Youth Disrespect

It’s a sad thing when a local Miami court appearance makes national news. However, the court appearance of Penelope Soto was nothing short of ignorance and total disrespect.

Granted, Ms. Soto may have been confused as to the entire procedure given that she was playing with her punk red hair during the entire proceeding. She may also not know how to respect those in the legal profession either.

One thing was clear though; her behavior was unprecedented and certainly uncalled for.

Sadly, her behavior is not uncommon with today’s youth. Just go to your local mall and stand in one spot for a few minutes. Notice how many youngsters knock into you and not even realize it and worse not even apologize for doing it. Yes, the kids are either so absorbed with their friends or their cell phones to pay attention to the real world around them.

So who is to blame for this?

• Parents. Many parents are so self absorbed with their own things they could care less about what their kids are doing. Sadly, I have seen many new parents who should not even be parents because their own values are terrible.
• Friends. Peer pressure is a big contributor as many will follow the same path of their friends thinking (wrongly) if its ok for them, then its ok for me as well.
• Teachers. Unfortunately, they are not teaching real life values in their curriculum leaving it to parents to teach children how to handle themselves in real world situations.
• Social Media. Twitter, Facebook, and even MySpace could be culprits as the youth sees things online and think it must be ok to act that way.
• Reality TV. Remember when MTV showed music videos? Today, it is the home of the most socially demeaning actions of today’s youth. Youths see this and think this is how life should be.

Some may question why I am mentioning this in this blog. The reason may not be simple but sadly many retailers hire youthful employees who are so self-absorbed and so rude that they could care less about the customer and care more about other things. What is even worse is that in many of these stores, the management either doesn’t care or isn’t around to watch the employees. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have walked out of a store because an employee just didn’t care at all. If Ms. Soto is the face of the future, we are all in big trouble and something must be done now to fix the problem. The judge in her case just made matters worse by giving her 30 days in jail with no social implications. Someone like Ms. Soto should be cleaning garbage on the side of the road for 30 days instead. This would send the right signal to the youth of today and hopefully a sign to tomorrow’s youth as well.