'Modern Youth' and what to do about it

I am writing this on holiday in a less-developed SE Asian country, where in one town I watched (western) ‘modern youth’ partying loudly and hard.  They were perhaps not the best ambassadors for their generation; while there was no malice, there was also little respect for local customs, or even thought for others who were in the same space as the party crowd, especially those who were living on a few dollars a day.  Apparently the scene was far better than it had been a few years ago when police were frequently involved, but I had to stop myself thinking unkind thoughts about young people today.  I know better, as a Principal, that the kind, caring young adults vastly outnumber the others – but even leaving my own experiences aside, there are two interesting perspectives here.

Firstly, ‘twas always thus.  Greek poet Hesiod wrote I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... the present youth are exceedingly.. [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint nearly three thousand years ago!  I doubt he was the first; he was certainly not the last, with medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer writing about youth language and slang, and 15th century writer Thomas Malory about youngsters ruining marriage by being too eager to jump into bed.  Recent incarnations about millennials can be found here and here, for example – and so really, me worrying about ‘modern youth’ likely says far more about me getting old than about anything else.

Secondly, and much more importantly, if there is any problem (perhaps the generations of complaining indicate that there has always been a problem) then why aren't we doing something about it?  And that’s the topic of this post – the remarkable success that one country has had when it decided that it really wanted to tackle what it saw as the problem.  And when I say ‘tackle’ I mean a serious attempt that involves resources and political capital, not just easy soundbites and rhetoric. 

The graphic tells a story of 15-16 year olds in Iceland over the last 17 years.  Rates of drunkenness in the last month down from 42% to 5%; daily smoking down from 23% to 3% and cannabis use down from 17% to 7%.    These are astonishing successes – but what’s even more heart-warming is that it has been accompanied by other signs of social cohesion - between 1997 and 2012, the percentage of kids aged 15 and 16 who reported often or almost always spending time with their parents on weekdays doubled from 23% to 46% and the percentage who participated in organised sports at least four times a week increased from 24% to 42%.

  

I am drawing here from the World Economic Forum (2018) article, which is well worth reading in its entirety. 

One set of changes was obvious – legislation: the legal age of tobacco and alcohol purchase were raised to 18 and 20; tobacco and alcohol advertising were banned.  Beyond these, clear differences between the lives of kids who took up drinking, smoking and other drugs, and those who didn’t led to pursuit of four protective factors:

l   participation in organised activities – especially sport – three or four times a week,

l   not being outdoors in the late evenings.

l   total time spent with parents during the week,

l   feeling cared about at school

The programme in Iceland largely centered around how to achieve these factors at scale. The first factor  received substantial state funding – with new sport, music, art, dance and other clubs, and, some regions using incentives such as Leisure Cards to give families 35,000 krona (some 320USD) per year per child to pay for recreational activities.  The second factor involved passing a curfew for children aged between 13 and 16, and parental walks around neighbourhoods to identify children breaking the rules.

While I might vote for either of these initiatives, as a Principal and parent I am generally more interested in what’s in my control, and here the third and fourth points come into play.  In Iceland parent-school links were strengthened through parental organisations in every school. Programmes were set up to encourage parents to attend talks on the importance of spending a quantity of time with their children rather than occasional ‘quality time’, on talking to their kids about their lives, on knowing who their kids were friends with, and on keeping their children home in the evenings (WEF 2018).  To this end, agreements for parents to sign were introduced, with flexibility for schools to adapt them.  Parents could pledge to follow all the recommendations, and also, for example, not to allow their kids to have unsupervised parties, not to buy alcohol for minors, and to keep an eye on the wellbeing of other children.  (WEF 2018).

As far as the fourth factor goes, programmes in schools focused on improving young adults’ thoughts about themselves and their lives, and the way they interacted with other people.  That’s different to the usual ‘just say no’ approach – because one works, and one doesn’t.   The main principle was that drug education doesn’t work because nobody pays attention to it.... [Whereas] what is [actually]needed are the life skills to act on that information says psychologist Harvey Milkman.

While none of these four factors are exactly surprising, they do need interpretation in any given context; there is no magic bullet here.  For example, the WEF report notes that in one un-named Baltic country, participation in organised sport actually emerged as a risk factor – because it turns out that many clubs run by young ex-military men involved  muscle-building drugs, drinking and smoking.  So we need to proceed with care.

But to me the message is clear; that if we are concerned about the behaviours of our youngsters then hand-wringing is a self-indulgent and self-serving luxury unless it is accompanied by data-informed action.  So it comes down to our collective social will to look after our children. Finnish student Annika Koljonen is scathing about the measures we are used to talking about in the UK, where you tell people to try harder, eat better, smoke less, and exercise more – implying it is all down to the individual.  We can do better than that, as parents, schools and societies.

References

Arnett, D. (2017) Millennials ruining everything? It’s an age-old accusation. Boston Globe

Koljonen, A (2018) Life expectancy is rising in Finland – unlike in the UK. What’s going right? The Guardian

Proud, A (2015) Crybaby millennials need to stop whinging and work hard like the rest of us.  The Telegraph.

Rugeri, A (2017) People have always complained about youg people.  Here’s proof.  BBC News.

Roberts, B. W., Edmonds, G, Grajalva, E. (2017) It Is Developmental Me, Not Generation Me. Perspectives in Psychological Sciences. 2010 Jan 1; 5(1): 97–102

World Economic Forum (2018) Here's how Iceland radically cut teenage drug use