What factors have changed college youth from reaching enlightenment to party wildly?

Question

I see a lot more out of college youth with the mind set of party, s*x, drugs, and excess. Having tons of fun without thinking. Reminds me of the idea of the sexual liberation of the 70's...but didn't all the mindless s*x, abortions, babies w/out fathers or mothers, adoptions, and other such things have any influence on these people? Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but is it wrong to have values that are outdated, maybe say from your grandparents' age? Because I find those to be more towards finding yourself then "having fun." When I'm older I don't want to say I partied like crazy, I want to say what I did with my time that was meaningful and spiritual but not religously. Where's the kids that want to go hunting for a weekend or backpacking in the woods? What happend to those kind of people, all I see everywhere is getting plastered/drunk/etc people.

Answer 1

There has been partying, drinking and s*x since young people have been able to get away from their parents long enough to indulge.

I am a very nerdy type who actually went to uni to learn stuff, but my younger brother has been talking about this recently. He likes to drive around, just for the sake of seeing the countryside. All his friends (using the word loosely) think that's really cool, but they don't do it because they are too busy drinking or being hung over. My brother has pointed out that they'd have petrol money if they didn't drink so much, but this hasn't changed their behaviour at all. I think drinking is "supposed" to be fun, so that's why the kids do it. I'm not sure if they stop and think about whether they are really enjoying it. My bro doesn't think they do.

Why do you only see drunken kids? Because they are out where they can be seen. If you'd gone looking for me at uni, you'd have found me in the curry shop, the sushi bar or the library. The "backpacking in the woods" lifestyle is getting harder for uni students to indulge in even if they wanted to, since most have to spend their weekends working in order to afford uni at all. So, that only leaves the evenings, and since everyone else is getting drunk, you go too, or stay home.

Answer 2

College students have always partied, and probably always will, but not all of them.   Some have an interest in making their lives productive and better, and also making the world a better place to live in.

Not everyone is shallow and hedonistic.    This party attitude was around long before electronic media, so that can't be blamed entirely.

Materialism isn't inherently wrong; we can't exist without material things.    There's nothing wrong in aspiring to attain the best material things that we can; that's a great incentive in life.

Irresponsible people will always be with us, as long as there are humans.    And an ideal world won't exist in our lifetime, all we can do is to do the best we can, choose our friends and associates wisely, and make our own place in the world as much as we can to suit ourselves.

The same factors are at work now as in medieval England.

People haven't changed all that much.     The media does cover things more than ever, so we are more aware of the behaviour of others moreso than at any other time in the history of man.      People have been getting plastered ever since Noah, who was the first drunk in the Bible.

There are still kids hunting, backpacking, hiking.   They're only in the media when they're lost for a week or two.

Answer 3

Young people have always liked to party (and some older ones too)

However you don't HAVE TO.  Its all about personal choice.

For me its about balance, study a bit, party a bit and go hiking a bit.  Its all self-discovery.

Answer 4

The youth has always been this way and it isn't going to change.

There experimenting with what they want to do, just like you did when you were there age.

Let them live their lives and make mistakes, life is the greatest teacher and we must always do what we wanna do before we died.

Answer 5

I blame MTV.

Answer 6

These are not in order of importance.

1. With each generation, parents are losing the ability to teach self-control and purpose of virtues, which in this case may be defined as any action of character you can use to gain or to keep things of value--such as an education, sobriety, mental health, and for some their virginity.

2. The desire of youth to grab on to "diversity" as if it was a virtue in and of itself. "Diversity" is something you do not seek to gain; it is the natural end of having rational ideas that vary or contrast with the ideas of others. It is not an end in itself.

3. The liberal ideology of the educational system, which has inherited the logical positivism and the skepticism of the teachers who taught the system, perhaps beginning with the socialist Thomas Dewey.

4. A society that SEEMS, I repeat seems to teach unrestricted materialism as in "conspicuous consumption."