What do youth today look like? Every generation looks with bewilderment upon the next, but this is one cohort of humans that certainly befuddle a lot of their parents. If we don’t try to understand their world, we can’t expect to influence them. Here are some important facts to remember:
Their days are short: Time is a rare commodity in the modern teenager’s home. Most kids in Canada live in a household with two working parents – and a growing portion live in single parent households. According to the Statistics Canada data, teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 spent, on average 2.3 hours each weekday on homework, and another 3.5 hours on the weekend on homework, paid work and housework. Throw in the 6.9 hours per day at school, and that’s equal to a 50-hour work week. In fact, the Canadian data found that teenagers are spending less time in front of the television and more time working at a job than their cohorts. The Lesson: We need to be sensitive to the fact that their time is a valuable commodity.