America's young people

Thinking about America’s young people. They’re only a few years past puberty. Their brains won’t be fully developed for another 8-10 years. They aren’t capable of making consistently good decisions. They want to become adults without really knowing what that means. The village and its guiding rituals are gone. Sometimes even parents are gone. Becoming healthy individuals is hard work. Taking a new identity in the family is hard work. When mentors are scarce, peers yield an influence which is not always constructive.

What does the larger society have to offer? Celebrities hawking products to wield influence and make money for themselves and their corporate bosses. Teens recruited as influencers. Seductive commercials for clothes, tobacco products and alcohol. Easy accessibility of drugs. Marketing of style with no substance, all to get at the lucrative young adult market. Unrelenting messaging that wants are actually needs.

Entertainment media and social media are out to grab, manipulate and influence those in this easily tapped market. A steady diet of violence, sexuality and twisted images of manhood and womanhood are there at the touch of a remote.

I think that deep down young people understand their life task of individuation, and want to make this happen. But they need guides and mentors, especially when society finds profit in thwarting them.