Adults: The Source of the Integrity Crisis
Lately, we have witnessed teenagers justifying any means for validation—from creating content that demeans people with disabilities and falsifying academic research, to viewing vaping as a marker of existence. We, the adults, tend to blame and vilify them. Yet, before our index finger points too hastily, it is time we look at ourselves and the environment that surrounds them daily.
Today, society prioritises validation through social media. The number of likes, followers, and clicks has become the currency of self-worth. Sherman et al. (2016) demonstrated that likes function as measurable social support, so behaviours like vaping that garner many likes tend to be interpreted as accepted and encouraged. Not only social media, but artificial intelligence (AI) also exacerbates the crisis. If validation once came only from visual content, AI now allows anyone to appear productive without an honest process. Kofinas et al. (2025) found that AI-generated work is difficult to distinguish from human work, triggering the use of shortcuts for validation. Integrity thus becomes the victim.
The three cases at the beginning of this article show one commonality: the desire to be acknowledged, even through means that demean oneself or others. The desire to be seen is human, but it becomes a problem when it is made the goal and pursued through ignoble means. If we reflect, this obsession with recognition is not a creation of children, but rather a mirror of adult logic: the logic that self-worth is measured by visible achievements and public recognition. It is this logic that makes parents willing to force their children and headmasters willing to justify shortcuts.
To address this issue, we must dare to shift the focus from ‘the child’s fault’ to ‘the adult’s wound’. Children’s problems are often seen as solely their own, while the environment they inhabit rarely receives attention. Adults often unconsciously assume they are ‘finished’ and no longer need to learn. This assumption is dangerous. No child is born thirsty for validation. The obsession with recognition is a learned outcome. Children absorb it from the structures and culture created and lived by the adults around them (Bandura, 1977). What adults celebrate and display as signs of success becomes a hidden curriculum teaching children what is ‘worthy’ to pursue and how to do it.
The validation needs of adults are visible in parents who show off their child’s report card as a sign of their own success, or headmasters who chase the label of ‘exemplary school’. Some of them justify cheating for validation. However, vilifying them as ‘greedy’ is a superficial analysis. The desire for validation is born from oppressive structures and culture. Parents force their children to achieve because of environmental pressure that deems a child not smart if they do not excel. Headmasters chase the label of excellence because of structural demands that press upon them. This is what Johan Galtung (1969) termed structural and cultural violence. The parents and headmasters are, in fact, victims. The situation worsens when they do not realise this wound, and then unconsciously pass it on to the children. In any domain, the fundamental question is the same: what do we celebrate as ‘success’?
Because they are unaware of the wound, the victims inadvertently perpetuate the cycle by turning into perpetrators. This situation must be stopped and changed. To do so, the first step is to build awareness and a sense of responsibility among adults, so there is no feeling of washing one’s hands of the matter because one feels victimised. Awareness alone is not enough. Adults need to understand the root of the problem, then act. In the concept of critical peace education, awareness must be accompanied by agency, the capacity to act to change circumstances (Bajaj, 2018).
The first task of adults is not to correct the attitudes and behaviour of children or students, but to stop the adult habit of pretending everything is fine. The next task is for adults who hold power, such as headmasters and heads of families, to remember that they have structures within their grasp that must be intentionally utilised by designing structures and cultures that foster integrity. For example, at home, what ‘success’ story will parents tell their children? Will it be about the neighbour’s child who got a high-paying job, or also about the neighbour’s child who helped solve a problem in the village? At school, the headmaster can determine what will be celebrated. Only the student who won a competition, or also celebrating a student’s contribution when they carry out activities that seem simple but contribute to the common good. Adults need to consciously arrange the environment so that integrity can truly grow and develop.
Another manifestation of this arrangement is for adults to direct life at home, school, and in the community to be more oriented towards contributing to real problems around them. When children or students are deliberately invited to observe their surroundings and contribute to finding solutions to improve them, the desire for recognition slowly ceases to be the goal and becomes a by-product of work done with integrity. This practice of building integrity cannot be postponed; the best momentum to start is the 2026/2027 new academic year.