Helping the young find a 'first life' before they lose themselves in second life

Young people increasingly use the Internet to build friendships and to share their personal agendas and stories with their peers. In some of the world's wealthier nations, teenagers will spend more time networking online than they do in face-to-face contact with others.

This is certainly true of Finland, which is one of the most wired nations in Europe. It has more mobile phones that almost any other nation on earth - in real, not simply proportionate, terms. And it was one of the first nations on earth to develop comprehensive and advanced broadband systems.

Finland's deep winter darkness drives people indoors for long periods and raises national suicide rates and it has one of the highest divorce rates in Europe. Study after study the world has suggested that children do less well in fragmented families than they do in families that stay together.

In Finland, as in some other parts of Europe, kids will come home in the depths of winter's darkness to parents and step-parents they don't feel comfortable with, or can't connect with. Then they'll spend hours alone, relating to their world only through the artificial prism of cyberspace.

It's a recipe for teen depression and alienation.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that all or most Finnish teens are depressed, or that they have a less than a warm relationship with their parents. I've spoken to hundreds of Finnish teens who are wonderful young people, with a real sense of destiny in life.

The fact is, though, that teens the world over find it hard enough as it is to fit into the adult world. The situation can only be made tougher by fragmenting families and the isolation of an entire social network built up only in cyberspace.

In an interview I conducted last year with Europe's leading futurist, Dr Patrick Dixon, we talked about how technology affects the fragmentation of society. Patrick noted that, for all their wizardry, Virtual Reality (VR) and other forms of web-based technology will always be limited in their ability to satisfy deep human needs. There is, he said, a huge and growing need for high touch in the age of high-tech.

As a society, we need to be consciously and deliberately creating new opportunities for young people to interact in positive and meaningful face-to-face environments. They need the chance to safely gather not just with people of their own age, but with those of different generations, so that they gain a rounded picture of the world and their place in it.

There is an even greater urgency with this as the push toward a virtual world increases. Churches, community clubs and school groups can do much to creatively inspire social interaction and cohesion.

We need to help the young find a 'first life' before they lose themselves in Second Life!

Secondly, this tragic shooting reminds us that many of Europe's young people are desperate in their search for underlying meaning in life.

The head of the British Army, General sir Richard Bennett, has said that when there is a spiritual vacuum in the nation, something will move in to fill it. In some parts of Europe, that something is radical Islamist fundamentalism.

In others it is rampant consumerism - and soulless secularism.