Young people and their world

a) charakteristika mladých (zovňajšok, móda, vnútorná charakteristika, záujmy)

When we speak about young people, we can mean either teenagers or young adults in their twenties.
Teenagers are young people at the age of 13 to 19, they are not children anymore but they aren´t fully
mature either. Most of them attend school or prepare for their future professions. Young adults who
are older than nineteen can study at college or university or they can start working. This is the age
when they can also get married, have their first child and settle down.

Teenagers go through a lot of physical changes which are caused by hormonal regulation. Boys start to
have more muscle mass, facial hair and deeper voices; girls´ hips start to get wider and they are
biologically ready to conceive a child. Physical appearance is very important to teenagers because they
want to look like adults and be attractive. They are quite open-minded and so they might sometimes
experiment with new fashion trends. When a new or even eccentric fashion style is introduced,
youngsters are often the first people who are ready to adopt it –whether it is related to unusual
hairstyles (e.g. dreadlocks), clothes (e.g. torn jeans or mini-skirts), tattoos or piercing. Girls start to
put on make-up on their faces and paint their nails. Some of them start wearing revealing or
provocative clothes, dye their hair, wear jewellery and other fashion accessories. When a new standard
of beauty is presented in mass media or on social networks, young people are easily influenced by it.
In extreme cases, they can become obsessed with their appearance, experiment with strict diets which
might result in eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia which are more prevalent among girls
than boys.

Young people also go through a lot of mental changes, they start to identify with their role models,
search for their own identity and in some cases also rebel against society and accepted social norms.
Their emotional life is often very intensive and most of them look for security. Due to hormonal
changes they might go through mood swings, they are easily irritated and they start to develop their
own worldview or “philosophy of life”. When their ideas or dreams do not correspond to reality or
when they are rejected by their peers or harshly criticised and ridiculed by adults, they can start feeling
insecure, depressed and anxious. Sometimes when we see a group of young people in public, we might
get the impression that they are careless, cheerful, self-confident and not very polite. Even if this is the
case, most of them are quite sensitive and vulnerable.

Youth is the period of our life when we start to form first true friendships or when we fall in love for
the first time. It is a period when we get a lot of new experience, encounter a lot of adventures and
learn to cope with painful disappointments as well. Many people are inclined to say that youth is the
best time of our life. Whether we agree or disagree with this opinion, it is undeniable that the way we
spend our teenage years can have far reaching consequences for the rest of our life. Our future career,
the quality of our relationships and attitude to life in general is often shaped by the experience we get
while being young.

b) postavenie mladých v spoločnosti (práva a povinnosti, možnosti štúdia, práca, mladé

rodiny)

Teenagers do not usually have the same responsibilities as adults because they do not have to work,
earn their living, care about accommodation, food or household bills, so they can enjoy their free time
in many different ways. Typical leisure time activities or hobbies of young people are for instance
music, sports, computer games, watching movies, socializing, meeting new people, going to parties
but some of them can also participate in activities offered by various youth centres or clubs as well as
become active in various social and ecological movements, organisations dealing with human and
animal rights or in some radical movements fighting for social and political changes.

Youth is the time when people try to find their place in society. They insist on respecting their rights
and they want to be seen as equals to adults and older citizens. One of the basic human rights is for
example the right for education and protection from unfair treatment. However, youth is also the time
when we have to start preparing for taking up our duties and responsibilities towards other people.
Duties of young people include attending school, studying, doing their home assignments, helping
their parents with household chores and in many cases also helping to take care of their younger
siblings. The better children and teenagers learn to be responsible in these areas, the better prepared
they will be when it is time to deal with more duties and responsibilities on the threshold of adulthood.
As declared by law, minors turn into adults with full rights and responsibilities at the age of 18 in our
country. When we are over eighteen, we have for instance the right to vote in elections, the right to get
married, to buy alcoholic drinks etc and we are also fully responsible for our actions and decisions.

After the end of compulsory school attendance, most young people continue studying at secondary
schools and later many of them apply for university or college education. They can study at state,
private or church schools and nowadays they have also a wide range of possibilities to apply for
international scholarship if they want to study abroad. Teenagers and university students often decide
to find a part-time job if they want to earn their own money because they feel the need not to be
dependent only on the pocket money they receive from their parents. Having a part-time job can be
quite challenging and demanding because being employed can often interfere with your studies when
it comes to the investment of your time and energy. However, for many youngsters it is nice and
rewarding experience due to the opportunity to meet new people and gain new skills.

Most young people do not get married or have a child before they graduate from school but in some
cases people start their families at a younger age (in their early twenties or even younger) which is
often very difficult and full of unexpected complications for people who are not fully mature. Young
families can benefit from the help of their parents or the state, for example they can take a special loan
which might help them find accommodation or young parents can get extra benefits to help them with
the costs of raising children.

c) vzťahy medzi rovesníkmi a generačné vzťahy (konflikty –príčiny, prejavy, dôsledky)

Young people are involved in two different types of relationships: with their parents, teachers and
older people in general and with other young people such as their siblings, schoolmates or friends. As
they reach their teenage years, their peers start to have a significant impact on their life, sometimes
even more powerful than their parents or teachers. Teenagers have to find their social position in
social groups of their peers with similar hobbies, problems and expectations. Within these social
groups of young people, new friendships can be made and a lot of new experience can be gained.
Unfortunately, many negative phenomena can occur in the groups of youngsters as well – conflicts,
bullying, peer pressure, violence, vandalism, drugs or irresponsible sexual behaviour. Relationships
with older people are often marked by generation gap which includes all the differences in attitude to
life, hobbies, fashion, opinions and lifestyle. Older people often do not like being confronted with
criticism of their established routines and ideas about life while youngsters hate being told what to do,
what to think and how to behave just because it is accepted by authorities and older generations.

d) príčiny a následky užívania alkoholu, fajčenia a drog

As we said before, young people get a lot of new experiences and they are often eager to experiment
with new things. Unfortunately, some of them start smoking, drinking alcohol in bars, clubs or at
parties with their friends and sometimes they also want to try illegal psychoactive or mind-altering
drugs. Not only curiosity but also inability to resist peer pressure can be the first step to these
activities. When they drink or experiment with drugs only occasionally and for recreational purposes,
it can be quite risky but in many cases it can be without any negative long-term consequences.
Situation gets much worse when they smoke, drink or take drugs on a regular basis because one day
they may find out that they are on a slippery slope that leads to full-blown addiction. Cigarettes,
alcohol and drugs can have a very negative impact on our physical health, mental well-being, social
life, personal relationships and future career prospects.

Smokers are at higher risk of suffering from respiratory diseases, lung cancer and other types of
cancer, heart diseases and so on. Heavy or regular drinking can damage liver, stomach, brain and other
vitally important body parts. Alcohol kills brain cells and people who drink too much for long periods
of time can go through dramatic mental changes as well – their cognitive skills such as memory or
concentration can deteriorate and their personality can change as well. They can become more
careless, aggressive or demoralised than they used to be before they started to drink. The same can be
said also about illegal drugs, especially those which are highly addictive such as heroin, pervitin etc.
Drug addicts or people addicted to alcohol often deny their addiction and only when it is too late do
they realize that if they want to give up their destructive habits, they are not able to do so on their own
and they need professional medical help in health centres dealing with addiction and providing
psychotherapy or psychiatric rehabilitation. Recovering from addiction can be a long and complicated
process. Unfortunately, statistics show that drug addicts who get over their addiction often tend to fall
back into their addiction unless they get a lot of social support from their families and friends.

e) predstavy mladých o budúcnosti (očakávania, túžby, obavy)

I would say that young people are full of expectations and ideas about their future. They have a lot of
ambitions and dreams, some of which might come true while others will remain just unrealistic
fantasies. Due to the fact that growing up is not easy at all and young people are quite critical towards
the flaws they observe in other people and towards negative phenomena in the world such as social
injustice or suffering of other people and animals, many of them hope they will be able to make the
world a better place. Their dreams and expectations can be divided into two main categories:

First, they dream about their own personal achievements in their life which is ahead of them. They
hope to become successful in their chosen professional career and they hope that they will be loved,
admired and respected by their partners and friends. They believe they will be able to avoid making
the same mistakes which their parents made.

Second, they dream about living in a better and safer world than we live in today. They are aware of
all the dangers and challenges of modern society such as environmental problems, unrestricted
technological progress with its unpredictable impact on human relationships and labour market, social
injustice, ignorance, cruelty and war.

Some youngsters are more optimistic and ambitious than others who might sometimes be
overwhelmed by pessimism and worries. The main worries of young people include insecurity, lack of
love and understanding, failures in studying, career or personal relationships and fear of being socially
isolated or unable to succeed in fierce competition which dominates certain areas of life.

Whether we like it or not, the future of our society lies in the hands of those people who are young
today, so we should help them make the right choices and support them in difficult times – after all,
the young generation consists of people who will inherit the world with all its positive and negative
features created by previous generations.