34% of Adults think the young have no respect for others

Almost one in four adults (24%) aged 26 or over say they feel uneasy when they see young people (those aged 11 to 25) on the street and cross the road to avoid them, according to a new report out today.

According to the YouGov research, which was commissioned by youth charity the Jack Petchey Foundation,  34% of adults (aged 26+) believe young people have no respect for others.

Why is Life Harder for Young People?

49% of adults aged 26 or over said they think life is generally harder for young people today than it was when they were young (i.e. 11 to 25) and only one in ten (10%) agree that they would want to be young in today’s society. Around two thirds (64%) put this down to the fact that young people are expected to grow up too fast, while 54% blame a lack of positive role models, and 53% say it’s because there aren’t enough places for young people to go (i.e. socially).

Anti-Social Behaviour: Vandalism the most anti-social activity

51% of respondents rated ‘vandalising property’ as the most antisocial act, chosen from a list attached to the end of a YouGov survey. Second was ‘urinating in the street’, with 22% citing it as the most antisocial activity.

However, only 34% of respondents had actually witnessed vandalism first hand, which was low in relation to the number who had personally encountered  litter-dropping (83%), loud swearing in the street (81%), spitting in the street (77%), and excessive noise late at night (72%).

Other antisocial activities appear to be fairly widespread, as 52% of respondents had witnessed people not controlling their pets, 49% had seen someone urinating in the street, and 36% had seen graffiti being created.

Only 1 in 10 adults would intervene if they saw teenagers engaged in graffiti

As both of the major parties are putting tackling anti-social behaviour high on their list of priorities on the next election, we added a few questions to the end of a poll to discover how people to respond to direct interactions with anti-social behaviour.

69% of adult Britons claim that they would intervene if they saw an old lady being mugged. In response to the following question, 40% said they would intervene, prepared to use physical force if necessary, while 29% said they would intervene, but would not use physical force:

“You are walking down a street at 8pm. There are a few people about. You see a heavily-set man mugging an old lady. What do you think, in reality, you would be most likely to do?”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, only 1 in 4 women claim that they would be prepared to use force in this scenario, in contrast with 56% of men.

Graffiti

However, only 1 in10 respondents would intervene in any way if they saw a group of teenagers writing graffiti on a school wall. 35% said they would not even call the police after they had walked away. Older people, having walked away, were much more likely to call the police: 63% of over 55s would do this, compared with 34% of 18 to 34 year olds. This group were, however, the least likely to intervene prepared to use force (1%).