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Venezuela

Extra! Venezuelan 'Brutal Repression,' Growing Isolation

El Nacional — April 27, 2017

CARACAS — The embattled government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has raised the stakes on both the domestic and foreign front.

At home, the death count continued to climb as the state responded to anti-government protests, a scenario Caracas-based daily El Nacional"s Thursday edition characterized as "Brutal Repression." Most sources cited 29 deaths in the past four weeks of clashes and demonstrations.

On the foreign policy front, the government decided to pull Venezuela out of the Organization of American States (OAS), which it says is "meddling" in the domestic affairs of the country in response to the opposition protests.

Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez announced the decision Wednesay after a meeting at the group's Washington headquarters in which its permanent council voted in favor of holding a special session to evaluate Venezuela's crisis, the El Nacional reports.

International pressure has been mounting for Maduro to schedule delayed elections and free jailed members of the opposition. You can read more in English from the Associated Press.

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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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