THE RISE OF AGGRESSION IN YOUTH

With the rise in the number of cases of road rage, accidents, physical and verbal fights, shootings, especially those involving the youth, aggression among the youth has become a major concern. Given that youth is considered as the future of a nation, a question that arises is that where is our country heading, who is to blame for this and what are the factors involved. 

According to a report by National Institute of Health, about 17.7% of the youth has high mean aggression score on Buss-Perry Aggression Scale. Males have high mean score on aggression than females. They experienced more verbal and physical aggression and anger than females. Younger age group (16-19 years) experienced more aggression than older age group (20-26 years). 

We see that a major distinction can be made in the levels of aggression based on gender, with males being more aggressive. While aggression can be caused by various factors like childhood trauma, psychological issues, family violence, alcohol and drug abuse, mood swings, loneliness and others, the reason for a more violent expression among males could be directly linked to social conditioning. The believe that an aggressive violent male is more masculine as compared to a calm male, impacts the youth adversely and the immaturity leads to aggression. Further, the kind of content being published and consumed by the youth promotes the normalisation of abuse, be it verbal or physical. 

Talking about economic disparity and aggression, a clear relation can be sited. While the youth of the weaker sections of society is prey to inequality, a neighbourhood of patriarchal society due to lack of education and childhood trauma arising from lack of basic necessities, the upper class youth is often prey to substance abuse, and peer pressure in terms of materialism where they can’t accept “no” as an answer to anything. All these factors contribute to the overall aggression among youth. 

A solution to this could be the rise in awareness of healthy parenting, a stricter transformative judicial approach, bridging the inequality, regulation in content in terms of age and mental health sessions in government and private schools. An easy let out of emotions where dialogue is encouraged could be of great help.