-Opening

Ladies and gentlemen,


As we all know, today we’re in the era of globalization, which is indicated by trade liberalization, and the easiness of transportation, communication, and information. On one side, the modern phenomena certainly have been of great help in making our lives easier. However, on the other side, it also brings big threat on developing countries including Indonesia. Why? Because we cannot deny that the easiness in transportation, communication, and the dissemination of information has big influence on the spread of diseases, drugs and other addictive substances, free-sex behavior, and further unhealthy life style. What we should be more concerned about is that all those negative things are potentially done by young people, the nation’s continuing generation. We can see nowadays, that consuming drugs and doing free sex are not strange things anymore for the youth in our country. When we look at globalization as one causing factor, we may have, for example, entertainment. Films and videos from abroad often show free-sex life among teenagers. TV serials like Baywatch or Beverly Hills, with handsome and beautiful stars can easily penetrate to teenagers’ mind. Consequently, they want to imitate the young stars’ life style.


The point is, ladies and gentlemen, youngsters need model figures, but unfortunately, the most widely publicized figures by the modern entertainment industry frequently demonstrate anti-social behavior, such as, drug and alcohol abuse, free sex, violence, and irresponsibility. What is even worse is that the swift flow of information is not balanced by adequate knowledge and understanding of the danger of the negative conduct. As it is disclosed by one research done by
doctors in Jakarta that 10-12 % teenagers there have very minimum knowledge of sex. It causes much misperception about sex among them and it pushes them to try things out. About drug abuse, a lot of adolescence think that one little try won’t cause them anything. They don’t know that it may be the start of drug addiction.

Ladies and gentlemen,
There’s still one factor that much probably causes free sex among teenagers, that is, pornography. Today, even children can get access easily to pornography through magazines, newspapers, films, and VCDs that are sold freely, and also Internet. Whereas in fact, it’s obvious that pornography has the potential of negative effects, such as addiction, escalation, desensitization, and act-out. By having that potential, pornography is very related to free sex in early age, which in turn, causes teenage pregnancy, abortion, single parenthood, prostitution, and venereal diseases, and AIDS.
Ladies and gentlemen,
In summary, so many social problems happen today related to teenagers. Among them are free sex and drug abuse. Therefore, it is high time for everyone to do something about the matters. They cannot be solved or, at least, minimized without good cooperation between the government, parents, society, and teenagers themselves. We cannot avoid globalization but we certainly can fortify ourselves against its negative effects. Teenagers should know not only to what or to whom they say “No” but also how they say it. Parents should be on their sides when they need attention, guidance and advice. Social institutions can help teenagers by conducting social endurance programs, which may contain, for example, how to make decisions, determine personal targets, and handle pressure, communication skill, and other general social skills. Sex education should also be intensified, starting from the family environment to school and society. The danger of drug abuse should be regularly explained through various kinds of elucidation. About pornography, perhaps we can refer to the United States. There, if a region defines something as pornography, the material will receive firm action. Moreover, porn magazines are not sold in any place, buyers should show their ID cards, extreme violent materials and child pornography are forbidden at all costs and can only be obtained in dark market. Internet also has its own regulations. Law, especially that which is related to pornography, free sex and drug abuse, is to be upheld and it is mostly the government’s role to do that. And so, every possible attempt should be done to deal with the problems. After that, what’s left for us is to pray that the efforts will be successful and that the Indonesian young generation, my friends and I, can still be the nation’s hope that people can be proud of.
-Closing