The Lost Respect Today by Noah

The Lost Respect Today by Noah - March 2017 Scholarship Essay

The topic of respect has always been something I've inspired to give a speech about to a school wide audience. Respect is an aspect of life that should always be remembered and taught from a young age to immediately enforce into a person's way of life, and as one grows older, it should be reenforced from time to time to remind the person that it is an important topic. As people mature and their way of life changes, their moralities change with them. Now of course it is human nature to change as you grow older and the way you view life and the things in your life change, otherwise nothing would ever change; but there are traits that should never be forgotten, and respect is one of the most vital traits.

The thoughtfulness and respect among people has slowly been diminishing as the years go on, and there is one key factor that contributes to that: technology. With the rapid and massive growth of technology, people, especially kids born at the start of the 1990s, have had the privilege of using it. Personally, as one who was born in the 90's, I have had first hand experience of using it and watching my peers use it. This age of technology and the amount of information and exposure to mature material has caused these kids to be exposed to two bigs things: material that is far beyond their years, and the media that lacks respect in many aspects of life. These range from TV shows or movies that show kids disrespecting their parents or friends, to a wide variety of arguments, peer conflict and harmful actions among all ages on social media.

Respect is one of the biggest ways a person shows their true character. This respect includes respecting people, personal materials, others' possessions, the environment, and as a whole, your community. The amount of violence, vandalism, and causal environmental trashing with litter shows the amount of respect people have for others and the things that surround them. Violence, for the most part, is an extreme way of showing the disagreement among parties (such as wars) , but the unnecessary violence such as bullying or personal assault that happens to people shows the attacker does not care about what the victim feels or what will happen to him. It is a lack of respect for the other and not caring what happens after the assault. The same goes for vandalism in terms of respecting the victim's possessions. People will effortlessly and/or carelessly damage or destroy one's possessions without thinking about the other person. Again, the environmental trashing relates to the "not caring" mentioned earlier. The thought of tossing a cigarette or cup out the car window does not make them think they are causing harm to the environment. The amount of causal pollution that is done on a daily basis is massive and shows the lack of respect people have for it.

As generations (again mainly from the 1990s, many of whom are still in school) continue to grow, the respect characteristic among them is slowly slipping. The mass exposure to information among technology is a key contributor to the loss of respect. Respect should be something people of all ages possess, as it the main factor as the way people live their lives and the way they treat their community.