Damar Harsanto, Jakarta – Young people in the capital have more permissive attitudes towards pornography, homosexuality, drug abuse and violence than their older siblings, according to one survey.
"We are witnessing a radical change in norms and values of our young people in the community," chief executive officer of the non-governmental organization Cinta Anak Bangsa Foundation (YCAB) Veronica Colondam said during a media gathering on Thursday.
YCAB conducted a series of focus group discussions involving 754 students aged between 15 and 17 from 23 mostly private junior and senior high schools, in the capital in 2004.
Quoting results of the discussions, Veronica said that one in two students had a permissive attitude toward pornography.
"The result also shows that one in three has a positive attitude toward homosexuality, while one in five has a positive stance against illicit drugs or violence," Veronica added.
She attributed the situation to strong influences of peer groups where the teens live, coupled with the failure of the education system to build strong a personality in every youngster. Those things, she added, would give them the ability to make and defend her/his own decision, especially if it differed from the rest of their group.
"Such a situation is quite alarming, especially when it comes to drug abuse," she asserted. "That's why we are focusing on efforts to empower the teenagers through personality programs to allow them to have stronger self-protection to fend off negative influences from their peer groups and instead encourage other teenagers to create their own positive activities in order to improve their environment," she said.
Last year, the foundation, which focuses on preventive measures to stave off drug abuse among students aged between 13 and 19, managed to include 57,618 students in its seven-hour training, of whom 8,503 became volunteer to take part in the battle against drug abuse and drug trafficking.
"I think all parties in the communities, including the government, have to have an immediate response to the alarming situation. Otherwise, at the end of the day, we will all feel deep remorse for failing to take the necessary action to save our children," she implored.
Dede Shinta Sudono, a national program officer on the elimination of child labor with the International Labor Organization (ILO) also emphasized that there was a strong link to how and where young people live to drug abuse and drug trafficking.
"Based on a research we did with a number of street youths in East Jakarta, we discovered that they are at high risk of drug abuse or drug trafficking, as they spend lots of their time on the streets hanging out with older people," Dede said.
Dede said 90 of the 92 street youths aged between 14 and 19 acknowledged that they had started using drugs when they were 13 and 28 of them had become drug pushers to pay for their drug habit.
'Second child prone to drugs?'
YCAB says that between 60 percent and 70 percent of teenagers addicted to drugs that seek counseling from YCAB are second children in their family. "This trend has been consistent over the past three years. But we have yet to carry out in-depth research on that," Veronica said.
Preliminary analyses show that the second child, especially in a family of three children, receives greater psychological pressure than her/his siblings amid poor parenting skills of their parents, forcing them to resort to drug abuse.
"Parents' bad attitudes of comparing one child to another child often does more harm than good," YCAB's counseling manager Elsar DA Hayer said.