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Debate: Society and the youth
All lovely things will have an ending, all lovely things will fade and die; and youth, that’s now so bravely spending, will beg a penny by and by.
—Conrad Aiken
Youth is a beautiful age, a carefree and adventurous time period of every man’s life. It is an age when man is young, enthusiastic, exuberant and reckless and often tends to go astray. That is why perhaps everything is blamed on the younger generation.
When one is youthful, one often tends to ignore and neglect the dangers hidden in every nook and corner of our world. One wants to explore every corner thoroughly and is unaware of what he might be facing.
We, the younger generation and today’s youth are careless and we take life as a game. We want to experience all the dangers lurking around and we want to enjoy every second of our lives because we think that the fraction of a second which is giving us opportunities may never come again!
Unfortunately however, the younger generation often falls prey to negative influences at this age, young people want to be accepted and liked by everyone and just in order to impress friends and to be a part of the so-called ‘in’ crowd, young people become deadly victims of peer pressure. This often leads to bad activities such as smoking, drinking and drugs. However, they are unaware of the fact that they are destroying their own lives!
This is an age when one is torn between being a frustrated teenager and climbing the ladder to adulthood. This leads to a lot of harried decisions, frustration and confusion. And sometimes, the only answer and the only door of escape seems to be suicide. This is why the society has portrayed today’s youth as reckless, impulsive and immature.
People, however, fail to understand the problems that the youth is facing. It is true that the young generation is at times reckless as well as inexperienced. But this is the twenty-first century, isn’t it? In today’s fast paced and competitive world, the younger generation has an extremely strong and impulsive desire to prove themselves capable of facing life’s challenges. Unfortunately, these desires to prove oneself often makes one forget his/her responsibilities.
Today’s youth are indeed irresponsible and reckless as well as materialistic and superficial at times but they’re still ready to face the real world without fear and full of courage. And after all, one learns from one’s mistakes. Life is not just a bed of roses. In order to cross the bridge of success, we have to face many hurdles and pick the thorns in our path but this is what really makes today’s youth capable of attaining their goals and becoming responsible citizens of our society. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.”
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