Electronically-savvy youths
צילום: ויז'ואל/פוטוס
Israeli mallrats
Study by National Council for the Child finds Israeli children love the mall, are electronically savvy. Study also finds rise in single-parent families, birthrates, school violence.
To find Israeli youths, just head in the direction of the nearest mall. A study conducted by the National Council for the Child found that 82% of Israeli teens consider the mall their “ultimate pastime”. Half the youths surveyed would rather eat at a restaurant or curl up with a good book. 56% of Israeli youngsters participate in extra-curricular activities, mainly in sports teams of various kinds.
The study, appearing in the council’s annual publication out Sunday, also found that Israeli youths are anything but techno-phobes; 93%of youths polled have at least one computer in their home, and 70% surf the net daily. Cell phones also naturally abound, with 80% of Israeli youngsters owning at least one cellular phone.
As for sending kids to their rooms, this may hardly be effective punishment, seeing as 78% of Israeli youths have at least one of the following in their humble abodes: a TV, computer, DVD or VHS player, cable or satellite television and internet connection.
Increased Birth Rates
The child council study also uncovered that, quite simply, there are more children in Israel circa 2007. At the end of 2006 there were 2 million children in the State of Israel, 70% of them Jewish, a third Muslim, and the rest Druze, Christian and of other faiths. There are also a growing number of Israeli children being born, with 148,170 births taking place in 2006.
More and more children, the study found, live in either multiple-child homes, or single-parent families (8% of youngsters polled). Moreover, 14,000 Israeli children in 2007 are children of divorce.
Sadly, the child council reported that one of every three Israeli children lives in poverty. Sixty-seven percent of children living under the poverty line are non-Jewish, with roughly 20% of their Jewish counterparts living in a similar predicament.
Teenage Violence
Israeli children, it seems, must contend with growing violence along with poverty. The Ombudsman for Children and Youth reported that he has aided over 100,000 youths in 2006, most of whom were victims of sexual abuse. 20% of these victims were abused by their parents, 46% by an acquaintance or family friend, and 32% by a stranger.
There is also an ever increasing crime rate among Israel’s young. In 2006, 35,000 new police records were opened for youths and teens, mainly for violence and property related offenses. The number of underage prisoners in Israeli prisons has also increased during the last five year.
Violence also seemed to prevail in Israeli schools in the last few years, as 19% of fifth and sixth graders and 13% of seventh-ninth graders reported being victims of physical, verbal or sexual abuse by fellow classmates. There were no major changes in the drop-out rates or in the number of matriculating students in Israeli schools in the last several years.
