The current society is experiencing a lot of dynamic changes which act as a significant deterrent on the behaviors of young people. Youths in the contemporary world are faced with multiple challenges such as those pertaining to mental wellbeing. A majority of these problems are which emanate from mental disorder and substance use. Aspects such as social environment, societal policies and cues, structural racism and media messages contribute to challenges experienced by teens in negative ways as shown following sections.
Social environment
This involves the immediate physical and social setting in which an adolescent live. Family being the immediate context has a large impact on a child’s emotions. Frequent instabilities and conflicts in families may cause stress in the youths which may lead them to finding comfort in substance use. Other cases such as abusive parents, family economic hardships, harassment in schools among others may lead to anger, aggression and other mental disorders of the adolescents.
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Societal policy and cues
The societal policies and cues determine how well a teenager feels comfortable during some undertakings. A society where there are no legal restrictions such that teenagers interact with harmful social networks may accelerate the cases of substance use. Moreover, most youths are so conscious about their social image and what people think about them. Negative perception affects their mental disorder which results from frustration and anxiety. For instance, when such young people post their image via social networks and people critic or body shame them, they become depressed.
Structural racism
This occurs where youth from one ethnic affiliation view others as being better themselves. For instance, in a school, one of the group may tend to be favored while the other is undermined. As a result the teenager form the undermined group becomes demoralized and tend to view themselves as lesser beings and in order for them to escape form such reality, they result to substance use. The youth also end up becoming isolated since they belong to the minority group and this may incapacitate their mental state
Media messages
Among the social networking sites, Instagram tend to cause the greatest negative effect on the mind of young people, especially teenagers suffering from comorbidities. Most youths tend to perceive the lives of other people as being better than their own; these culminates to mental disorders. Young people are easily moved by explicit content and also that which tend to be glorified by the media by viewing other young people indulging in drug influence. They take up such behaviors because they believe they are socially acceptable.
To sum it all up, it is apparent that social environment, societal policies and cues, structural racism and media messages have damaging effect on the problems associated with adolescents. They culminate to dangerous behavior such as drug abuse and mental disorders. Consequently, awareness should be created to the people especially parents on how to create an enabling environment as their children transit from childhood to adulthood.
