If The Drinking Age Were Lowered To 18, It Would Cost More Lives
The current drinking age in the United States stands at 21 years following several amendments. However, debates are underway to reduce this drinking age to 18 years. More than a year ago, close to 100 presidents from the States best-known universities such as Duke, Ohio State and Dartmouth got recruitment by the Amethyst Initiative to provoke the national debate on lowering the drinking age (Granata 2012).
Despite the various petitions circulating on several campuses to lower the legal drinking age to 18 years, activists maintain that this move would result to loss of more young lives to alcohol and its related consequences.
According to John McCardell, a former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who was the founder of the Amethyst Initiative, the law of excluding people below 21 years from the legal drinking population is unjust, unfair and discriminatory.
In my opinion, populations within the age of 18-20 years have brains that have not properly matured and need guidance from their seniors. Therefore, considering that alcohol impairs judgment, this young population are susceptible to losing their lives to alcohol since they would not have proper control of themselves when they are drunk. Additionally, exposing people to alcohol this early would result to alcohol related diseases in their early adulthood due to too much alcohol content.
Social Networking Is a Healthy Activity and Is Largely Harmless
Social networking has become the latest technological development, which has attracted a large number of internet users. These people use the social network sites to connect with others who might either be close or even very far away from them – even continents away from them (Meyler 2013). The famous social sites that have been lately exploited include Facebook, being the leading social network since it attracts the highest number of internet users. Others include Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Olx, Google trader and YouTube, among several others.
Firms to build brand image and reach their clients with more efficiency have also recently used social networking. In the social networking platform, employers meet the desired employees to fill their vacant positions in their firms. It has also made it easier in passing relevant information to the public, especially by the government agencies.
Despite these advantages related to social networking, it has some disadvantages related to it. For instance, the youth use the social networking platforms to do overrated activities such as sharing pornographic information. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the advantages related to social networking far outweigh the disadvantages. Additionally, the disadvantages can be regulated and the advantages upheld since they are healthy activities.
Violent Video Games Lead To an Increase in Crime
The young men who were reported to have opened fire at Columbine High School, at a movie theatre in Aurora and those in other massacres had something in common: they were reportedly violent video gamers who appeared to be acting out a dark digital fantasy. It is believed that exposure to computerized violence instilled such idea in them (Carey 2013).
Research has found out that American girls play more of the violent videos than the girls do. In 2008, 97% of 12-17 years played video games (Carey 2013). In that year, violent video games were selling compared to the other video games such as racing or soccer. These video games have been blamed for school shootings, violence towards women, and increased bullying in schools. When these children grow with these characters, the future crime rates would highly increase, considering that the violent video games expose the kids to more bloody scenes.
Reference:
Carey B. (2013, February 11). Shooting in the Dark. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/science/studying-the-effects-of-playing-violent-video-games.html?_r=0
Granata K. (2012, November 11). Lowering Drinking Age A Bad Idea. The Recorde: Central Connecticut University. Retrieved from http://centralrecorder.com/2012/11/11/lowering-drinking-age-a-bad-idea/
Meyler A. (2013, January 14). Social Networking Sites - Harmless and Progressive or Harmful and Regressive? Ezine Artiles. Retrieved from http://ezinearticles.com/?Social-Networking-Sites---Harmless-and-Progressive-or-Harmful-and-Regressive?&id=6992199
