• Most teenagers want to engage in activities to achieve a feeling of 'highness'
• Parents advised to come up with more productive activities at family level
Image: COURTESY
Government officials and law-abiding Kenyans have over time been taken aback by people disregarding the realities of the coronavirus pandemic.
By the time of writing this article, cases in the country stood at 34,201. Number of deaths was 577.
While nobody had had an experience of living under social distancing, wearing masks and staying at home, it is surprising how some Kenyans chose to use their brains to beat the regulations.
More surprising is how school-going youth have been caught in parties, taking the time after schools closed to hold sex orgies.
The Star sought expert opinion behind the youths' behaviour.
Kenya Counselling and Psychological Association chairman Elias Gikundi says at their adolescent age, youths are naturally risk takers.
“Even in life in general, they take risks which lead them to accidents, commotion and even loss of life,” he said, adding that risk taking gives youth a sense of ownership and satisfaction.
Gikundi said the youth crave a ‘high’ that is missing when they are idle.
“For somebody to get into a situation where they feel high and excited in life, some of the activities that will bring that are of high risk in nature,” he said.
Students have been home for nearly four months. While idleness could be a factor why youths are engaging risky behaviour, Gikundi says the key factor is the stage of life they are in.
He is also the director at Kenya Association of Professional Counsellors.
Besides group parties, he says teenagers may also engage in other tendencies like social media and Internet addiction, as well as drug abuse.
“Adolescents also have a way of feeling invincible, that nothing can happen in their lives, and that explains why they walk on the roads in a way they may be knocked by cars,” Gikundi said.
“When they engage in risky behaviour, they feel that this coronavirus cannot hurt them; it is for others and not them.”
In all these, he says, parents feel helpless because “it is not something they had prepared for and they also need help in dealing with the youths”.
To help the youth cope with challenges that come with their age group and idleness, he called for more activities at family level.
He said families can have virtual supported activities, which members can link into, or other activities that can be initiated with the coronavirus circumstances in mind.