Studying Reasons Why Teens Turn to Violence
Violence committed by teenage boys and girls, against their peers or others, has become all-too-commonplace, from gritty urban streets to pristine suburban developments. No community is immune to this problem.
Such violence stems from multiple causes rooted in normal adolescence. During that time, a teenager gradually detaches from childlike ways of thinking, feeling and behaving to become an individual less dependent on adults.
Ideally, healthy development encourages the teen to incorporate positive values of home and community while allowing constructive expression of self.
Yet circumstances may produce unhealthy consequences instead. Teen boys, for example, are looking for ways to understand and express their masculinity. Many of them, unfortunately, have no father or consistent male role model in their lives. Yet television, movies and music videos provide more models than needed of violent male behavior, posture and accouterments.
For many teens, the message they receive nearly constantly is that masculinity and violence are intertwined. Parental support and involvement, whether from the mother or father, is critical to preventing teen violence.
A parent sets limits, demonstrates acceptable behavior and offers guidance. However, many teens are left on their own during after-school hours, when trouble often brews.
Role models in the community, such as members of the clergy, educators, Big Brothers or coaches, are also important in preventing teen violence.
Other family attitudes also help shape a teen’s susceptibility to using violence. In homes where children are raised by adults who use corporal punishment, the youngsters learn that aggression is an acceptable way to deal with anger and disagreement.
If the adults use racial or ethnic stereotypes about certain people, the teens also learn to see such people as inferior. The result: teens who are more willing to direct anger and violence at people different from themselves. Some teens act violently only when in groups of friends among whom acceptance depends upon violent actions. Others commit violence only when alone. And there are those who are violent in either circumstance.
Teen gangs offer a special attraction for adolescents lacking emotional support at home. The gang provides a separate world, with its own rules about dress, behavior and activities. A gang differs sharply from a group of teens who simply hang out together. Gang members close themselves off as completely as possible from outside influences. In a gang, teens are encouraged to use violence to protect the group or bolster its reputation. Violence may even be an initiation requirement for joining the gang, the postulated reason for a series of recent New York City slashing attacks on strangers.
Early signs that a teen may be engaged in gang activity include: an increasing willingness to break rules, becoming defensive when questioned about activities and friends, school attendance or performance dropping drastically, wearing specific colors of clothing or emblems, putting burned-in marks or tattoos on the body.
Some school districts have embarked on efforts at ending teen violence by instituting conflict resolution programs. These projects, in which teens often counsel other teens on how to find nonaggressive ways to deal with problem situations, need to be developed and encouraged further.