The menacing youth behaviour

By Sarafina Sanerivi 12 December 2016, 12:00AM

Kaio Le’a, from the village of Nono’a, Saleimoa, believes the behaviour of the youth is becoming too much to handle.

With life moving very fast, Kaio says that the youth are getting easily influenced by everything that’s going on around them whether its alcohol, wasting time with friends, or simply talking back to parents.

One of his concerns is with the female youth who are beginning to act just as rowdy as the boys and he feels that everyone should work together to get a handle on the situation.

“Life is moving very fast,” Kaio explained to the Village Voice.

“There are many influences in the world as everything goes fast and the youth are the ones who adopt these influences. It’s a sad sight but it’s something that can’t really be stopped.

“I speak especially about the female youths; the ones that drop out of school get influenced very easily in the wrong things and it’s not good.

“They are becoming just like the guys, they muck around here and there and they do things that young girls aren’t meant to do. That’s the one of the worries we currently have.

“But speaking in general, the youth are beginning to become a real hassle especially when alcohol is involved.”

Kaio says that although it starts with the parents, he also believes that the bad behaviour begins to escalate once the children begin going to school.

“I feel that most of the influences begin at school,” he said.

“The children go off and they start hanging out together and then the bad apples gets the good ones into a lot of trouble. Then after a few years of that then the good ones also become bad apples.

“Bad company corrupts good character and when that occurs, they drop out of school and cause trouble for the rest of the country.

“Now we have many youths walking around wasting time because they have no jobs.”

The concerned citizen says that there are many options for the youth to use their time wisely and that not having enough jobs around is just a lame excuse.

“If there aren’t many jobs available to the youth then there are still many things they can do to be productive,” he said.

“But the issue here is that the children are just so disobedient. The village council can only do so much to help this situation; the youth need to do their part in life.

“Use your time wisely and be obedient to your eldest. I think the government and their ways of running things is to blame for the behaviour of the youth.

“There is too much leniency shown to the young; I mean, a child can take his dad to the police if he gets a beating. If you spare the rod then you spoil the child.”

But all in all, Kaio says that life in the village is great and that there are no differences with the town and the villages.

“In regards to the development of our village, it is no different to the urban areas,” he said.

“Yes we have village councils who are always helping to keep things in line but whatever is done in Apia is also done here in the villages.”

By Sarafina Sanerivi 12 December 2016, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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