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Youth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Youth (disambiguation).
A group of college women in the United States, 1973.

Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood, but it can also refer to being teenager.[1] This is the time when children go through significant psychological, social and emotional development as they approach adulthood[2]. The World Health Organization WHO recognizes this phase as a phase from 10 to 19 years old[3], while in Germany youth is considered as a period from 12 to 19 years old, it is during this period when young people separate from their parents and build their own families, join the armed forces, have the right to vote and can even claim a certain level of protection such as work and parental support[4], while in Bulgaria and Denmark youth is recognized as a phase between 14 and 18 years old, while in Greece children are considered people up to 12 years old and young people are people from 12 to 18 years old.[5] The suicide rate among young people has declined significantly to 85,051 in recent years, suicide was one of the main causes of death among young people aged 10 to 19 according to a recent study which seeks to investigate the cause of death among young people[6].

Terminology and definitions

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Students of a U.S. university do an outdoor class, where they discuss topics while walking.
Youth in Afghanistan

General

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Around the world, the English terms youth, adolescent, teenager, kid, youngster and young person often mean the same thing,[7] but they are occasionally differentiated. Youth can be referred to as the time of life, when one is young. The meaning may in some instances also include childhood.[8][9] Youth also identifies a particular mindset of attitude, as in "He is very youthful".[10] The term in itself when referred to in a manner of social position can be ambiguous when applied to someone of an older age with very low social position; potentially when still dependent on their guardians.[11] Scholars argue that age-based definitions have not been consistent across cultures or times and that thus it is more accurate to focus on social processes in the transition to adult independence for defining youth.[12]

"This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease." – Robert Kennedy[13]

Youth is the stage of constructing the self-concept. The self-concept of youth is influenced by variables such as peers, lifestyle, gender, and culture.[14] It is a time of a person's life when their choices are most likely to affect their future.[15][16]

Youth rights

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Main article: Youth rights
Youth rights
Activities
Theory / concepts
Issues
Organizations
People
Related

Children's rights cover all the rights that belong to children. When they grow up, they are granted new rights (like voting, consent, driving, etc.) and duties (criminal response, etc.). There are different minimum limits of age at which youth are not free, independent or legally competent to take some decisions or actions. Some of these limits are: voting age, age of candidacy, age of consent, age of majority, age of criminal responsibility, drinking age, driving age, etc. After youth reach these limits, they are free to vote, have sexual intercourse, buy or consume alcoholic beverages or drive cars, etc.

Voting age

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Main article: Voting age

Voting age is the minimum age set by law that a person must reach in order to be eligible to vote in a public election. Generally, the age is set between 16 and 18 years. Studies show that 21% of all 18-year-olds have experience of voting. This is an important right because by voting, they can support policies that they themselves have chosen, not just those of older generations.

Age of candidacy

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Main article: Age of candidacy

The age of candidacy is the minimum age for a person to hold some lower office. In most countries, it is 18 years to legally qualify to hold certain elected public offices. In many cases, this age also determines the age at which a person may be eligible to run for election or have access to the vote.

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Main article: Age of consent

The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered legally competent to consent to sexual acts, and is thus the minimum age of a person with whom another person is legally permitted to engage in sexual activity. The distinguishing aspect of the age of consent laws is that the person below the minimum age is regarded as the victim, and their sex partner as the offender.

Defense of infancy

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Main article: Defense of infancy

The defense of infancy is a form of defense known as an excuse so that defendants falling within the definition of an "infant" are excluded from criminal liability for their actions, if at the relevant time, they had not reached an age of criminal responsibility. This implies that children lack the judgment that comes with age and experience to be held criminally responsible. After reaching the initial age, there may be levels of responsibility dictated by age and the type of offense committed.

Drinking age

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Main article: Drinking age

The legal drinking age is the age at which a person can consume or purchase alcoholic beverages. These laws cover a wide range of issues and behaviors, addressing when and where alcohol can be consumed. The minimum age alcohol can be legally consumed can be different from the age when it can be purchased in some countries. These laws vary among different countries and many laws have exemptions or special circumstances. Most laws apply only to drinking alcohol in public places, with alcohol consumption in the home being mostly unregulated (an exception being the UK, which has a minimum legal age of five for supervised consumption in private places). Some countries also have different age limits for different types of alcoholic drinks.[17]

Driving age

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Main article: Driving age

Driving age is the age at which a person can apply for a driver's license. Countries with the lowest driving ages (below 17) are Argentina, Australia, Canada, El Salvador, Iceland, Israel, Macedonia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, the United Kingdom (Mainland) and the United States. The Canadian province of Alberta and several U.S. states permit youth driving as low as 14. In India, driving is legal after getting a license at the age of 18. Most countries set 18 as the minimum age to drive, other countries like us USA the minimum age is 16.

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Main article: Legal working age
See also: Right to work

The legal working age is the minimum age required by law for a person to work in each country or jurisdiction. The threshold of adulthood, or "the age of majority" as recognized or declared in law in most countries, has been set at age 18. Some types of labor are commonly prohibited even for those above the working age, if they have not reached the age of majority. Activities that are dangerous, harmful to the health or that may affect the morals of minors fall into this category.

Student rights in higher education

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Main article: Student rights in higher education

Student rights are those rights, such as civil, constitutional, contractual and consumer rights, which regulate student rights and freedoms and allow students to make use of their educational investment. These include such things as the right to free speech and association, to due process, equality, autonomy, safety and privacy, and accountability in contracts and advertising, which regulate the treatment of students by teachers and administrators.

Smoking age

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Main article: Smoking age

The smoking age is the minimum age a person can buy tobacco and/or smoke in public. Most countries regulate this law at the national level while at some point it is done by the state or province.

Health and mortality

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Youths in South Africa partying

The leading causes of morbidity and mortality among youth and adults are due to certain health-risk behaviors. These behaviors are often established during youth and extend into adulthood. Since the risk behaviors in adulthood and youth are interrelated, problems in adulthood are preventable by influencing youth behavior.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed its Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) in 2003 to help assess risk behavior.[18] YRBSS monitors six categories of priority health-risk behaviors among youth and young adults. These are behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence;

YRBSS includes a national school-based survey conducted by CDC as well as state and local school-based surveys conducted by education and health agencies.[19]

Universal school-based interventions such as formal classroom curricula, behavioural management practices, role‐play, and goal‐setting may be effective in preventing tobacco use, alcohol use, illicit drug use, antisocial behaviour, and improving physical activity of young people.[20]

Obesity

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Main article: Childhood obesity

Obesity now affects one in five children in the United States, and is the most prevalent nutritional disease of children and adolescents in the United States. Although obesity-associated morbidities occur more frequently in adults, significant consequences of obesity as well as the antecedents of adult disease occur in obese children and adolescents.

Discrimination against overweight children begins early in childhood and becomes progressively institutionalized. Obese children may be taller than their non-overweight peers, in which case they are apt to be viewed as more mature. The inappropriate expectations that result may have an adverse effect on their socialization.

Many of the cardiovascular consequences that characterize adult-onset obesity are preceded by abnormalities that begin in childhood. Hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and abnormal glucose tolerance occur with increased frequency in obese children and adolescents. The relationship of cardiovascular risk factors to visceral fat independent of total body fat remains unclear. Sleep apnea, pseudotumor cerebri, and Blount's disease represent major sources of morbidity for which rapid and sustained weight reduction is essential. Although several periods of increased risk appear in childhood, it is not clear whether obesity with onset early in childhood carries a greater risk of adult morbidity and mortality.[21]

Bullying

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Bullying among school-aged youth is increasingly being recognized as an important problem affecting well-being and social functioning. While a certain amount of conflict and harassment is typical of youth peer relations, bullying presents a potentially more serious threat to healthy youth development. The definition of bullying is widely agreed on in literature on bullying.[22][23][24][25]

Bullying often happens in schools

The majority of research on bullying has been conducted in Europe and Australia.[26] Considerable variability among countries in the prevalence of bullying has been reported. In an international survey of adolescent health-related behaviors, the percentage of students who reported being bullied at least once during the current term ranged from a low of 15% to 20% in some countries to a high of 70% in others.[27][28] Of particular concern is frequent bullying, typically defined as bullying that occurs once a week or more. The prevalence of frequent bullying reported internationally ranges from a low of 1.9% among one Irish sample to a high of 19% in a Malta study.[29][30][31][32][33][34]

Research examining characteristics of youth involved in bullying has consistently found that both bullies and those bullied demonstrate poorer psychosocial functioning than their non-involved peers. Youth who bully others tend to demonstrate higher levels of conduct problems and dislike of school, whereas youth who are bullied generally show higher levels of insecurity, anxiety, depression, loneliness, unhappiness, physical and mental symptoms, and low self-esteem. Males who are bullied also tend to be physically weaker than males in general. The few studies that have examined the characteristics of youth who both bully and are bullied found that these individuals exhibit the poorest psychosocial functioning overall.[35][36][37][38]

See also: School bullying

Sexual health and politics

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General

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Globalization and transnational flows have had tangible effects on sexual relations, identities, and subjectivities. In the wake of an increasingly globalized world order under waning Western dominance, within ideologies of modernity, civilization, and programs for social improvement, discourses on population control, 'safe sex', and 'sexual rights'.[39] Sex education programmes grounded in evidence-based approaches are a cornerstone in reducing adolescent sexual risk behaviours and promoting sexual health. In addition to providing accurate information about consequences of Sexually transmitted disease or STIs and early pregnancy, such programmes build life skills for interpersonal communication and decision making. Such programmes are most commonly implemented in schools, which reach large numbers of teenagers in areas where school enrollment rates are high. However, since not all young people are in school, sex education programmes have also been implemented in clinics, juvenile detention centers and youth-oriented community agencies. Notably, some programmes have been found to reduce risky sexual behaviours when implemented in both school and community settings with only minor modifications to the curricula.[40]

Philippines

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The Sangguniang Kabataan ("Youth Council" in English), commonly known as SK, was a youth council in each barangay (village or district) in the Philippines, before being put "on hold", but not quite abolished, prior to the 2013 barangay elections.[41] The council represented teenagers from 15 to 17 years old who have resided in their barangay for at least six months and registered to vote. It was the local youth legislature in the village and therefore led the local youth program and projects of the government. The Sangguniang Kabataan was an offshoot of the KB or the Kabataang Barangay (Village Youth) which was abolished when the Local Government Code of 1991 was enacted.

Many young lives in developing countries are defined by poverty, some suffer from famine and a lack of clean water, while involvement in armed conflict is all common. Health problems are rife, especially due to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in certain regions. The United Nations estimates that 200 million young people live in poverty, 130 million are illiterate and 10 million live with HIV/AIDS.[42]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Definition of YOUTH". www.merriam-webster.com. 2024-10-20. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
  2. ^ https://data.unicef.org/topic/adolescents/overview/
  3. ^ "Adolescent health". www.who.int. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
  4. ^ Bildung, Bundeszentrale für politische. "Jugend/Jugendliche". bpb.de (in German). Retrieved 2024-10-24.
  5. ^ "Kinder- und Jugendschutz / Protection of minors". www.protection-of-minors.eu. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
  6. ^ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6537827/
  7. ^ Konopka, Gisela. (1973) "Requirements for Healthy Development of Adolescent Youth", Adolescence. 8 (31), p. 24.
  8. ^ "Youth dictionary definition – youth defined".
  9. ^ Webster's New World Dictionary.
  10. ^ Altschuler, D.; Strangler, G.; Berkley, K.; Burton, L. (2009); "Supporting Youth in Transition to Adulthood: Lessons Learned from Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice" Archived September 16, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Center for Juvenile Justice Reform.
  11. ^ Furlong, Andy (2011). Youth Studies: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415564793.
  12. ^ Tyyskä, Vappu (2005). "Conceptualizing and Theorizing Youth: Global Perspectives". Contemporary Youth Research: Local Expressions and Global Connections. London: Ashgate Books. p. 3. ISBN 0-7546-4161-9.
  13. ^ "Day of Affirmation, University of Cape Town, South Africa. June 6, 1966" Archived February 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial. Retrieved 11/9/07.
  14. ^ Thomas, A. (2003) "Psychology of Adolescents", Self-Concept, Weight Issues and Body Image in Children and Adolescents, p. 88.
  15. ^ Wing, John, Jr. "Youth." Windsor Review: A Journal of the Arts 45.1 (2012): 9+. Academic OneFile. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.
  16. ^ Saud, Muhammad; Ida, Rachmah; Mashud, Musta’in (2020). "Democratic practices and youth in political participation: a doctoral study". International Journal of Adolescence and Youth. 25 (1): 800–808. doi:10.1080/02673843.2020.1746676.
  17. ^ Drinking Age Limits Archived 2013-01-20 at the Wayback Machine – International Center for Alcohol Policies
  18. ^ "Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)". Adolescent and School Health. CDC. 22 August 2018.
  19. ^ Grunbaum, J.A., Kann, L., Kinchen, S., Ross, J., Hawkins, J., Lowry, R., Harris, W.A., McManus, T., Chyen, D., Collins, J. (2004) Youth risk behavior surveillance—United States, 2003. MMWR. Surveillance Summaries, 53(2), 1–96.
  20. ^ MacArthur G, Caldwell DM, Redmore J, Watkins SH, Kipping R, White J, Chittleborough C, Langford R, Er V, Lingam R, Pasch K, Gunnell D, Hickman M, Campbell R (5 October 2018). "Individual-, family-, and school-level interventions targeting multiple risk behaviours in young people". Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2018 (10): CD009927. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD009927.pub2. PMC 6517301. PMID 30288738.
  21. ^ William, H. (1998) Health Consequences of Obesity in Youth: Childhood Predictors of Adult Disease, Pediatrics, 101(2), 518–525.
  22. ^ Boulton MJ, Underwood K. Bully/victim problems among middle school children. Br J Educ Psychol.1992;62:73–87.
  23. ^ Olweus D. Aggression in the Schools: Bullies and Whipping Boys. Washington, DC: Hemisphere Publishing Corp; 1978.
  24. ^ Salmivalli, C; Kaukiainen, A; Kaistaniemi, L; Lagerspetz, KM (1999). "Self-evaluated self-esteem, peer-evaluated self-esteem, and defensive egotism as predictors of adolescents' participation in bullying situations". Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 25 (10): 1268–1278. doi:10.1177/0146167299258008. S2CID 145521375.
  25. ^ Slee PT. Bullying in the playground: the impact of inter-personal violence on Australian children's perceptions of their play environment. Child Environ.1995;12:320–327.
  26. ^ Biswas, Tuhin; Scott, James G.; Munir, Kerim; Thomas, Hannah J.; Huda, M. Mamun; Hasan, Md. Mehedi; David de Vries, Tim; Baxter, Janeen; Mamun, Abdullah A. (2020-02-17). "Global variation in the prevalence of bullying victimisation amongst adolescents: Role of peer and parental supports". eClinicalMedicine. 20: 100276. doi:10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100276. ISSN 2589-5370. PMC 7152826. PMID 32300737.
  27. ^ King A, Wold B, Tudor-Smith C, Harel Y. The Health of Youth: A Cross-National Survey. Canada: WHO Library Cataloguing; 1994. WHO Regional Publications, European Series No. 69.
  28. ^ US Department of Education. 1999 Annual Report on School Safety. Washington, DC: US Dept of Education; 1999:1–66.
  29. ^ Borg MG. The extent and nature of bullying among primary and secondary schoolchildren. Educ Res.1999;41:137–153.
  30. ^ Kaltiala-Heino R, Rimpela M, Marttunen M, Rimpela A, Rantanen P. Bullying, depression, and suicidal ideation in Finnish adolescents: school survey. BMJ.1999;319:348–351.
  31. ^ Menesini E, Eslea M, Smith PK. et al. Cross-national comparison of children's attitudes towards bully/victim problems in school. Aggressive Behav.1997;23:245–257.
  32. ^ Olweus D. Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Oxford, England: Blackwell; 1993.
  33. ^ O'Moore AM, Smith KM. Bullying behaviour in Irish schools: a nationwide study. Ir J Psychol.1997;18:141–169.
  34. ^ Whitney I, Smith PK. A survey of the nature and extent of bullying in junior/middle and secondary schools. Educ Res.1993;34:3–25.
  35. ^ Austin S, Joseph S. Assessment of bully/victim problems in 8 to 11 year-olds. Br J Educ Psychol.1996;66:447–456.
  36. ^ Forero R, McLellan L, Rissel C, Bauman A. Bullying behaviour and psychosocial health among school students in New South Wales, Australia: cross sectional survey. BMJ.1999;319:344–348.
  37. ^ Kumpulainen K, Rasanen E, Henttonen I. et al. Bullying and psychiatric symptoms among elementary school-age children. Child Abuse Negl.1998;22:705–717.
  38. ^ Haynie DL, Nansel TR, Eitel P. et al. Bullies, victims, and bully/victims: distinct groups of youth at-risk. J Early Adolescence.2001;21:29–50.
  39. ^ Petchesky, R. (2000) 'Sexual rights: inventing a concept, mapping an international practice,' in R. Parker, R.M. Barbosa and P. Aggleton (eds), Framing the sexual subject: The politics of Gender, Sexuality and Power, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 81–103
  40. ^ Bearinger, Linda H., et al. 2007. "Global perspectives on the sexual and reproductive health of adelescents: patterns, prevention, and potential." The Lancet 369.9568: 1226
  41. ^ Catajan, Maria Elena (March 24, 2014). "NYC: Use SK funds right". SunStar Baguio. Retrieved 26 March 2014.
  42. ^ Furlong, Andy (2013). Youth Studies: An Introduction. USA: Routledge. pp. 227–228. ISBN 978-0-415-56476-2.
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Wikiquote has quotations related to Youth.
  • Media related to Youth at Wikimedia Commons
  • "Youth", BBC Radio 4 discussion with Tim Whitmarsh, Thomas Healy and Deborah Thom (In Our Time, Apr. 23, 2003)
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