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Thai middle-class youths face growing problems with urbanisation.

As Thailand's middle class grows, so are the problems facing the younger generation.

In our continuing series from Inside Thailand, our correspondent takes a look at the kingdom's middle-class youths and their increasing alienation.

Kritaya Sreesunpagit, Director, Youth Innovation, says: "Young people make up 48 percent of the Kingdom's population and generally they enjoy a higher standard of living than the generation before."

Many Thai parents are able to provide a better life for their children than they had themselves.

But the increase in income has come at a price - there are more and more disenfranchised youth among the middle classes.

One academic points to the loss of the traditional extended family as a reason.

Many middle class people left provincial homes for better livelihoods in the city and with the shift, lost the comforting presence of grandparents and other family members, who play an important role in raising well-adjusted youngsters.

Associate Professor Surichai Wungaeo, Social Research Institute, Chulalongkorn University, said: "Urban middle classes have become a very difficult (milieu) for children to grow up meaningfully in. I think we need to have a greater effort into making youth who (are) born out of these families to, say, becoming more nurtured. This lack of connection or affection rears its ugly head in self destructive behaviour involving drinking, smoking and drugs."

It is easy for young people to start partaking in these vices, especially those teenagers able to afford it.

Lax law enforcement means that even though convenience stores are prohibited from displaying cigarettes, many don't check the youngsters who ask for them.

Studies show that by age 16 about half of those young people surveyed had tried drinking alcohol and cigarettes, with the first drugs experimentation coming at about a year later.

A recently released poll also reflected a rise in teenage gambling and looking at pornography.

But the news is not all bad, insists youth group leader Kritaya Sreesunpagit.

He says: "The past couple of years that we've been working, we have much more support from adults and many organisations and also the schools who are hopeful, actually quite hopeful to see that young people could make a difference. Young people are creative, and have great energy that could contribute to lots of good things."

She says that adults are always critical of the younger generation, even though they were once young people too. - CNA/ch


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