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Extra! Fear And Looting In Baltimore


"RIOTS ERUPT" Tuesday's front page of The Baltimore Sun reads, above images of clashes and burning cars as the city descended into chaos Monday after two weeks of tensions over the alleged police killing of Freddie Gray.

Violence started erupting just hours after the funeral for Gray, the 25-year-old Baltimore man who died April 19 while in police custody, becoming the latest symbol of police violence against young black men in the United States.

Roaming gangs of mostly young men clashed with police in the streets, injuring at least 15 officers, breaking into shops and looting their stocks, leading to the arrest of more than two dozen people, The Baltimore Sun reports.

The government declared a state of emergency, and reinforcements from the National Guard were called out. The city also imposed a mandatory curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for one week starting Tuesday night.

ABOUT THE SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun is a daily newspaper that was founded in 1837 in Baltimore, Maryland, and is now operated by Tribune Company.

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Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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