Many cases sexual abuse of minors have been observed recently. According to data from the Greek Police, 400 minors have been victims of violence or robbery since the beginning of the year. The pandemic is to blame—that's the first thought that comes to mind. I believe that The pandemic is just the trigger. Indeed, the lockdown, the fear for the health of our loved ones, and uncertainty about the future have frayed all our nerves, resulting in a sharp increase in incidents of violence across all age groups, including femicides and violence against minors. Recently, a female student stubbed out her cigarette in a classmate’s eye, and another girl had her hair cut off—all of this happened inside schools. Gangs of minors are stealing from and beating up other minors, and the list goes on.
Everyone’s hope is that the pandemic will pass and tensions will subside. Teenage violence, however, is here to stay, because I believe it has other causes as well. It is a product of the education they receive from many sources. Today’s teenagers have grown up surrounded by violence over the past decade. Let’s start with television. Police dramas always feature shootings and murders. A police drama isn’t complete without beatings and murders. That’s to be expected; if you watch period police dramas, however, they contain much less violence. But when our children are overexposed to police dramas—since every channel airs at least one—things get complicated. Add to that the movies shown on private channels, which are full of car chases, car crashes, and, of course, shootings and murders, and we can see that Every child who watches TV sees at least three murders every day. Of course, there’s also a rating indicating that the movie is suitable for viewers 16 and older. It’s simply a disclaimer from whoever is showing the movie or series: “I told you not to watch it; if you did, that’s your problem.” Of course they watch it. I’ve never seen a teenager change the channel because the movie was for adults and he wasn’t. On the contrary, He'll watch it to enjoy the forbidden.
Let’s move on to TV streaming platforms. It’s the same thing—and even worse. TV shows and movies churned out by the bucketful, all with the same content. It’s impossible for the major studios to have enough people with enough ideas to produce thousands of movies and series every year, given that demand is so high. Inevitably, for lack of ideas, they make movies with three murders and five car chases, and they have a product to sell.
We're getting online. Video games are based on—what else?—murders. Our teenagers spend endless hours in front of their screens, playing games—either alone or with online friends—and killing hundreds every day.
Our children, then, are surrounded by violence. No matter what they do, they’ll encounter violence: beatings and killings in excessive doses every day. This is a systematic and continuous “education” that any educational system would envy. Let’s also factor in the the innate tendency of children and adolescents to imitate, since imitation is also a learning process. There are so many things children have learned by imitating: from walking to talking. So, after a decade of being taught to be violent, some teenagers resort to violence. Isn't that to be expected? It would be strange if it didn't happen. Such systematic indoctrination in violence—bordering on brainwashing—is bound to affect some teenagers (fortunately, still only a few).
When you take a country’s culture and systematically copy it, making it your model, you’ll also inherit the problems that this culture creates; they come as a package. We, across Europe as a whole, have fully embraced American culture—not just in movies and TV shows, which the networks buy by the kilo at half price, but everywhere. Let’s look at another example: It’s well known that Anglo-Saxons generally don’t have a cuisine. How did they manage to convince us that they have an exceptional cuisine, and that burgers and cheddar have become trendy? They’re even trying to bring us Halloween, a holiday of Celtic origin, and it has begun to be celebrated—albeit tentatively—in Greece as well. Soon they’ll be bringing us Thanksgiving too, though the… Church might just save us from that.
It makes sense, then, When we copy what the Americans do, we’ll end up with their problems too. Violence in all its forms, including, of course, that committed by minors, is one of America’s major problems; together with gun ownership and ghettos, it makes the violent behavior of our own teenagers seem childish. In America, minors storm into schools armed and kill anyone they come across, as we read about every so often in the news.
In China, by contrast, teenagers are allowed to play online games for only three hours a week. Some would say this amounts to a deprivation of liberty. Of course, it seems excessive to me; such a measure could never be implemented in Europe. In China, there is a different culture and a different political system, and something like this can be implemented; here, certainly not, and quite rightly, such ideas do not exist. However, we can already see who will emerge victorious in the competition between the United States and China in the next generation, based on the development of the younger generation in both countries.
This unchecked exposure of our children to violence, with no oversight whatsoever, does not bode well. Perhaps the pandemic will end at some point, and perhaps we’ll all calm down a bit, Teenage violence, however, is here to stay. This is a systematic indoctrination of adolescents that is not going to stop; consequently, the wave of juvenile violence will continue to rise. If some people are puzzled by the violence that has taken hold of our teenagers, let’s remind them of the old proverb: ’You learn what you’re taught.”.
By Stratos Stratigakis, Mathematician – Researcher, stratig@yahoo.com,
www.stadiodromia.gr
