Addressing Youth Violence: Challenges and Solutions

Violence is the expression of intentional behavior by one or more people that causes, or may cause, physical or psychological harm to others. It manifests itself through aggressive, unjustified, illegitimate or illegal acts, which are distinguished by their malignancy and offensive tendency against the physical, mental or moral integrity of other people. There are several types of violence, including physical abuse, mental abuse, and sexual abuse.

Youth violence can be carried out by young people in isolation or developed by groups of boys who come together with the aim of participating in violent activities.

Statistically, youth violence has a higher incidence among boys of the male sex, of the middle class, with family problems, from developed and prosperous societies and whose age ranges between 14 and 18 years.

What is the profile of a violent young man?

The personality traits that are usually present in a young person who exerts violence are:

• It has a high tendency to aggressiveness, strong impulsivity, hyperactivity, low capacity for reflection and lack of control over anger.
• He has achieved little socialization since childhood, with few friends and great difficulties in maintaining them.
• Seeks the pleasure and immediate satisfaction of your needs and desires.
• Shows coldness, little empathy, with difficulties to identify their own emotions and those of others.
• They tend to express a defensive, defiant attitude, perceiving signs of threat and aggression in others, and misinterpreting their intentions.
• He believes himself to be self-sufficient, but at the same time he frequently uses and manipulates his relatives to achieve his immediate goals.
• Has a low feeling of guilt about the violent acts carried out and tries to justify them. He despises the rights of others.
• Has a low tolerance for frustration.
• Has a great inability to accept norms or limits of family, school and social environments in general.
• It lacks the ability to negotiate, compromise or yield.
• He has underdeveloped social skills, with high difficulties for the proper resolution of the conflicts that arise.
• Shows a clear tendency to face problems through force and imposition.

What are the factors or causes that influence a violent youth to develop?

Youth violence is a complex social phenomenon, affected by a large number and variety of factors that can promote its development. The presence of some of these factors does not necessarily lead to the development of a violent youth. It is always the conjunction of several factors that makes it easier for a violent profile to develop with greater probability.

Among the most prominent are:

• Psychological problems and personality disorders: young people with poor self-esteem, with a prevalence of feelings of inferiority, self-conscious, and with high integration difficulties among their peers. Boys with certain personality disorders that are not cared for and treated properly.
• The family environment is the one with the greatest influence on the development of violence. One of the causes of this problem is due to the fact that the parents have not set the necessary limits and norms since childhood, nor have they applied consequences to certain inappropriate attitudes or behaviors, leaving them unpunished. This neglect of responsibility as parents is characterized by a carefree attitude, with a tendency to grant and yield to any request of the children, a fact that denotes an educational style without any type of authority, in which everything is allowed.
• Likewise, another attitude that can promote the development of a violent young person is that of parents who show emotions of rejection or abandonment towards their children and frequently humiliate or mistreat them, while expressing violent behaviors before them, becoming role models. imitate.
• In the school environment, the school can facilitate the development or consolidation of these violent behaviors, for example, by not having paid the necessary attention and not having adequately managed the cases of students with learning, social integration, or bullying difficulties .
• Likewise, an excessively lax, ambiguous or inconsistent educational system, in which teachers do not assume the necessary responsibilities towards their students, can lead them to exceed certain limits without receiving consequences and without learning to manage conflicts and difficulties that may appear between they.
• In the social sphere, youth violence is a reflection of social violence. The encouragement of certain aggressive models, the excessive valuation of power, effortless success, consumerism, extreme competitiveness, individualism and the pursuit of immediate pleasure can influence the young person to overvalue all these tendencies and adopt them as his own. For young people, societies involve certain dangers that can favor an outbreak of youth violence, such as, for example, the fact of talking excessively about rights and little about duties, with the idea of ​​deserving to have everything without having to earn it or wait to get it.
• Societies with great differences in socioeconomic status and with the impossibility of progression or improvement can favor the eruption of violence, as well as the broadcasting of violent programs in the media can lead young people to imitation and to tolerance or justification of the use of the violence.
• Other social factors most related to the possibility of the appearance of aggressiveness in young people are easy access to alcohol and drugs, as well as the use of video games with high explicit violence, which can influence the learning and practice of aggressive solutions to conflicts.

How to prevent youth violence?

Violence prevention is everyone's responsibility: parents, family members, educators, psychologists, pedagogues, sociologists, politicians, the media, etc. In any case, it is also very important to bear in mind that the main protective factor against violence is the family and the school, and it is essential to work on it from childhood.

Parents must exercise an authority from affection and love, establishing constant and consistent limits and norms. It is essential, at the same time, to transmit and practice values ​​such as solidarity, tolerance, responsibility, motivation and appreciation of effort, cooperation, respect for others, sexual equality and cultural plurality. Spending time with children, reinforcing desirable attitudes, valuing them, teaching them to handle frustration, identifying specific problems that they may have and accompanying them in the appropriate resolution are recommended guidelines that parents should carry out to prevent the emergence of violence within the Family nucleus.

From school, it is also important to do violence prevention work, coordinated with families, to teach the aforementioned values ​​and develop the necessary skills.

Before any problem, always consult a specialist in behavior problems, he has a large team of Pediatricians and Psychologists.