Bishop of Shrewsbury speaks in defence of young people

|PIC1|Every generation frets about young people. Recent headlines have included: 'Teenage sex health crisis due to drink and drugs' (Daily Telegraph), 'Violent Teens batter Partners' (The Sun), and 'Warning of Child Obesity Epidemic' (BBC News). If that is all we read we would think that our young people are in meltdown and everything is hopeless.

Aristotle, writing around three hundred years before the birth of Jesus, said, 'When I look at the younger generation, I despair of the future of civilisation'. Part of the reason for all this angst is that young people need to be different. They like their own fashions and music, and seem to have so much more freedom that the previous generation had.

One writer has coined the phrase 'generational envy' to describe this perennial phenomenon. Yet the strange thing is that when I visit local schools or listen to our young people I find that many of them are hugely positive, motivated and wanting to make the world a better place. They are particularly passionate about the environment.

I also recognise that there are different pressures on young people today. They may have more money, freedom and choice than I had when growing up in rural Wiltshire, but they are growing up in a society which often values you only by your income, the car you drive, your job or your looks. They are battered by advertisements which send out powerful messages about what matters in life and what is acceptable.

This was graphically illustrated when Sony launched a new PlayStation video game called 'Resistance: the Fall of Man'. It included a virtual shoot-out in the nave of Manchester Cathedral in which hundred of enemies were killed. Not surprisingly, there was public uproar.

As a society we have a responsibility for the sort of world that we want our children to grow up in. It was something that Jesus stressed in his chilling words: 'If you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones...it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea' (Matthew 18.6).

As we approach Christmas, let's think of ways we can support our children and young people rather than criticise them. Do we make time to listen to them and encourage them? What messages are we giving in our choice of presents?

One way we can make a difference this Christmas is by making our voice heard as public policy is shaped. The campaigning group MediaWatch-UK (which argues for 'decency and accountability in the media') has launched an online petition to the Prime Minister calling for a substantial reduction in the portrayal of fictional violence. I have put my signature to it. Would you like to do the same? (http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ViolenceonTV).

Alan Smith
Bishop of Shrewsbury
26 November 2007