I’m sitting in the junk room at home, which has a window over-looking the green outside our house. There was a group of teenagers gathered around the nearest bench earlier. Just as I was thinking “isn’t it nice to see young people having some sort of life again”, one of their number threw an empty drink can over his shoulder into the grass. Moments later another can joined it, then another.
I thought about confronting them while they were there, but gave them the benefit of the doubt - hoping they would take the rubbish when they left. My hopes were somewhat optimistic. A friend that lives nearby confronted another group earlier in the summer, and faced several days of online abuse in the aftermath.
Why are so many young people devoid of civic responsibility? What causes it? I have thoughts, but I’m not quite willing to share them - many will see them as a direct attack on either their own behaviour, or the parenting of their children - and those conversations never go well.
Postscript - unprompted, my teenage daughter and her friend just marched out with rubbish bags, pretty angrily, and picked up all the rubbish lest they be tarred by the same brush.