Skip to footer

Kids today, what do they know? Turns out, a lot

Fewer young people are engaging in risky behavior than only a quarter century ago. Why this moral shift in the next generation?

|
AP Photo
Paige Petri, a student, poses at Horizon High School, a school that allows teens to get counseling and drug testing while they study alongside other recovering addicts, in Madison, Wis. Petri said she started smoking pot and getting high on cough medicine two years ago. Now a student at Horizon, she said she expects to graduate in a couple of years and that it likely wouldn’t have been possible if not for the Madison school.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

When entrepreneur Eric Greenberg conducted a survey of young Americans for his 2008 book “Generation We,” he found them to be “some of the smartest, most caring, and most spiritually grounded people I have ever met.” They were more mature and responsible than their predecessor generation. Perhaps he was on to something. Recent national data show today’s youth are generally engaging in less risky behavior than a quarter century ago.

In short, teenagers are less likely to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, engage in unsafe sex, or have a baby out of wedlock, according to new federal surveys.

This trend does not mean young people have ceased sowing any wild oats. Kids still seek out some taboos as a rite of passage to adulthood. Vaping, for example, has become popular. And too many young drivers still text behind the wheel.

Yet on the whole, kids are making smarter choices than a generation ago, a moral fact worth celebrating as well as contemplating. Is it due to better parenting? Have schools and government become better at teaching the costs of harmful behavior? Or are young people finding safe alternatives, such as digital entertainment and social media, to occupy their idle time?

Mr. Greenberg’s survey of a decade ago found the most important trait of young people was their belief in “the greater good.” If so, many of this generation showed up for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Yes, they enjoyed taking selfies. But as a group, they displayed a selfless goal in their civic engagement.

For millennials (or those born between 1982 and 1996), more than half feel spiritual peace and well-being at least once a week, according to a Pew survey last year. About three-quarters feel a strong sense of gratitude at least weekly.

Resisting harmful substances or risky behavior is not simply a matter of saying no. And fear of consequences may not be enough. Young people who embrace a higher good or a social cause can more easily shrug off the vices of their peers. Somebody is doing something right to influence these trends.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Kids today, what do they know? Turns out, a lot
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2016/0817/Kids-today-what-do-they-know-Turns-out-a-lot
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe