Environmental risk and technological progress in young people's perception and practices

                                                                                                     Introduction     For  many  years  now  numerous  international  sources  have  been  showing  the   rapidity  with  which  the  human  being  is  gradually  destroying  the  ozone  layer   contributing  with  his  activities  to  global  warming  and  to  an  increasing  rivers   water  and  ai r  pollution  rate  that  gives  no  sign  of  decreasing,  causing  the   extinction  of  many  species,  demolishing  forests,  depleting  mineral  resources,   inflicting  other  forms  of  damage  on  environment  and  consequently  on  his  own   life  (Sen,  2010,  pp.  576 -­‐583);  all  this   happens  even  if  it  is  well-­‐ known  by  now   that  man’s  future  mainly  depends  on  protection  and  safeguard  of  the  living   environment.  Many  actions  in  our  standard  behaviour  and  daily  routine  as  for   instance  turning  the  light  and  heating  on,  making  electrical  ap pliances  work,   driving  and  throwing  the  litter  away  surely  may  have  high -­‐impact   environmental  consequences  (ENEA,  2006,  p.4).   The  present  academic  thesis  has  been  built  up  in  th e  theoretical  framework   that  has   just   been   outlined.   The  following    presented  w ork  consists  in  a  sort  of  exploratory  and   quantitative  pilot  study    aiming  at  investigating  the  knowledge,  perceptions   and  practices  of  a  sample  of  students  attending  the  last  two  years  of   secondary  school  from  different  educational  institutes  in  Rome  abou t   environmental  issues  ,  without  any  claim  of  statistical  inference.   On   the   one  hand  it  is  the  same  individual  who  directs  himself  making  his   choices  thanks  to  his  values  (Sciolla,  2008,  pp.  89 -­‐90)  and  on  the  other  hand  it   is  society  that  needs  to  have  new   generations  acquire  values,  norms,  attitudes   and  behaviours  that  are  generally  shared  by   some  social  group  (Catellani  in   Besozzi,  2006,  p.112).   Anyway  today  particularly  in  western  societies  you  can  often  hear  about   decline  in  morality  and  values  (Boudon,   2003,  p.7).   What  place  have  environmental  issues  in  the  value  scale  of  young  people   nowadays  considering  changes  in   the   public  moral  sense  and  belief  system  ?   The  basic  hypothesis  of  this  analysis    lies  in  the  existence  of  a  relationship   between  knowledge   and  practices  related  to  environment  but  above  all   between  background  and   the   already  mentioned  practices.   The  usual  different  areas  of  socialization  and  values  transmission    which  are   crucial  in  this  age  group  have  been  considered  ,  that  is  family,  school,  group  of   peers  and  mass  media.   In  what  refers  to  the  last  mentioned  institution  it  is  necessary  to  point  out  that   in  this  study    the  named  term  implies  essentially  television  because  if   compared  to  newspapers  and  the  radio  it  is  the  most  followed  by  the   examined  group  of  age;  whereas  the  internet  as  new  medium  is  still  difficult  to   be  used  by  youngsters  to  search  for  this  kind  of  information.   5