WRITING:

Recent figures show an increase in violent crime among youngster under the age of 18. Some psychologist
claim that the basic reason for this is that children these day are not getting the social and emotional
learning they need from parents and teachers.
To what extent do you agree or disagree?

The nurturing of young people – the future of a nation has always been attracting concern from the
public, however, the number of crimes among people under 18 has recently increased, especially that of
violent offences. This has led some psychologist to attribute this to children’s lack of social and emotional
lessons taught by their parents and teachers. Personally, I strongly disagree with this belief in view of the
prevalence of violence on social media and the influence of their peers on teenagers, the most suggestible
subjects.

Firstly, teenagers nowadays are bombarded with an increasing amount of violence on many means of
media. Being digital natives, they have a tendency to glue to the screen and spend excessive hours
watching TV, which therefore lead to their overwhelming exposure to the violence currently presented in
many films. This therefore instills a belief that violence is normal into those suggestible people,
provoking them to commit such types of crime. Moreover, social media are contributory to the spread of
violence among young people. By allowing a number of users with bad purposes to reach a widespread
audience, such applications as Facebook and Youtube are poisoning the young minds with morally
unacceptable ideas, resulting in an alarming surge in the crime rates. For example, the hoax of Momo has
not once worried the parents and authorities since it challenged the children and teenagers to commit
suicide and other crimes.

Secondly, being in the vulnerable period of puberty, many teenagers resort to violent crimes as a way to
assert themselves to their friends. Unknown of more acceptable ways such as volunteering, many young
people want to prove their strength to their peers, often in the form of violence. This has not only
resulted in the increasing amount of violence, but also the vulnerability of both those bullying and being
bullied, which can have devastating effects on the following generations and the society as a crime-
ridden one. Furthermore, seeing the prevalence of bullying in their surroundings, teenagers are
enormously affected. In order to be in tune with their peers, they may resort to violent offences for fear
of being left out, and this gradually leads them to believe that physical abuse is a norm. In the long term,
more and more teenagers are easily provoked into offending the law as a way of venting their negative
emotions, impoverishing the social morality.

In conclusion, given the violence-ridden social media and influential peers’ effects on the teenagers, to
say that lack of parental and teacher moral lessons is a fundamental cause to the increasing violent crime
rates is untenable. Hence, a strict censorship on the violence in social media means and heavy
punishments on real-life physical abuse are advisable for the sake of the young generations.