Some people think that all teenagers should be required to do unpaid work in their free time to help the local community. They believe this would benefit both the individual teenager and society as a whole. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages and give your opinion.
There is a growing debate about whether all adolescents should be asked to perform mandatory volunteer work in their leisure time to help assist the surrounding area. Although there are a variety of benefits associated with this topic, there are also some notable drawbacks, as will now be discussed.
The advantages of teenagers doing voluntary work are self evident. The first relevant idea is work experience. A valid illustration of this would be increasing their tangible skills. For example, an adolescent who volunteers to help in a customer service department will learn how to communicate effectively to people in different age groups. On a psychological level, the youth’s life skills will also be enhanced by having empathy towards others. This can be demonstrated by volunteering and assisting families living in low socio economic backgrounds with their day to day tasks.
There are, however, also drawbacks that need to be considered. On an intellectual level, the teenager may get distracted from their study. This situation, for instance, can be seen when voluntary work is also being undertaken taken during school terms. There would be time constraints for both areas. On a physiological level, youth might experience fatigue as they are unaware of the acceptable working or volunteering hours and, as a result, sometimes they can be overworked.
In summary, we can see that this is clearly a complex issue as there are significant advantages and disadvantages. I personally believe that it would be better not to encourage youths to do compulsory work because their studies might take them to a higher level in society, whereas volunteering could restrict this progress.
