America, Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

The teens in your life could be carrying weapons and using illegal substances and you would never know! There has been a recent increase in teen violence and illegal activities. You should get involved with the teens in your life! In the United States there has been a 50% increase in youth gun violence and selling of illegal substances since 2025 and a 68% increase of deaths since 2016.  Your teen could be exposed to these dangers and you would never know. If the teens in your life are being secretive, it is best you check on what they are doing in their free time or when they hang out with their friends. 

From my personal experience the youth do not understand that not everything needs to be solved with violence. An old classmate of mine named Sam was sadly a victim of teen on teen violence on Monday April 13th this year. He was shot in the foot near a pizza place kids from my old school would go to after a long hard day. This was a shock because some of my closest friends were around there when it happened. Anything could have happened. There is no reason to ever pull a weapon on a teen, especially as another teenager as yourself. Imagine these were your sons, brothers, or a teenager in your community.  

Usually the reason these teens are making such big and dangerous mistakes is because of where they grew up or who they hang out around. A lot of teens influence other teens. It is your duty as a parent to make sure your teen as well as the people around them are safe. Adults and teens are selling guns, weed, and vapes to the underage community. If you see any of these things happening or if your child is asking you for random amounts of money without reasoning,  here’s how you can help keep the teens in your life safe. 

As an adult in a teenager’s life you should understand how different substances work in order to help teenagers stray away from harmful substances that could cause brain damage, strokes, and or seizures. If an adult is not informed then they will not be able to help or ensure the safety of a teenager in the case of an overdose or other crisis. It is also important for adults to know the kind of people the teenagers in your life hang around. If a teenager hangs around bad influences they could be pressured into using weapons or substances. However, if they are with good influences, they will stay away from those dangers. Knowing who your teens are with also gives adults a sense of safety that their child or a teenager is in good hands. As an adult in a teenager’s life it is your duty to keep them safe, especially in a community you know could influence them to start doing these bad habits. Teenagers do not always know right from wrong. They see what’s going on in their community and become involved in those things because that is all they grew up with. The adults in the community don’t always care, because they are the ones influencing the kids in the first place and may not see what’s wrong with these choices.

There are a lot of ways you as an adult can help prevent these things from happening. I specifically chose this program called the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative (SSYI) that was created to respond to the dramatic increase of youth shootings. SSYI helps communities going through teen gun violence through growth, social, physical, and mental well being for both youth and their families. Cities in Massachusetts were positively impacted because of this program there was a 31% and 61% decline in youth gang related activities and non-fatal shootings. 

One way we could raise awareness about teen violence and substance use is to use social media as a way to make the parents question how their kids or kids in general are doing. There used to be a PSA on TV that the government would use to make sure parents remembered about their kids. It is always a choice to keep the teenagers, or all people in your community safe, but just imagine if it was your kid, a friend’s kid or family’s kid involved in the violence. This is the harsh reality that we live in. It is in your hands to decide what you do to help them. To show you how much of an increase this topic has had here are some statistics on how much gun violence and illegal substances have grown over the past years.