Why Do Young People Join Gangs?
Gangs’ appeals are increasing on young people. They are influencing the youth terribly. This is why I am writing a post - to explain why young people are joining gangs. There are many reasons why they think they should be in a gang, and some are really desperate; fighting or queueing up to get into a gang.
Reason 1: Neglect
The most common reason of why young people are joining gangs is neglect. They may be mistreated by their family (or even friends), and the only solution - they think - is to join a gang. There, they state they can be loved, and feel like part of a real family.
Reason 2: Peer Pressure
Some young people may join gangs due to peer pressure. Peer pressure can really harm you, physically or even phsycologically, therefore it is really likely that someone would join a gang because of this.
Reason 3: Status
Another reason is the status they might gain amongst peers and others. I have found out that lots of young people think joining gangs is cool, which provokes them to join these gangs, mostly if they have a bad status already.
Reason 4: Financial Gain
My last reason of why young people join gangs is for financial gain and/or other rewards. This is simply explained in the reason itself: it is for their gain. Maybe they could earn something for it, and this makes them almost keen on joining gangs.
I really think joining gangs is terrible, as it could not only harm the participants in it, but the environment itself; gangs usually do graffiti or other vandalisements, which evidently is a horrible thing
Comments (5)
15 Feb 2019
What solutions are there for any of these? For example, would producing more jobs and opportunities for young people prevent them joining gangs for financial gain?
I think it would prevent them joining gangs for financial gain. This is because they could join a better community AND earn money at the same time, and the opportunities could be more interesting.
Yet, I do still have an argument against this. I don't think this might work as well on the current participants of gangs, as they will need lots of persuading from other people around them to actually LEAVE the gang and try out new opportunities. We still have to think about the other reasons: some young people join gangs because they want to feel like in a family, and this reason goes well with the financial gain one. So, it will take a lot to affect the person, as the other gang members might have already influenced the person.
On a side note, this could also help young peoples' education, as the other opportunities could involve learning and stretching your mind. It could vary from tuition to fun learning activities - and less gangs!
15 Feb 2019
I think this post explains why young people join gangs very well.
16 Feb 2019
I agree. I think young kids do it for popularity and/or for street cred.
Yeah.
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