Effects Of Youth Deviance

Are youths more deviant today then they were in the past?

We now live in a decaying age of youths. We live in a world where nowadays, youths are no longer respecting their families, parents, jobs and especially themselves. It could be said that the levels of deviance in the modern day are relative to those in the past but due to web 2.0 (more known as the ‘new internet’) and the new digital revolution it has become easier – and faster – for those to report and share deviance. Maybe now in the 20th century the levels of deviance seem amplified in relation to the past.

It’s surprising, that even though there has been a drop in recorded crime over the years, the concerns about deviance in young people still remain high. This shows us, as a society,

Deviance refers to young people that could be seen as deviant by society due to the fact that they may differ from mainstream culture. Society has seen this deviant behaviour and has come to the conclusion that youths are becoming immoral. This could relate to Howard Becker’s labelling theory of 1963. This theory states that when criminals are labelled with a particular identity they then accept that label and play up to it.

Deviance in men is a key issue nowadays. A lot of the deviance is caused by young men feeling like they are in a crisis of masculinity; most men don’t feel like they are the breadwinner anymore due to the fact that more women are able to climb the ladder at work and be able to earn the big bucks. Also some jobs now have become increasingly feminised. Due to this, a sense of masculinity has been taken away from them, and because of that, they are turning to crime and deviance to assert themselves and their strength. This can also be seen in young people, as presented in

It is arguable that nowadays we have made things a lot easier for criminals and the rising in consumer goods had created many more opportunities also. Many statistics do not tell the whole story of crime, especially of youth crime. In the same way that statistics are changing, the way crime is being dealt with and criminal behaviour is also changing. An example of this is that before the police got involved with school incidents, teachers and parents dealt with them. An example of this is an incident from 2004, where it was reported that a young 12-year-old boy was arrested and reprimanded after throwing a fork at a girl during an argument in a playground. Even though this crime was far from being seen from police eyes, they still saw a duty to intervene.

As a society we need to recognise that our fear of crime has had very little affect on a risk of falling victim to it. As youth crime rates fall, consistently at that, it does not affect our degree of panic felt about deviant behaviour. We shouldn’t deny that we have issues, our concern for this anti-social behaviour and fear that this crime is committed by our own children. Although, our grasp on this history of this problem of child deviance is more problematic. As we do not understand the issues surrounding this deviance, we fear that it interrupts our respect and relationship between adults and the