Where I Stand — Jarvis Graham: Stressing family values

Friday, Jan. 2, 2004 | 9:31 a.m.

Editor's note: Nearly 900 students from 41 high schools participated in the 48th annual Sun Youth Forum on Nov. 25. The students were divided into groups to discuss various topics. A spokesperson was chosen from each group to write a column about the students' findings. Jarvis Graham of Las Vegas Academy writes about the views from her discussion group, "Teen Topics."

AS I WALKED into the room where our group met, I noticed a certain diversity that I knew would create an effective discussion. I sat down, looked through my notes, took a deep breath and eagerly awaited the start of our day.

As our moderator opened the room up for discussion, there was dead silence, but then the first subject was thrown out: What is the importance of family values in today's society? Comments started flying.

Family values are very weak, especially in Las Vegas. We are a town based on gaming and have few community standards, one student said. But family values start with the family, another argued.

The responses to these two comments were overwhelming, ranging from strong agreement to strong disagreement. Another point brought up was that family values had a lot to do with morals.

Our moderator threw out the question: Have morals declined in our society? Morals haven't declined, but they have changed, one student said. Many people in our group agreed, because our generation is like none before.

Family values and morals have changed much because teenagers are independent and stressed. More often than ever we are active in school with tons of homework, clubs and sports. On top of all of that, many teens have jobs.

These jobs we have -- so we are able to buy ourselves things we like, so we don't have to ask our parents -- are actually tearing us away from our parents, something that is creating a gap in communication. This is causing the family time we used to have to decrease, which in turn causes family values to go down.

Widespread drug abuse among teens was another topic we discussed. As a group, we collectively agreed that drug abuse is getting to younger and younger kids. Many teens are more accepting of drugs. They think everybody else is doing drugs but, in actuality, they are not.

We concluded that the reason many younger teens think all teens are doing drugs is because of the way the media portray us. Whenever they talk about teenagers, they often show the bad things we are doing or how much trouble we are getting into. Many younger teens just see that and assume it's the truth.

Also, peer pressure has a major effect on teen drug abuse. Peer pressure has started to become so detrimental to teens that they are more reliant on their friends than on their families. Now some teens have taken their friends, or these so-called families, and have turned them into gangs because they feel they are all they have.

This leads to the question: Are gangs just an aspect of society that we need to accept? There were few comments on this but one central idea was that we do not have to accept it, but we must know it is there.

As we continued to discuss other topics, from violence at home to teen obesity, I realized that family values have a way of sneaking into all aspects of a teen's life. Not to say family values are the only thing we discussed, but I feel it was the lead discussion topic.

In the end I feel that our group was highly successful in its discussion. We were extremely diverse, so we had comments coming from all aspects of teen life.

I believe that discussing things is the only way people are going to understand the point of view any person is coming from, and I truly know that we achieved a discussion that will help everyone understand other teens a little bit more.