5th
Learning to Lie
By the end of the interview, the kids saw for the first time how much they were lying and how many of the family’s rules they had broken…Out of the 36 topics, the average teen was lying to his parents about twelve of them. The teens lied about what they spent their allowances on, and whether they’d started dating, and what clothes they put on away from the house. They lied about what movie they went to, and whom they went with. They lied about alcohol and drug use, and they lied about whether they were hanging out with friends their parents disapproved of. They lied about how they spent their afternoons while their parents were at work. They lied about whether chaperones were in attendance at a party or whether they rode in cars driven by drunken teens. #
It does not surprise me at all the number of teenagers that lie is so high. Be it to evade punishment or get what they want, any child can and probably will use deception since they see little or no immediate consequences.
It disappoints me that so many of my fellow students try to excuse themselves from their amorality with the idea that lying at least a little is a necessity to a teenager’s way of life. Of course, this is absolutely untrue—it is a necessity only to the drug user, the power-hungry, or those that need attention.