"What are you doing on the weekends?”  It’s the most popular question among young people at the end of the week. "I don’t know”, follows the answer. Such a typical situation for the present-day youth! As for me, I don’t know what to do at my free time either, but I exactly know what the majority of young people of my age do when they have a minute to spare: they lie on the sofa chewing something and watching TV.  I do the same.

When my mother sees me sitting in front of the TV-set glued to the screen, she says: "Why not go out and have some fun?” But what should I do to have fun? I really don’t understand the meaning of these words. Where to go, what to do to have fun? Maybe, if someone raised my spirits or taught how to organize my leisure I would fully understand the meaning of Mom’s words, but so far I can only say that I don’t know anyone who is responsible for such a situation when we don’t know where to go and what to do. I don’t see any organizations which could help us with leisure. Yes, each of us used to have some hobby when we were teenagers, but when we become older we give up our hobbies, because we do something what is interesting for us only when we are teenagers. But why not keep the same hobby being an adult, but do that on a higher level? For example, when I was a pupil, I used to attend Art School, but when I finished it, I stopped drawing. Now I think that if there were some Art Studios in my native town I would certainly continue this activity, so interesting for me, but in a more professional way. I suppose that every young citizen of my town wants to find an occupation to his taste, but alas! We haven’t got such clubs and studios for students of afterschool institutions here. I think that the problem of leisure time would have been partly solved if we had such, but our state officials have no time for our problems, and it’s sad. As a result, a lot of young people aimlessly loiter about the street. And that causes another problem.

Youth is the time when a person wants to show his individuality and stand out from the crowd. How can they do that? Teenagers demonstrate it by their clothes, behaviour and preferences. So they join different sub cultural groups: emos, goths, punks, skin heads and many others. They gather in groups and spend their time in the way peculiar to this or that sub culture. For example, if we see a person in black wearing a necklace with Celtic crosses, we know that it is a goth. A graveyard is a usual place of goths’ meetings. They tend to spend their time in gloomy and fearful places. Psychologists name a lot of reasons why young people should go to such unpleasant places, but in my opinion, they may join such groups because of their idle way of life and absence of any other interests. In such companies, a teenager finds friends with similar tastes and hobbies, and so they spend time together. I think such sub cultures don’t give much to a young person, but at the same time it doesn’t take anything too. For example, I share the apartment with a girl who used to be a member of the group who call themselves "straight edgers”. This is a branch which comes out from the rockers’ subculture. They have their own traditions and laws which they are to observe. I don’t want to concentrate the reader’s attention at this; I only want to stress that when this girl became older she left the group of "straight edgers” because she realized that there were some other values in life.

Nowadays a lot of young people spend their time in a quite similar way. They prefer sitting in cafes and drinking beer if they can afford it, but if they can’t, they gather in yards of block houses and do the same: drink beer. Some of them go to night clubs to have fun together, but that always comes with alcohol too. Russia loses its young generation in such clubs and bars because it is there where drug dealers find their victims. So, I don’t think that a night club is the best place for the youth; on the other hand, we have no other places to have fun and dance. Perhaps, the solution of this problem is in clubs’ managers’ actions: they must be on the alert so that the visitors couldn’t bring drugs, but club owners won’t do that because they have their own profits from deals with drug sellers; moreover, they have a part from sales. Thus, money is made not only in clubs but in drug sales too.

So the problem exists and will exist, until the society realizes all the gravity of the situation which leads the young generation to degradation. We already observe that there are a lot of lazy young people who do nothing to be cleverer and develop themselves. We used to be a nation which called themselves the most reading one, but what are we like now? A person can say, "I like reading books”, but if you ask him, "Which book have you read the last?” he doesn’t know what to say, and it’s a pity because this man doesn’t put any meaning into his words about books. Should he have read the book he would have remembered its title.  Speaking of me, I can say that I’m not a fan of reading but I like looking through the mass media, and I always remember the newspaper I read last. I am also fond of watching films like every normal young person, but I am not rich enough to go to the cinema very often. Today a cinema ticket costs more than a student can afford. So we have to sit at home and watch most of the new films of a bad quality on a small TV-screen. I think if tickets were cheaper there would be more students in cinema houses every day. On the other hand, what is on there? We have hardly any good films like those we used to have at the time of the Soviets. Nowadays, all Russian pictures are made similar to American ones. Our films do not arise in the young generation patriotic feelings and love to the Motherland. There is a lot of cruelty and violence in them. So, maybe, it is good that I haven’t got enough money to go to the cinema very often because the majority of Russian films don’t teach us to good and positive.

Thus, if I can’t relax in the cinema, where should I go then? Once I asked one young man how he spent his spare time and whether he had any problems in organizing it. His answer was not a surprise to me: he complained that he didn’t know any normal places for entertainment in Salavat, there are only bars and low-grade cafes where young people drink, smoke and gamble. Doing sports costs much too! If you want to be healthy you have to pay for it. And we wonder why our young generation is so weak physically! I am sure that sport gyms must be free of charge or at least entrance fees should not be too high. In that case, not only those who have money but every person who wants to keep fit will be able to attend such places. All that made me think that maybe we are to blame ourselves for not being able to organize our leisure time.

I asked my mother if she used to have similar problems in her youth. I wondered whether her generation had had other interests, thoughts and values. I was surprised a little when she told me that they had been like we. She only added that the Soviet youth had not had serious problems in organizing leisure. Everyone had known what to do and had pursued his/her life goal. Mom also told me that they had not had anyone to organize their spare time; they did that themselves.