Risk conscious- really ? ( Commonwealth Essay 2013 )

You notice yourself getting ever so hyped over things that in normal circumstances,  really aren’t even logically justifiable by any rational mind ; not taking the tube after reading news of a train wreck in a remote village two continents away? ; Stopped using your iPhone because you read from a magazine pullout that it could increase your chances of getting alzheimer’s? Or maybe  thinking  the black plague  is going to resurface, mutate and cause a  bottleneck-epidemic and possible extinction of the human race.

If this is you, or almost you, you have fallen victim to the ever so dramatized, inflated  part of media and also the lunacy of sci-fi Hollywood movies. 

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and not to mention

( really ) 

The brilliant thing is, you’re not alone! 

However disappointing and however feeble that depiction of humanity is, you cannot deny that the media blows things out of proportion. Sci-Fi-Hollywood, a genre on its own doesn’t do much help either.   You may however,  be reassured by the fact it’s not completely down to your personality - its the things you’ve been left vulnerable and defenseless to that predominantly is just bogus.  Inevitably and most unfortunately, this is why young people are more prone to contracting this paranoia-inducing-syndrome more than anyone in the world. 

Let’s face it, young people - we may not ever want to admit it but we’re not very good at making the most basic and coherent decisions when we’re reading articles from pop-up windows over the web that were designed to attract the attention of the ignorant. The odds also aren’t in our favour as we are also the children of the world wide web and spend nearly a third of our lives in virtual space. 

However In reality, when looking at things in a more general perspective, it doesn’t matter if you’re a school teacher, a lawyer, a housewife, a business student, a bus driver or even a paleontologist because after reading that blog or article attached to a forward-email,  you’re undoubtedly going to experience that psychological process  occurring at the far corner of your subconscious mind ; contemplating the text that you’ve just read ; somehow relating it to yourself and the people around you and then gaining a mild sense of panic. Before you know it,  your brain has developed a new fear. And as far as fear goes, the magnitude absurdity is of no limit. 

The one key factor here is we’re all mostly exposed to the same sort of content and information like news-headlines and celebrity-scoop and stories and myths and articles and urban legends and movies and posters warning us about the horizon of the black hole that is about to engulf our solar system next month.

The media, more specifically the internet plays a tremendous role with the spreading - or shall I say, infecting of paranoia  which directly decreases our enthusiasm and  also sheer ability to take risks because we’re always imagining  the worst possible outcome out of every situation. You could end up living your life in severe anxiety thinking that something awful is about to happen every second of the day.  

The aversion to taking risks inevitably isn’t only narrowed down to more apparent fears  like contracting diseases, being held hostage or being a part of a plane crash casualty. Lets talk about more a relevant sort of fear that is the overprotectiveness of parents in this modern era. Parents today are more paranoid than they were thirty years ago. Nanny-cams, helicopter-moms,  strict diet plans are just some of the things you here in the paranoid parent vocabulary. There is more manufacture of products to aid to the unnecessary anxiety  of moms and dads now more than ever.  

As parents, being constantly on edge is one of the many things you have a free pass to. Its natural instinct to be afraid for your children and have this inclination to constantly hover over them because you want to protect them as much as you can in all forms possible. This ever so commonly heard of tendency in parents today has become so evident to the extent there have been TV shows screened on an episode-basis dedicated to depict such rigid parenting namely “ World’s Worst Mom “ starring Lenore Skenazy who urges paranoid parents to change their stringent parenting ways for the better. 

Putting the relationship between media and paranoia aside, I think it is more important to analyze risk-taking amongst teenagers in this day and age. When given an opportunity or a choice, would a young person put their popularity, social status or pride on the line? Would they try out for cheerleading even if it meant the chances of making it were one in fifty? Or would they sign up for two extra curricular activities because they trust themselves about their personal time management?   

There very scenarios has been played out in so many mainstream movies. Underneath all the exaggerations and editorial-ruche, the whole idea sadly isn't very far from the truth.

In my opinion, teenagers of the 21-st are very pessimistic creatures. We fear being judged; paranoid at the idea of mockery  and just afraid of the sheer thought failure.  Social image matters to every one of us so deeply that we fail to realize that sometimes the world doesn’t  revolve around us . It is utter shame this paranoia is affecting young people more than anyone considering the fact this is supposed to be the time of our lives when we’re supposed to get rid of all our inner  inhibitions and conquer the ever so obstructive dimension of hesitation. 

To be continued...