Mandatory Community Service Essay

In our day and age, tenagers are becoming more and more lonely and distant. With technology on the rise, teens are no longer going out with friends and taking extracurriculars, rather they spend time on social media and watching TV. Our generation of teenagers are slowly becoming more and more antisocial and less active, empathetic, and happy. One major change that can help our generation of teenagers would be making community service mandatory for high schoolers. Not only can this change help teenagers become more active in the community and social, it can also greatly help the community. Community service and volunteers are always needed, and who better to do the job then teenagers? This can push teenagers to get out of the house, make friends,

According to Mandatory Volunteerism by Arthur Stukas, Mark Snyder, and E. Gil Clary, it is very important not to force teenagers into community service. Since studies found that community service requirements can have negative effects on “students’ intention to volunteer freely in the future” it is important for these programs to be crafted better. For example, it was suggested that these programs should contain an “element of free choice and offer programs that allow students to choose the type of volunteer activity they will engage in.” This is extremely important since it will help students enjoy their experience doing community service and help “students who initially did not what to volunteer” find that they actually enjoy helping others “if the requirements were applied gently.”

I believe that it is clear that high schools should make community service mandatory in whatever method or approach they deem necessary. Community service can help high schoolers in many ways, including their character, development and education. Making community service mandatory for high schools can also clearly improve and help the community immensely. Although special attention should be made on how mandatory community service is applied and enforced, making community service mandatory for high schoolers truly cannot do much harm. It is clear that community service is simply something that “needs to be