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Essay on How does Modern Society have a Negative Impact on Adolescents?
Communities and institutions that surround adolescents are increasingly challenged by the changing social and economic conditions in society. These conditions include the decline in economic security for poor and middle-class families, the increase in the number of single-parent households, and the rise in the number of neighborhoods with concentrated poverty that are spatially and socially isolated from middle- and working-class areas. Such trends place enormous stresses on public and private institutions--neighborhoods, schools, the health care delivery system, the workplace, and employment and training centers.
For adolescents to be successful in a society that offers many choices and challenges, it is abundantly clear that they need support from all the settings and social institutions that make up a community. Patterns of residential transience, often generated by poverty, represent another neighborhood factor that can influence youth development. Frequent household moves, disruptions in daily routines caused by unrelated individuals entering or departing the household, and mobility among neighbors can undermine community ties, weaken support networks, and reduce privacy. However, such transience does not inevitably disrupt development if adolescents have opportunities to sustain relationships with trusted adults.
Encounters with neighborhoods are shaped not only by parenting processes and children's experiences, but also by class, gender, and ethnicity. There is a great deal of evidence that suggests that social class influences the character of the neighborhood organization and culture. For example, many poor adolescents are growing up in racially segregated and economically isolated neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods, a high proportion of adults are poor, unemployed, on welfare, or single parents. Research shows that these adolescents are in fact at increased risk for school failure and dropping out of school, unintended pregnancy, abuse of alcohol and other drugs, delinquency, and victimization and perpetration of violence........
