Are we fundamentally flawed with regard to violent behaviour in mod societies ???

Question

Why are the children and teens in modern day societies so
prone to violence and crime, is it lack of a skills based education
or something more intrinsic, like the need that parents have to
spare the rod and spoil the child ?????

Answer 1

Good Question.
A while back I was curious about this myself. Since my initial (un-researched) belief was a higher amount of violence would be evident in the United States vs other countries.

My thought has been: violence exposure in media, gaming violence, poor overall teacher to student ratio (role modeling by non-parental figures) as well as a high percentage of parent non-involvement-- all contributes to the teen/child violence in our society.

The National Institute of Child and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, United States, did a study (back in 2003, I believe). They examined data from five countries: Israel, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, and United States.
What surprised me …..“Participation in any fighting, frequency of fighting, injuries sustained in fights, and frequency of weapon carrying were very similar across all five countries. Although there were not significant differences in the other indicators of violence across the countries, there was a consistent ordering of countries, with the lowest levels of violence in Portugal and Sweden, and the highest in Ireland and Israel.” Rates of aggression varied, with Sweden reporting the lowest frequency (14.8%), and Israel the highest (42.9%).

The bottom line of the study was: “The difference in rates of aggression and the different ranking of countries in aggression frequency compared to the other violent behaviors suggested aggression was influenced by CULTURAL and SOCIAL influences.”

(Which makes me question.. what are the cultural and social influences that Sweden and Portugal have?)