Reuters carries a story about a survey conducted by MTVNI, which finds that overall young people in developing countries are happier and feel they have more to look forward to. There's a comment in the article that the happier young people tend to be more religious; I'd love to know if living in developing countries is enough of an indicator for likelihood of religious faith, or if religious faith by itself is a factor in young people's happiness. I thought this was worrying:
MTVNI said one of the trends they spotted was that young people with access to mass media tended to feel less safe as they did not have the cognitive skills to interpret real risk.
In the UK, more than 80 percent of 16- to 34-year-olds said they were as afraid of terrorism as they were of the getting cancer -- though the latter was far more likely to hurt them.
Not only worrying that young people may be as (un)likely to take positive steps to look after their health as they are to avoid the danger of terrorism, but that 16-34 year olds (34 year olds!) don't have the cognitive skills to spot the difference between scaremongering and actual danger.
No comments:
Post a Comment