Generation Gap

Life isn’t easy at all, especially for teenagers. Teens pass trough different periods during their development, and these periods are determined by changes of mood, by a flow of conflicts (inner, social), but the most frequent are the family conflicts, called as well generation gap, that means also : the difference in the attitude, priorities, and views among generations. Thus, this generation gap has always been there but these days it has reached to an explosive stage, so as, the values and patterns of life have changed to a great extent. Likewise, today, everybody likes to live and behave in his own way, to be left by his own, to be free. This attitude has widened the generation gap. It is now destroying family life . The elders look after the children and make all sorts of sacrifices to bring them up. Naturally, they feel they have a right over them. As a result, they want their children to follow their instructions as they have certain expectations from them. But the children, when they grow up, want a complete freedom in their thoughts and actions and unfortunately their thoughts and actions are just opposite to those expected by the elders. They revolt when any kind of restrictions are imposed on them. Consequently, some families break up and everything may get ruined. At the same time, the complexities of life are rising every decade, and problems intensify mainly when parents forget how did they behave, what problems did they encounter and what feelings did they have when they were children, especially teenagers. For otherwise ,when the teens enter the stormy problem of generation gap , it comes out with greater intensity than ever. For them, at this age, their friends suddenly become important , and they try to ignore parents. On the contrary, there are parents that ignore teens because of work problems, or personal ones. And eventually, parents or teens get mad, because they suffer from lack of affection. This causes great anxiety to parents and the misunderstandings increase between the children and the parents. The technological advances play a great rule in enlarging the gap as the younger generations are quicker to accept and adopt these technologies , so that, they consider the elders of their families very old fashioned in their tastes, opinions and out looks toward life. On the other hand, the older people don’t like the modern values which they call the " internet" and "globalization" values. They consider the young generation shallow, lacking knowledge and moral depth. This difference can best be seen in the difference of interests and hobbies. To sum up, conflicts between generations will always exist, and the gap is getting bigger because of the modernization, because of the technology , and the appearance of new interests and values. The desire of freedom is developing every year, as a result, the problems and complexities of life intensifies also. There are parents that ignore their children and children that ignore their parents, and that leads to misunderstands and quarrels….Even if we can not make the generation gap disappear, we can reduce it’s depth by communication and going out on vacations together , watching movies or by evening family outings.