What do you think is the biggest problem
facing today's teenagers? Most British parents would guess that it's drugs, but
they are wrong. Parents are so worried about their children getting mixed up
with drugs that they fail to see that the main causes of anxiety for most young
people are relationships, especially those with friends. Nothing, it seems,
can be worse than falling out with your best friends.
Young people rely on their friends to talk
through any problems they may have. The message, is, therefore: it is your
friends who keep you sane.
People today rely less and less on large
family groups, and more and more on friends. In fact, students said recently
that couples are a thing of the past.
Friends Reunited is the most popular
website in Britain. People enter the name of their school on the computer and
they suddenly can access lots of people from their class, even if it is a class
from thirty or forty years previously. It seems that the pull of old friendship
is enormous, especially as people now rarely return to live in the places where
they grew up.
And how important are friends for you?