of proper guidance?
The uncomfortable answer is: A lot.
With low self-esteem, teens who don’t feel good about themselves often have a bunch of problems, like not doing well in school and having messed-up relationships.
More and more teens are dealing with mental health problems.
Addiction is a major issue for teenagers.
The consequences of experimenting with drugs and alcohol can be destructive and far-reaching, as I’ve witnessed.
The complexities of romantic and peer relationships can overwhelm and confuse teenagers.
I’ve realized that open conversations about healthy boundaries, consent, and communication are necessary.
The digital age comes with its own set of challenges.
I’ve noticed that technology can lead to cyberbullying, addiction, and privacy problems.
Adolescence is a time of life that can be challenging.
It brings about changes in the attitude of a teenager because of social, emotional, and physical spheres.
Adolescents may feel undue pressure because of parental expectations for their academic performance, peer competition, prevalence of drug and alcohol, and mental health issues.
It is our responsibility to provide guidance and support during teenage.
During my mentorship, I came across various issues that distract teenagers and make them frustrated and enraged.
Teenagers today differ totally from their predecessors in 1995.
This is the period of the Internet Empire.
This is the period of Emperor Google.
How many queries seeking solutions were ruthlessly suppressed by someone before Google’s wisdom?
The truthful answer is: Millions.
How much connected information spread through Chinese whispers and was believed to be true?
The amazing answer is: Numberless.
Alas! Even I feel deprived of a huge astonishing knowledge that I craved during my teenage years!
Now, teenagers do not wait for their teachers and parents to quench their curiosity.
They stay empowered all the time, holding a device.
Earlier, perhaps the most influential way to guide teenagers was by leading by example.
I’ve seen that teenagers often emulate the behaviours and values they observe in adults.
They often show their dissatisfaction with irresponsible and deceitful teachers and dominant parental authority.
How discouraging it is!
In these times, it is difficult to find model examples, neither in family nor among teachers, that inspire them to be an ideal person.
They find people around them busy in their materialistic pursuits, not caring for anything fair or foul.
They learn these lessons by heart during their teenage years.
They innovate ideas to search for shorter routes to success to prove them sharper and faster than the old generation.
We need to change ourselves to change the environment for teenagers so that they can find role models among us, not in films, not in social media, and not in politics.
The omnipresent digital world grabs all opportunities for physical interactions.
Today’s teenagers show little enthusiasm for motivational speeches and guidance from older adults.
They spend most of their learning time in the company of cell phones and laptops.
There is a need to completely restructure traditional methods of guiding and motivating them.
We need to convert all our mentoring and motivational supplements into posts and videos on Facebook, Instagram, or any other favourite social media platform in the country concerned to reach them when they are in the learning mode.
I do not believe any wisdom lies in advising teenagers to minimize their presence on social media.
As we see around us, from school to college and university, from religion to groceries, from a tutor to yoga classes, everyone is invited to join them and to like them on social media.
Therefore, if we want to guide our teens and keep our culture and tradition alive, we have to seek refuge in social media.
We must convert our heritage into a palm tree to survive in the mighty storm of the digital world; otherwise, the storm is so strong that it will uproot the ever-strongest gigantic banyan tree in no time into oblivion.
We must follow the stream to keep everything intact that we wish to preserve.
Don’t oppose social media, but accept it to mould it into the form and shape that we find most suitable to balance heritage and innovation.
Our society, in which we lived and shaped our present mindset, left us a long time ago.
We cannot restore old order, but we can merge with new order to play our decisive role instead of becoming obsolete and forgotten.
Teenagers nowadays have a great deal of potential to positively impact our civilization through their fresh thought processes, energy, and ever-improving cutting-edge science and technology.
To adjust to the frequency of new channels, we must restructure the methods in which we engage and communicate with them.