Curfews are Not Useful for Teenagers

Caption: Freshman Victor Silva looks at the time on his watch, considering how much time he will have before his parents expect him to be at home at night. [by Aline Dobashi]

By Aline Dobashi

I would like to argue that curfews, a regulation that parents might choose to impose over their children requiring them to be indoors after a certain amount of time, do not have a useful impact on teens. It is my opinion that not only does it not have a positive impact on teens, but it is right to assume that it does more harm than good on teens’ mental health.

I think it is safe to assume that no teen likes to be told what to do. Even worse, to be told what time to get home or to sleep. A problem with teenagers is that, at this time of their lives, their hormones are really sensitive and their mental state is not at its best. So, this states that curfews are more likely to do bad for them rather than good.

Overall, some parents may think that curfews help teenagers get out of trouble since they have less time to do things they will regret afterwards. However, there are statistics that show that this may not be the case.

According to a Stanford University study, their research shows that “there is no significant reduction in crime accountable to the implementation of juvenile curfew laws (McDowall et al., 2000…).”

With this information, it is safe to conclude that the parental control curfew implementation does not cause a reduction in teenagers regarding trouble. Even though curfews don’t have a positive impact on teens, the question that continues is: does it cause any harm or negative impacts on teenagers? In my opinion, I think the answer is in the consequences observed by experts of the law.

According to the Coalition of Juvenile Justice, they state that “youth curfew laws create unintended consequences that do more harm than good for the youth.” This happens because curfews hinder independence and autonomy for juveniles.

They limit social connections with other people and, worst of all, can often create a feeling of distrust between them and their parents. This causes teens to be more likely to disobey the curfew implemented by their parents.

Although many studies do show that curfews have a negative impact on teenagers, there are still some studies that show the opposite. According to the National Library of Medicine, four out of eight studies examining the effectiveness of curfew laws on juvenile and victimization concluded that there was a positive impact.

As stated, only half of the studies showed a positive impact, which means that the other half were negative or neutral. The study concluded that even though some studies show a positive impact on curfew laws, more research is still needed before conclusions can be actually drawn about this topic. I suggest that curfew laws don’t cause a positive impact on society or on teenagers’ mental health.

Based on these findings, I think it is safe to say that curfews do not have useful impacts on teenagers with ages ranging from 12-18. In my opinion, not only do they have no positive impacts as shown in the previous paragraph, but they also cause more harm than good. I believe that a curfew is more of a way for parents to show their teens that they are in control of them, and, in return, teens do not respond well to these forms of communication that parents show overall control. With this conclusion in mind, I believe the best understanding on this topic is to realize that curfews do no good to teenagers.