YOUTHS today often find themselves in situations they don’t really want to be in, but somehow or the other they end up being there. A lot of youths today are victims of peer pressure, domestic violence, drug abuse, suicide, teenage pregnancy, just to name a few. A lot of these factors affect the lives of youths tremendously and cause a major breakdown in their life, physical and mentally. 

Due to this, a lot of youths become school-dropouts, drug addicts etc.
Peer pressure is one of the leading factors affecting most youths of today, which also leads to other issues, including suicide and drug abuse. When youths today involve themselves with other youths of their own age group, and they want to be like every other member of the age group, they would do everything to get there.
For example, if the particular group is involved in drug use, and there is a newcomer, everyone else in the group would force their group activity unto the newcomer, and this is where peer pressure comes into play, changing the life of that one youth who is new in the group.
Suicide is yet another issue that affects youths today. Suicide comes from various leading factors, for instance, domestic violence, peer pressure, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse etc.
The rate of suicide is very high in our society today. As we all know, suicide is very prevalent in Guyana, especially amongst our youths. A close friend of mine was asking me one day, and I quote, “What’s up with the suicide rate in Berbice; why so many youths killing themselves?” My reply to that was “Why do you think it’s a Berbice thing? Youths from many different areas in Guyana are killing themselves.”
This goes to show that persons are only looking at the areas where suicide is at its highest, but I don’t think we should look at it as that. We should look at it as our country and our youths, and we should ask ourselves, “What are we doing to prevent all of this? What are we doing for the youths of Guyana? Are we doing enough to help prevent these social issues from affecting the youths?”
Well, in my perspective, we are not doing enough, and we should step up our game and do whatever we can. The little we do today can benefit a lot of youths, and even our country, tomorrow. Let us all join hands and fight against these social issues affecting our youths and country as a whole.

S. SOMWAR