Youth is any person between the age of 15 years and 30 years regardless of the gender. Undoubtedly, the youth are the backbone of a society and hence they determine the future of any given society. This is because all other age groups, the kids, teenagers, middle aged and the senior citizens rely on the youth and expect a lot from them. This makes the youth to be an important age group in both today’s society and the future society than other age groups. Therefore, due to the high dependence on youth in the society, we the youth have a role to play because the future of our families, communities and the country lies in our hands. The role of the youth is simply to renew, refresh and maintain the standards of the society. Youth have a role to renew and refresh the current status of our society including leadership, innovations, skills etc. Youth are expected to contribute largely in the fields of technology, education, politics, and peace of the country. On the other hand, youth have also to maintain our cultural identity and upgrade all good values in the society and public institutions. First of all, kids and teenagers need to be advised, taught and encouraged by the youth. Youth also have to also guide properly the young generation. The youth have to teach both the teenagers and kids all aspects of general life, show them the way so that they grow up and what is right and what is wrong. Youth have to advice and encourage teenagers and help them to solve social, educational, psychological, emotional and religious issues coming their way. Youth have the role of teaching teenagers and the young generation what teachers and parents fail to teach them. Secondly, as the middle aged and the senior citizens grow older, youth take over the positions and as such youth shoulder bigger responsibilities both within and outside the government. Growing inclination of the youth for economic and social upliftment of the people makes them trend setters of the society. Youth have to bring in new innovations and new skills in the job industry for more productivity at a lower cost because they tend to do away with old technology and try to find new ways of doing a certain job. Channelising their energies for rapid of industrialization the youth raise the standards of daily life year after year. For progress and prosperity a country needs educated, well informed and responsible leaders. Youth have to develop leadership skill to lead the people from the front and course correction to overcome the shortcomings of the previous generations for completely changing the outlook of their societies should be the priority of youth. Youth have to do away with vices like corruption, self centered and greed in leadership so that dreams of development, gender equity and equal allocation of resources is cherished.
Since the youth shape the future of our society, they have to be educated, guided, encouraged, advised, taught and shown the right ways to excel in every sphere of public activity.
Youth also have to maintain virtues set by other leaders, help the society or country to achieve it’s vision in future. The youth ultimately become the family heads and find new roles for themselves. The youths are expected to start and maintain their own families as their parents did. After their marriages youth find themselves facing the challenges of developing peace within their own communities and as such play a role in stabilizing the atmosphere of peace in the whole country. Cultural bonding among the people further the causes of national peace and social well-being of the people across the country. Nothing comes on a silver platter. All I mean is that nothing will happen if youth don’t work hard to carry forward their missions to logical conclusions. Education plays a key role in the raising the potentialities and capabilities of youth. For acquiring skills, innovations and knowledge youth have to pursue education even for their own social and economic well being. So apart from the above roles, the youth also have a role in process of education as it is the key to success and development. Youth also have to seek information from the people of middle aged and senior citizen groups connected with various disciplines with the intent to devise plans and strategies for the future. Since the youth shape the future of our society, they have to be educated, guided, encouraged, advised, taught and shown the right ways to excel in every sphere of public activity. This is must to help them achieve their desired destinations. Our elders have to teach us what is to be done and what is not to be done. So it is everyone’s duty especially the middle aged and the senior citizens to guide us because as the future of our society lies in our hands. While youth have to shoulder major responsibilities of the society, majority of them spend time on couch, watching TV, overspending money to the extent of finding themselves in debt traps, and consuming alcohol and smoking. Too little sleep developing among youth because of these bad practices can have serious health effects but youth don’t tend to give up these unadvisable practices. Research has shown that chronic sleep deprivation increases risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, depression and heart strokes. Spending too much time on social networks i.e. Face book, Whatsapp etc, sleeping late in the night and waking up late in the afternoon, doing useless activities on internet, excessive use of smart phones, and breaking the emotional connection with the parents are among the other bad habits which the youth need to give up . Giving up such bad practices will surely boost both the economic prosperity and as well as the social life of the people of any country.
(The author is a teacher in Education Zone Mawar of North Kashmir’s Kupwara district. Views are his own) [email protected]