LONDON, England??Times are bad; children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book,? wrote the great Roman statesman Cicero sometime between 106 and 43 BC.

The lament is perennial although today the kids have gotten harder, more dangerous.

In a recent landmark decision in England, a 15-year-old girl was convicted of manslaughter for aiding and abetting her friends as they beat to death a 29-year-old man who was simply minding his own business.

Her crime: ?happy-slapping.? With her mobile phone, she filmed the ferocious attack on a defenseless man, then sent the film to others for their amusement, all the while boasting about what they had done.

The girl is a ?gymslip? mother, so called because such mothers are so young?not even in their teens?yet they?re already parents and saddled with children, some of whom have a parental syndicate of three to four men.

Hundreds of children, under the age of 8, spinning out of control and being admitted to hospital for alcohol-related illnesses! Young boys and girls committing violent criminal acts against property and people and being slapped with antisocial behavior orders. Child-murderers.

Rudderless kids involved in drug-fueled mayhem, laying waste to some of our town centers; public sex; binge-drinking in what have become no-go areas after midnight.

The British government is so worried that it is proposing courses on parenting, imposing prohibitive fines on parents deemed to abscond on their parental responsibilities, sex education for 5-year-olds, and drug and alcohol education for 4-year-olds.

It breaks your heart, but it happens, and you have to wonder why we in the UK don?t apologize every time we refer to these blessed isles as a ?developed country??a country with so much, bursting to the seams with plenty and prosperity, and yet being smothered by its own material riches.

Cluster suicides

In the past year, we have had a phenomenon of cluster suicides. Seventeen young people, in their early teens and early 20s, in a nondescript Welsh town called Bridgend, had died by their own hands, by hanging themselves from bedroom posts, trees, a washing line. (Only one survived.)

Bridgend, population 40,000, is among the most economically deprived towns in the UK today. The police, baffled and none the wiser post-mortem, believe that at least 10 of the suicides knew each other. There is no evidence to suggest that there was a suicide pact among them.

Social networking sites

While none of the victims seem to have sought out suicide websites especially, they appeared to have something in common: They were active users of social networking sites, like Bebo and Facebook.

Their deaths sparked a frenzy of Internet-memorial sites, or virtual books of condolence, which in themselves probably promoted copycat suicides.

The charity Papyrus, which is dedicated to preventing suicides among young people, found that a number of the kids killed themselves after reading about the cluster of deaths on the Internet or in chat rooms.

?Hope ur having a laff up there!? ?Hope u saw the balloon I sent up for u!? Just two of the many banal, but touchingly callow, messages which were posted on these memorial sites.

One theory has it that the victims, completely out of the blue, had wanted to die simply for the prestige of having their own Internet-memorial site.

In a celebrity-engrossed society, their deaths and the manner of their dying have given them celebrity status; the Internet?and the freedom it endows to users?has given them the means to become famous.

We are, I?m afraid, witnessing the world over what has been called the ?digital narcissism? of our age.

A recent study by psychologists from San Diego State University reports that the ?young are suffering from an excess of self-esteem, self-importance, entitlement and narcissism.?

Self-promotion

In blatant and shameless acts of self-promotion, conducted in the borderless world of the Internet, these kids are proclaiming: ?This is me! Watch me!? This new social revolution is rapidly?and sadly?deracinating anonymity and what it means to be a private person. In a thumping bid for recognition, anyone can now post anything and everything online?music, literary attempts, diaries, angst and furies, sexual histories.

?Kids around here (Bridgend) have been drinking, smoking dope, taking Ecstasy and having sex since they were 13 or 14. By the time they reach my age, they?ve done everything. They get bored and think killing themselves will be exciting,? said Danielle, 16.

?It has become a trend, a cool thing to do,? said 17-year-old Anne-Marie, who confessed to having considered suicide herself.

?Nothing to do here except maybe go out at night and get drugs. Suicide is just what people do here because there is nothing else to do,? said another.

Internet generation

Perhaps it is precisely because kids of the Internet generation are exposed to everything?thrill, adventure, challenge?that they find there is nothing left for them to try or do.

In our manically accelerated lives, the center cannot hold. Suffering from time famine, acute material fatigue and lost content, we seem to have commercialized every aspect of our lives, including childhood. Too weary, we defer to our children and their ?pester power.? Too tired from life?s mortal dailiness, we surrender the care of our babies?some just a few weeks old?to childminders and nannies, and to already frazzled teachers, the sum total of their education.

Our children drown in a rueful cocktail of indulgence, indifference, inertia and benign neglect. We seem to have lost the confidence to impose parental guidelines, set boundaries, and exert control and authority.

In a pitched battle with these little acquisitive blighters, who bray and cry for new toys, trainers, trinkets, we say: ?OK, just give it to them to shut them up!?

Wading into the tumult and tide, the UK Children?s Society, in a recent study, has found that most parents believe that, deprived of new gizmos and gewgaws, kids are left anxious, pressured and depressed, for they are unable to keep up with fashion, trends and friends.

Materialism

?Evidence suggests that those most influenced by commercial pressures also show higher rates of mental problems. It could be that the most anxious, miserable children are trying to buy things to comfort themselves,? said Philip Graham, emeritus professor of child psychology at the Institute of Health in London.

Children who have been given too much, too soon, well, they might think they don?t have a lot left to look forward to!

?Today?s children are being invited to engage with ideas they simply don?t have the maturity to deal with,? said Jacqueline Wilson, best-selling author of preteen novels.