Risk Factors for Youth

Blog 9

Our world today is much different than how it used to be. There are a lot of advantages, but whole lot more risk factors that play a part in our society today. They mainly will be affecting the youth of this generation. A big risk factor that is prevalent in our society today and goes along with what we have been talking about in this class is attempted suicide in gay and bisexual youth. An article that I found online says, “Studies of human sexuality have noted high rates of suicide among homosexual youth” (Remafedi, Farrow, and Deisher, 1991). The article goes on to explain that this happens more frequently in male youth. This type of risk factor affects me as teacher because as a teacher, you spend countless hours with students and sometimes more than their parents do. It is important to inform them and get to know your students in order to prevent these types of issues.

Another risk factor that has become a prominent thing in our society today is cyber bullying. I bring this up because technology is so prevalent in our society and about every young person has some type of technology. Children are getting cell phones at a younger age and even know more about technology than their parents or adults, which is quite scary. An interesting fact that I found online about cyber bullying says, “Over 80% of teens use a cell phone regularly, making it the most common medium for cyber bullying” (11 Facts About Cyber Bullying,). Children and teens need to be informed of what is out there and how technology can be dangerous to them and even cause detrimental side effects along with putting them in harms way. This is not to take away from how beneficial technology can be for students and teachers, but the more that is available the more consequences that arise. This affects me as a teacher because the use of technology will need to be limited in the classrooms because it does pose a distraction. The main issue is that cyber bullying is very hard to detect because as a teacher you can not just take a child’s phone and start looking through it.

Works Cited

Risk Factors for Attempted Suicide in Gay and Bisexual Youth. (1991, June 1).

Retrieved March 28, 2014, from

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/87/6/869.short

11 Facts About Cyber Bullying. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-cyber-bullying

Save for later