Young adults from 'Generation Y' more exposed to images of death more than any previous generation
   
   
By Steve Doughty Last updated at 6:52 PM on 4th October 2010
 
 

The Bishop of Coventry, the Rt Rev Dr Christopher Cocksworth,
claims most of Generation Y are bereft of a 'story' to help them navigate through death
 
 
Young people in their teens and 20s have seen more pictures of death than any previous generation, the Church of England said today.
   
It cited television images of the destruction of the Twin Towers, the execution of hostages in Iraq, memorial websites and assisted deaths of the terminally ill.
   
The realism of films and the ‘savage interactivity’ of computer games means they have been ‘assailed by the sight of death throughout their lives’, a report said.
   
The Church said that people born in the two decades after 1982 - which it called ‘Generation Y’ - lack guidance to help them understand and cope with death.
   
But, the report said, they are happy to get by with just a folk memory of Christianity and the modern mourning typified by roadside shrines of flowers.
   
Young people, it found, are ‘searching after some way to explain and interpret what has happened to those they have lost.
   
‘This generation is far more amenable to solemn moments and symbolic means of remembering those who have died than generations immediately preceding them.’
   
The report said: ‘Internet sites of remembrance and memorial are big business. Schools are adorned with flowers, candles and memorabilia when a student dies. Remembrance Day is having a renaissance with Generation Y.’
   
Recent years have seen a proliferation of websites such as Gone Too Soon which provide on-line memorials to the recently deceased.
   
Often created to mark the passing of young people, the sites feature messages from mourners, and provide an opportunity for people to add a computerised candle or flowers, or send a gift to the family of the person who has died.
   
The term Generation Y is often used to identify the successor the Generation X, a group taken up widely by authors and sociologists in the 1980s. Generation X, born in the 20 years after 1961, following the end of the post-war Baby Boom, are supposed to be a rebellious generation who rejected the traditions of their parents.
   
The sight of death - including images from the September 11 attacks on the Twin
Towers - are bombarding Generation Y, the Church claims
   
They are associated with punk rock, the depression of the early 1980s, then the money-making fashion of the latter part of the decade.
   
Generation Y, supposedly also coloured by the recession at the end of the 1990s and again after 2007, are said to be less disaffected, liberal in both political and economic views, and dedicated to electronic communications.
   
The analysis for the CofE by a group of authors including the Bishop of Coventry, the Right Reverend Christopher Cocksworth, said that teenagers and people in their 20s are not the rebels of the 60s and 70s who rejected both their parents and Christianity and were hostile to the Church.
   
Instead, the majority regard religion as irrelevant for their day-to-day lives, it found after studying the views of 300 young people who gathered at community work projects.
   
Death is one of the few things that push younger people towards spirituality, the report said.
   
‘On the rare occasions when a religious perspective was required, for example, coping with family illnesses or bereavements, they often made do with a very faded, inherited memory of Christianity in the absence of anything else,’ it found, adding that sometimes young people would pray in their bedrooms.
 
‘What is salutary for the Church is that generally young people seemed quite content with this situation, happy to get by with what little they knew about the Christian faith.
 
The study found that more than half of the young people consulted said they had thought about right and wrong during their time at a Christian-run project.
 
But fewer than a third had thought about God or the purpose of life.
 
The report said: ‘Generation Y have fewer cultural hang ups about the Church than did their predecessors. The challenge for the Church is to provide them with the opportunities to explore and to learn about belief of which they know little.’
 
 
   
   
   
  War is not a game. Ask someone that has anything more than very, very minor fragmentation in his lower intestines or chest cavities (not that you will have long to do so).
   
  I hope you have followed the Commandments within reason....
   
   
  Alternatively, you can have a look at Generation Y's sense of entitlement in the Wall Street Journal's 'Trophy Kids' Go to Work:

http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB122455219391652725.html.
   
  A good breeding ground for a few Genghis Khans....
   
   
   
   
   
   
The main article is available from:
   
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1317635/Generation-Y-exposed-mass-images-death-like-9-11-says-Church.html