We all know that teenagers are the most sensitive age of anyone’s life. During teenage, children go through both physical, psychological, and social changes. They become very sensitive and emotional during this phase of life. Teenage is the age between thirteen and nineteen.
If you have teenagers or are raising teenagers, you must know how difficult it is to handle teenagers. Trust me, raising teenagers is not a piece of cake. You never know when their mood’s going to change. I, too, have teenagers, and I am much aware of a teen’s mood swings.
Since teenage is the phase where children develop and shape their character and behavior into what they want to be in the future. Hence it would be best to give all-time to your teenagers to mold their character as you want.
The behavior of teenagers also depends on the environment they live in, the friends’ circle they have, the movies they watch, and more. If a violent environment surrounds teens, they may get involved in some criminal activities. In the worst scenario, teens might end up committing some crimes.
Teenagers think that they are mature and can take any decision they think is right. And in the course of that, teenagers sometimes might commit some serious crimes. Crimes that teens commit are known as juvenile crimes.
There are various reasons why teens commit crimes. Here in this article, I have mentioned some of the reasons why teens commit crimes:
Reasons Why Teens Commit Crimes
Family Issues
Home is the first school for all the children. All the moral ethics and netiquette kids learn is mostly from home. Family members play a vital role in shaping the character of children. Having a good family environment is the most important factor for shaping children.
Family problems like bad relations among family members, violence among family members, a broken family can disturb teens emotionally. Teenagers having such family problems can also face abuse which will make teens either isolated or violent. We can say that it also results in poor parenting.
For instance, if a teen sees their parents fighting all the time, they tend to be violent. They feel showing violent behavior is the way to react to any situation.
Likewise, teenagers always try to seek the attention of their parents. Teenagers of busy parents might get involved in criminal activities to gain the attention of their parents. Also, when you are busy, you may not have enough time for your kids, and they will have the freedom to do whatever they want. In such a situation, they may get involved in some inappropriate activities.
Financial Issues
Next and the most common reason that we can hear as a reason for teen crime is financial issues. You might have heard teenagers shoplifting and stealing to fulfill their basic needs.
During teenage, teenagers’ needs get bigger and bigger, parents with limited financial needs may not be able to fulfill all the needs. Teenagers want everything their peers own. When parents cannot fulfill the need, they involve themself in illegal activities to earn money to fulfill their needs.
Also, teenagers want to help their parents to overcome their family financial difficulties and maintain their socioeconomic status, because of which they try to earn money either legally or illegally. Most of the time, teens take illegal ways to earn money to earn lots of money in very little time.
Lack of Communication
Lack of communication between teenagers and parents, teachers are also the reason for teen crimes. Most of the time, when parents are busy, they do not have proper time to communicate with their teens. Teens feel lonely and isolated when their parents are not around to communicate with them.
When there is no proper communication and guidance to teens, they can easily get influenced by peers and media. Also, when there is no one around to communicate, teens get involved in criminal activities to escape their loneliness.
For instance, if your teen is facing bullying in school and not around them, listen to their problem. They will start to feel physically and mentally weak. And they end up showing criminal behavior to present themselves as strong in front of their peers.
Peer Pressure
The influence of peers or peer pressure is also one of the popular reasons for teens to be juvenile delinquents. After parents, if there is someone with whom teens spend most of their time is their peers. Teens like to be like their peers and do whatever their peers do.
If your teens have criminally active peers, it will increase your kid’s chances of being involved in criminal activities. The influence of peers can be so strong that teens will not identify between right and wrong behavior.
Many times teens do whatever their peers do just to fit into their peer’s group. Teenagers want to be termed as cool kids, and in the course of that, they may land up doing juvenile crimes.
Lack of Education
Lack of education or poor education is also the reason for criminal activity among teenagers. During teenager, teenagers feel whatever they are doing, or their friends are doing is right. They do not know what wrong and right, and legal terms are; hence they get themselves into crimes.
Many schools do offer courses and programs where kids can learn about juvenile crimes and things that are illegal to do. They can learn about legal matters and activities that are ethically wrong to do.
But some teens find such classes boring and skip such programs and classes. And they are only the ones who are involved in criminal activities knowingly or unknowingly.
Substance Abuse
Substance abuse among teenagers is the riskiest and dangerous abuse. Teenagers are influenced by their friend’s circle and sometimes even their family members if family members take substances like drugs or alcohol.
Once teens are into taking drugs or other substances, they ignore all the critical aspects of their life. This will impact their future severely. Also, many times teens get themselves involved in illegal activities to earn money to buy drugs and alcohol.
Hence, there are no doubt substances like drugs and alcohol are a solid contributor to teens’ criminal activities.
Parental Criminality
As you are well aware that parents are the first teachers of their children. Children learn and inherited most of their charter from their parents. As I mentioned earlier, if parents are into drugs or alcohol, there are high chances of teens learning the same from their parents.
Likewise, if the parents are involved in criminal activities like stealing, abusing, domestic violence, selling drugs, and so on, then teens are likely to do the same. All these activities fall under juvenile crimes.
For instance, there is domestic violence in a teens’ home; then they tend to be violent and show their violence among their peers.
Psychological Issues
Another reason for teenage crimes can be psychological issues or mental health issues. As mentioned earlier, during teenage children goes through mental changes as well. During teenage, teenagers want all the attention of their parents toward them. In gaining parents’ attention, teenagers try to do activities that might not be ethically right.
Teenagers facing mental health problems like bipolar disorder, hyperactive disorder, depression can also experience juvenile behavior. Sometimes teens try to hide their mental health problems by showing such behavior.
When teens are unable to cope with their mental health problems themselves, they take criminal activities.
Media Influence
Violent movies, TV shows, or games have much impact on teenagers’ behavior. Watching too many violent shows or playing violent games will make teenagers aggressive as teenagers try to be whatever they see on the shows.
Such media will change teenagers’ behavior and will also impact their health. When teenagers play video games, they are so much into the game that they start to curse and use abusive words to their fellow competitors.
Likewise, when teenagers watch movies where their favorite actors are playing a negative role, they try to behave in the same way. If there is some bullying scene in the movie, the teen might start to bully their friends.
Conclusion
Summing up, it is crucial to keep teenagers disciplined and try to guide teens before they go on the wrong path. It is the responsibility of parents, teachers, and society members to protect teenagers before they commit crimes.
Before reacting to the crimes teens performed, you need to know the real reason for performing such activities. Here I mentioned some reasons for teens getting involved in juvenile crimes.
