Dishonesty as a Policy

Growing up nearly everyone has heard the singsong rhyme “Liar, liar, pants on fire, hanging from a telephone wire.” It is a simple chant that ridicules one for telling a lie but it also symbolizes how in the earlier stages of adolescence, telling anything, but the truth was a terrible crime. Thus, people may begin to wonder how teenagers can feel so comfortable with lying when they were raised with the mindset that dishonesty was so bad that it equaled public humiliation.
Circumstances that provoke lying come up fairly often for teenagers. According to a survey of 30,000 teens by the Josephson Institute, a majority of the youth have been dishonest. Almost half of those surveyed admitted to concealing the truth for money-saving issues and 83 percent revealed that they hide an important fact from their parent.
Now, what are the circumstances that bait teens into being this dishonest? Students will sometimes experience undesirable pressure in a situation where they feel like they are the center of attention. Naturally, they would start to sweat and try to come up with every possible solution to get out of that predicament. The circumstances can vary from being asked an embarrassing question by peers that will define their social standing to being pushed into doing a deed that they do not desire in order to protect a person’s feelings.
Being in high school, these incidents are more than likely to occur depending on how social the student is. In the beginning, pupils may be less willing to tell the truth because they are afraid. If they lie, they may be able to get away from the situation easily.
By telling a small fib, one can be saved from possibly having to go to the school dance with an unwanted date whose feelings one wishes to leave unhurt. All the person simply has to say is, “I can’t go because I’m grounded for the weekend, sorry,” and the problem is gone. The recipient does not feel the pain of rejection and the other can avoid an awkward situation.
However, a white lie can backfire fairly easily, causing more problems than actually telling the truth. What if people who were rejected found out they were deceived? Wouldn’t they be more offended than if they were just told ‘no’? Most of the time, white lies are used to protect someone, or oneself, but generally more harm is done by saying these than there is in saying the truth.

By: Sarah Takhar StaffWriter