What's wrong with our youth? Is it a psychosocial disorder? Is it the parents?

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by AGDee

I'm sorry, but the only thing "new" about a kid being beat up by a group of 6-8 bullies is that it gets videotaped and posted on the internet now. Do you seriously mean to tell me that nobody in your highschool ever got beat up by a group of students? It happens, they are kids. They didn't used to be made famous by it, they just used to get suspended.

People always freak out about the awful behavior of the generation or two below them when, in fact, the behavior really isn't a new phenomena. Parents never like their kids music (except me.. I tend to like the same music that my kids do), they always think kids dress in ridiculous fashions (ironically, the 14 y/o is wanting to wear the same stupid 80's fashions that I used to wear), etc.

True. Being bullied is nothing new, but being hostpitalized or almost killed over it is. Going around shooting other people like playing some violent video game is also insane. I think specific genes and the social environment interact to produce changes in the brain that influence emotional control and violence in kids. The V-Tech killer was taken off of his meds and look what happened. It's starts early, and if it isn't caught there's a possibility the kid could bacome a lifelong violent criminal. Antisocial behavior is what I think parents should start noticing. I think understanding whether a child is hyperemotional, or unemotional allows psychologist to identify high risk children early and to intervene with treatments before the child gets involved in serious crimes. I think things are different now because 20 years ago it was just general therapy and counselling, then waiting a few months to see if the kid got better. Yes, I do think parents are part of the problem but may not be the whole problem in some cases. In some cases improving parenting can be among the main tools of approaching antisocial behavior.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

True. Being bullied is nothing new, but being hostpitalized or almost killed over it is. Going around shooting other people like playing some violent video game is also insane.

I beg to differ. Again, it just isn't talked about as much or hyped as much in the media.

If you've ever seen Death of a Cheerleader or River's Edge, those are both true stories (although River's Edge was changed from a guy being killed to a girl so they didn't have to pay off the author). Both of those happened over 20 years ago.

[epchick]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

True. Being bullied is nothing new, but being hostpitalized or almost killed over it is.

Now there is where you are wrong. You might not have ever seen someone getting beaten up that bad, but happens. It happened a lot when I was younger.

[cheerfulgreek]

I'm in the library a lot, so I'll have to do some research on this topic, because I honestly don't think I'm wrong at all on this issue.

[epchick]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

I'm in the library a lot, so I'll have to do some research on this topic, because I honestly don't think I'm wrong at all on this issue.

You can do all the research you want on the topic, but you might not know it happens unless you've seen it in person. In middle school, i've seen kids heads bashed in on the blacktop. Cops were a regular occurance there. In high school, our star track athlete severely broke a girl's nose because they were fighting over a boy.

Things like that happened often when I was younger.

[UGAalum94]

Violence and amorality/immorality isn't new, but you can find studies that show that rates of arrest and incarceration for girls particularly have increased.

I think the nature of media, especially the internet, may make us more aware of news stories we wouldn't have heard about 20 years ago, so some of our sense of an increase may be because we just hear about more, but there's data that points to a trend too.

[DSTRen13]

I work in retail at the moment. I don't know how parents were, but wow ... Most of the ones I encounter make me cringe. Still, I can't imagine that each generation doesn't have its own parenting issues. Maybe it is the drugs.

[luv n tpa]

You need a license to drive, but anyone can have kids. Parents.

I just love the things I have seen from years of babysitting, albeit not necessarily violent behavior being referenced. When I was a kid, we went out side to play, amused ourselves. You could give me a 6 inch piece of yellow string and I'd have a blast. Nowadays, kids will sit and stare at me asking what can they do next. I have to lay out a $30 craft that will be destroyed in 10 days. They just don't know how to entertain themselves anymore.

One family just decided not to deal with their girls yelling and screaming. My first day, I was told to give them candy if they got upset or fresh with me because it would make them stop.

Last semester, I had a mom who actually asked me to teach her kids things. Fine and dandy. Apparently I was teaching them the word "no" because they had never heard it from their parents before. The son also, I swear, must've had ADHD. I would drop hints to her about my cousin with similar symptoms, and she'd reply with something like, "Well it's a good thing my son would never behave like that."

The girls I have now are so refreshing and .. normal. They have friends that come over from time to time, however, that are not even close. Just today I had to teach one of their guests that ripping things out of someone else's hand was wrong. "I want it. It's mine. I'll tell my mom and you'll be sorry." Seven years old. Mom comes by to pick her up, "Oh. Well she doesn't like to share. Nothing I can do."

WHAT?!

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by epchick

You can do all the research you want on the topic, but you might not know it happens unless you've seen it in person. In middle school, i've seen kids heads bashed in on the blacktop. Cops were a regular occurance there. In high school, our star track athlete severely broke a girl's nose because they were fighting over a boy.

Things like that happened often when I was younger.

Wow! What kind of neighborhood was your school located in? Geez.

[cheerfulgreek]

o.k. I did a little research on this topic. Here's what I found.

I was right. It has gotten worse. What you guys said about this not being new material was correct, but the problem has gotten worse. There's a book on psychosocial disorders in young people. There's a child psychiatrist and a criminologist that both said there has been a steady rise in youth crime following the 2nd World War averaging a fivefold increase from 1950 to 1990. They weren't just talking about the U.S though. They were talking about developed countries including the U.S.

There was also a psychiatrist that said there are two distinct types of teen criminals. She said that one very common type takes up petty crime in adolescence, based on peer pressure. The other is what I was talking about earlier. She said the other was more problematic, and they start showing signs of antisocial behavior in kindergarten. She said that these kids have biological predispositions to behavior problems. That was pretty much my point. I want to add something to what she was saying. I think this paired with an environment of bad parenting, poverty or abuse puts these kids at high risk of committing violent crimes and spending their lives in and out of the prison system. I don't think it's all genetics.

I also looked at more data from other material, and I found that in both boys and girls who went on to become criminals were likely to have shown some kind of early onset neurological impairment or difficult temperament early in life as young as age 3. The graph that I was looking at also showed an increase.

So how am I wrong. I'm not saying you guys are wrong, because you've made some valid points, but I'm not wrong on the whole issue either.

[fantASTic]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

o.k. I did a little research on this topic. Here's what I found.

I was right. It has gotten worse. What you guys said about this not being new material was correct, but the problem has gotten worse. There's a book on psychosocial disorders in young people. There's a child psychiatrist and a criminologist that both said there has been a steady rise in youth crime following the 2nd World War averaging a fivefold increase from 1950 to 1990. They weren't just talking about the U.S though. They were talking about developed countries including the U.S.

There was also a psychiatrist that said there are two distinct types of teen criminals. She said that one very common type takes up petty crime in adolescence, based on peer pressure. The other is what I was talking about earlier. She said the other was more problematic, and they start showing signs of antisocial behavior in kindergarten. She said that these kids have biological predispositions to behavior problems. That was pretty much my point. I want to add something to what she was saying. I think this paired with an environment of bad parenting, poverty or abuse puts these kids at high risk of committing violent crimes and spending their lives in and out of the prison system. I don't think it's all genetics.

I also looked at more data from other material, and I found that in both boys and girls who went on to become criminals were likely to have shown some kind of early onset neurological impairment or difficult temperament early in life as young as age 3. The graph that I was looking at also showed an increase.

So how am I wrong. I'm not saying you guys are wrong, because you've made some valid points, but I'm not wrong on the whole issue either.

I really don't believe that kids today are more violent than before. I think there's a lot more exposure of it, though.

You can't really take those statistics as fact, cheerfulgreek. For example...as a scientific reviewer, I would instantly ask you this question: "The standard of what counts as violent crime has been greatly lowered since WWII. Did reviewers take that into account?" It's also worth finding out how much research was actually done on violent crime after WWII...I would definitely believe that a lot more crime went unreported in those days.

Statistics != science.