Violence of the modern youth

Violence... It seems we've grown quite accustomed to it nowadays...
The reason I'm creating this thread is at first an article I just read, but in a deeper sense, it's not just for one case, but for what seems to be a world-wide tendency. I must admit, I've always thought that this violence of the youth today, the school shootings etc. are mainly a problem of the West, of the USA. Most of the cases, which I had heard of, about shootings in schools, injured or killed pupils and teachers, were coming from the USA. Everyone of you has heard of at least one such case. I've also heard that also Germany and some other states are having such problems. "But so what? It's their own problem!" Well, it seems it's not! Recently there's a trend in the medias to point out similar things also in Bulgaria. True, I haven't heard of real shootings, but I'm not talking only about shootings anyway. That's only one part of the bigger picture. What I'm talking about is the growing violence among today's children and teenagers. A few weeks ago one newspaper discovered a number of video clips uploaded in the Internet. They weren't copyrighted, they weren't pirated - so far nothing bad. But their content still aroused a wave of debates. Because the content was mostly like this:
1. Striptease of underaged teenagers.
2. Girl fights in schools.
Ok, the first category was seemingly voluntarily. But what caused these debates was the fact that there were a number of clips, showing two or more girls, fighting in the school or the school yards, under the watch of whole crouds of their classmates, who're doing nothing else than taking pictures of the fight with their cell phones. No attempt to stop the fight, no nothing. Just the "pleasure" of watching real-life violence...
This case was followed by the medias with some others - new ones and old ones. One of the new, which I remember, was how three "cool" girls brought their new classmate-girl at the appartment of one of them, supposedly to become friends, and then they forced her to strip in front of the camera/cell phone and also to pee on her favourite plush toy. Of course, after that they showed the clip to everyone in the school. I can't say what the victim felt, I can't say what these three girls felt, I can't even say what I feel... I can give two more of the new examples - in one single day, there were two school-fights reported on the national television. In one, a girl "took out" a boy by hitting him in the groin, which resulted in the hospitalization of the boy. When they interviewed the boy (not older than 15), he told the TV crew that once he goes back to school, he'll pay her with the interest. The other case - two girls get in a fight during the school break, one of the girls takes out a knuckle-duster (fortunately, not a spiky one), knocks out the other girl and then the weapon quickly disappears among the crowd. Of course, the medias didn't forget also to remind us of previous acts of youth violence. Like f.e. the one, in which one teenager cold-bloodedly stabbed, killed, chopped to pieces and hid the body of his classmate. Both of them underaged...
And now I read an article about a group rape of a 16-year old Bulgarian girl by 10th and 11th grade Greek boys in a school on the Greek island of Euobea. It seems that this case has brought up this very same debate also in Greece. So it's not just the violence-movie-producing USA, not also the world-war-sparker Germany, not also the backward-Balkan Bulgaria, but it's spread even to the core of the Western civilization. And that's only what I've heard about! One God knows how many more such or similar cases are out there all accross the world!
So I can't help myself and not ask the question "What, the hell, is going on with this world?! Has being a "bad boy" or a "bad girl" became so modern that children and teenagers are so ready to humiliate each other, to beat each other, to kill each other?!" I don't know the question, I don't know the cure, I simply can't realize this could actually be happening. And it could be happening even now...


Edited by NikeBG - 01-Nov-2006 at 11:28

I heard it too.I even think to open a topic about this case.

We bulgarians can read that article but foreigners cant.Can you post a link with article in english.
    

Edited by Krum - 01-Nov-2006 at 11:37

Yes,is a sad situation.Generally,the majority of people does fear the Law or the State because simply the Law is not enforced properly.From there is that everything begins.So,if the parents do not fear,how can their children fear?Simply ,they wont.In Amarinthos case,we have to fase also the power of the close society.Close societies still exist in Hellas,not in the same lvl as in the past of course,but they exist.The Law cannot be enforced there properly ,as in the rest of the country,because everybody know each other and cover each others dirt.The Law of Silence.Of course,the absence of fear and dispair is a global phenomenon.Hellas has,for the first time in it's history,significanrt problems with young criminals for different reasons.But ,Bulgaria and Romania still continue their human trafficking and illegal adoptions.They sell their children for some thousand dollars in order to feed themselves.Generally,every country has significant problems to solve,especially in the Balkans.But ,that's what globalization also means:globalizations of problems.First in the USA,now in Europe.

Edited by Spartakus - 01-Nov-2006 at 15:04

Its horrible to say but in Australia happy slapping (the term given to recording fights and all that on phones then passing it around) is increasing and also alot of fights being started just for this purpose. Also about a week or so ago there was a thing on the news about 10 or so guys sexually harrased a girl and recorded it all then put it on the internet.

Its things like this that make me sick

Originally posted by TheDiplomat Violance of the modern youth has reached to such an extend that I myself sometimes think to msyelf that maybe I should not be a father in the future.

Yes, I'm asking myself the same thing too. I'm still 20, but I'm not really sure if I'd want to have children of my own in the future of this world. Especially since I don't see any hopes for improvement soon - it seems it's only getting worse and worse.
I don't know if it's only because of the violent computer games and movies though. Sure, they're a big factor as well, but I don't think it's only that. Because we see violence also among the adults, which should already be mature enough not to be influenced by movies or games. But the other reason is IMHO exactly the violence among the adults, which should act as a "good example" to the children, but instead of that they act the opposite...

These things are indeed terrible and I would by no means try to downplay them, but I think the changing media has a ver big role in this. Perhaps violence did increase in the last decades, but perhaps it was not the violence but the mediaattention that changed. Violent fights between schoolkids is nothing new, what is new is the fact that they get recorded and spread and so are put under the attentions of the larger masses. Fights in school used to stay private, now they are public. The same is true it seems to me for other cases. Take child abuse. Fifty years ago, you would never ever find a newspaper article about it, but that does not mean it did not happen. It well might have happened even more than now, as the chances of getting punished for it back then were so small.

Originally posted by Genghis Your absolutely right Aelfgifu.  I know that in America, a recent survey showed that most parents think that their children are more likely to be kidnapped than when they were kids.  In reality, the opposite is true, the media has just given so much attention to missing children that it has warped people's sense of reality.  After all, there's no news like bad news.

True, and let us not forget that the missing kids are almost always young white girls. My grandmother watches all these news shows, and she is afraid that I am going to "get abducted" one day by one of those people on the "internets" because she watches all of this fear-mongering news that does not account for the fact that the instances of the events covered rarely happen.

Originally posted by Aelfgifu Take child abuse. Fifty years ago, you would never ever find a newspaper article about it, but that does not mean it did not happen. It well might have happened even more than now, as the chances of getting punished for it back then were so small.

It sure did happen more in the past than it does now in the United States. Only a few parents spank their kids as a punishment, and it is usually only at a very young age. My mother and her siblings used to get severely beaten, sometimes for no reason whatsoeve,r back in the 1960's. If  parents did that now, they would surely be punished by the law.