hello and welcome to the big picture i cannot stop and i'm ali that's the today show discusses the role of morality plays in the lives of teenagers that's right kevin we know the teens are faced with situations every day that test their morality so today we've much you guys describe morality let's start with robin well it is a belief that a person has to live by and they follow through with them they get it from other just by definition i think one of those are beliefs that you force on yourself to follow through it's like you know it's like a code that you put yourself to that you need that you should follow through all your life to show that you're the right person i have to say the rubbish just like a code of ethics to live by and like for me personally rules that i told my friends so do you guys feel that morality is a choice or do you feel that it just comes naturally to people i think it has to be a choice personally i'm not sure about anybody else but you have to choose to follow the morals you can't just do it naturally i think you if they didn't everyone would have the same exact set of morals and i don't think they do do you guys feel that that action is important in and being moral that that your actions speak louder than words when it comes to morality  definitely if you say that you follow something but you don't actually follow through then you're not really then you're more of a hypocrite than a moral person and that's what i believe i'm curious if you're going to pick a moral becomes quite obvious to other people around you that when you say one thing you do another that it's not you're not fooling anybody by having a fast set of moral codes that you tell people you live by but in actual you don't carry them out and i think that it becomes very apparent to it's someone like thanks for doing something more but they're not everyone else knows and they think that he does on purpose but he's not doing on purpose maybe sometimes they do so more about putting morals into action how do your morals influence your decisions well the they actually mean what their action i mean maybe should make my decisions like if i'm trying to make a decision of whether i should go and do drugs or whether i should go and money i'm going to steal from someone i think about my morals and whether or not i would want to do that as a person and that's that's how well what makes a person want to be more do you think it's just you have a lot of self worth that you want to be a moral person what do you think it is i think that our self worth self worth plays a big part in it because if you don't community and it's like the domino effect that if you have morals that it goes that goes around you know i totally agree so what kind of issues and decisions that you have to make test your  morality something like i said earlier a group of friends that i had to go out and like you know like go destroy property you have the choice of whether or not you want to go with them or if you want to stick and follow your morals and yes well we asked that same question to a bunch of peers township high school students and here's what they had to say your pressures were to test my morality to me pornography video games tests my morality test a teen magazine sexual interest in other peers test people's morality nowadays i think it's a big thing to sex or not to sex ok what you're dealing with is what sistine reality is probably to stay the decision whether to study and work hard work to cheat myself like from how my religion and my faith has molded me i definitely bring my morals from that con basically i get my morals from everything i interact around  my parents my faith my friends my family outside like my distant relatives even everything everything i interact with affects my morals or add to them or even changes them a little bit just to me and maybe make them a little bit better and make me a little bit better as a person and i think for me it starts with well i get information from big part of having more losses and they can be your own and not just someone else's i think it's really good to get your ideas and input from other people from your friends your family your teachers your peers in school but i think that one s like morals motivate you even and i'm not a part of it is that morals aren't necessarily always good or always bad you cannot people can have bad morals it's possible that everyone has some sort of set some sort of code that they live by some sort of shoes it doesn't affect it i think i think it's sort of test it man that's good so as you grow up as you experience different life situations you sort of are faced with your challenges and that shapes your morals i think shapes it maybe not necessarily changes that completely because like i know for me it could be different for a lot of people that i've set certain standards of myself that i'd like to hold carry out throughout my life you know as they grow up and well peer pressure just like things encounter in life do shape them i don't think they should change or like for me i don't want these events to change it completely because the standards of whatever it is set up so you feel that your morals can be compromised are through the situations that you feel that you always have you know the same morals that you them brought up with and have chosen for yourself your morals can't be compromised only in your choices that you make they can compromise yourself as a person but your make you do because i think it comes back to being your choice and i think it's a big part of it is you i definitely agree with jordan and like you can have like the temptation to compromise or morals but it's completely un is are you willing to compromise what you set for yourself i think something could happen in your life that makes you want to change your moral at all i think things can happen to shape them and so but like if you're if you when you set your morals for yourself if you like if you feel like strongly about them i don't think it's going to change them completely well it can shape form or change your view of something i think that if it's something you feel strongly about they're probably not going to change one hundred percent so let's say like you had that you didn't feel bad about drinking you know  drinking at the beginning like well a lot of people go about like i'm invisible like oh it happened to him and it's not me and i might think differently or think twice the next time they could say for hopefully could change it completely  nothing with drugs and alcohol is not always your choice whether you want to stop you and save your friend's eyes i mean if you're already so deep into it that sometimes it's it's almost impossible to change and i start certainly is a factor that would influence but sometimes it's not enough to change so this situation that you guys have just laid out that's a situation that really your morals would have been tested do you guys say situations every day that test your morals and how do you deal with that not every day but i mean like i face i see things as they come but i don't think every day i see moral testing that i think every day this is something no matter how little or how small it touched your morals and you have to recognize that and that's one way to keep your morals where they where you want them and i think it's definitely every me personally i like to say that i don't like to judge people and and so but i'll be sitting there at lunch and my friends will start talking about something it's not like some horrible thing that we're saying but it's still going against what i had i say that i don't like to do but you just don't realize i'm right there with her like gossiping is just like i know it's not right but it's so easy to fall into and you know you heard what oh you know like and i think that's like one of the biggest tests like for myself too is like ari should i be taking part in this conversation or is it something that i can do without him and i don't mean in my life to get on so sometimes even just being and being there being present t morality right you guys you know that being friends with a person who has different moral then you can affect you negatively or you know does it affect you positively make you stronger i think it definitely it can affect you negatively especially if you spend so much time with that person because i mean this is what you're surrounded by and everything but on the other hand if you're willing to take it as a challenge and how can this challenge my morals and how can from what i'm learning you're seeing in this trend can i build myself or build my moral stronger that most of the people that i am friends with are not associated with have the same sort of moral standards as to where and while it happens like if you do i mean you hang out and you're friends with someone because you like them and there's something about them you like and ok i mean how do you feel about that can be friends with a person who has different morals and you know i think there's a general a level of respect that you need to have and i have that entails morals and yeah i think that's really important i'm not going to befriend kid like murdered somebody i know it's kind of other examples like stuff like that and that on the other hand i think it's excellent i have friends who don't have a lot of the same beliefs as you and i guess that's kind of giving getting a good point or got a pass for some commercials but we'll be right back with more of the big picture right after this be blind to type call one eight hundred diabetes now welcome back to the big picture where we previously mentioned that faith and religion play a big role in the shaping of teen morality kallen how does face shape your morals see  me with an outline for the morals that i should follow it doesn't say exactly what i should do but if it does it does sitting like it gives me examples it gives me  background on how how i should conduct myself how i should be able to act that's i think is a major part of my morals as a person my face is definitely like probably the key factor in my reality in just because i feel so strongly about my religion and just like following christ and stuff that i like and desire so much to follow him that i have shaped my morals accordingly like with what the bible says it's like ok so how can my life just reflect like a godly image and how am i going to live my life so that others will be able to see it in my actions i think of the bible and religion is a very good way to shape your morals but i also know that doesn't have all the answers and some of those things you have to find out through experience and through interaction with your environment and things around you but i would say that the bible is by one religion is a very good way to shaping morals from so do   i like to make my own like beliefs and stuff from scratch like to take what everyone believes and i take into account and see which one probably best suits mine so i don't already have a like i don't have like a bible or anything written for me already so i just make my own morals and see how that affects me and if it's a good thing i keep it if it's about it do you think it's more difficult because you don't you're not coming right from that source you can't even know what i believe about god yet but i think i would also prefer not having like a set of guidelines that i need to follow i think that it's important to feel morality so let's check out what they had to say all right i would say from the times that i was a little through high school in college and a moral fiber of young people's day has changed for good television and would always amaze me the kids loved to watch th chairs like i love lucy those shows like that name joy in those are bodies as pure and wholesome as you can get i think the morality has changed a little bit because the kids today are more exposed to it you you can do something important going back to the big picture you know kevin i thought it was really interesting how every person we interviewed had said that teen morality had to change since they were teenagers and that's right and they all seem to have their own reasons for why it changed jordan do you think that teens in general today are more that adults today are more in tune with teen morality well i'm not to disagree with most of the adults you had in your package there because i just think that that kids are misrepresented general but well they don't see is people with positive morals and people that have the same morals that they held back when they were young kids and i think that in any day and age you're going to have people with good morals and people of high school high moral standards and you're not people of low moral it's just how how much emphasis is put on the bad and the good i think it does mean something to that every person we interviewed through their profession that they were working with teens every day so they learn you know they're not just standing off and looking down at teenagers and saying they're doing this this and that but it seem like they had a really positive view teen morality and so the teens were overall pretty moral do you think that the media reflects that type of  morality with teenagers or do you think it takes more of a negative spin the media calling the media tends to take two different students the really moral students and then the really bad students i mean of course there are going to be some students in between who will learn you know could go either way but like the media tends to emphasize the really a moral students and they tend to put down or take late generally give the moral students a bad time and the mean and that's showing that the adults that maybe students these days don't have the same morals that they did i mean maybe maybe our morals have changed because the adults i wanted to change the morals from when they were kids they've seen ours they seen are more they seem their morals as kids and they said well ours weren't good enough so maybe we'll change it and or more for ours for kids to make them better  people i think that like we as teenagers have the opportunity now to either impress or kind of like disappointed ultras where they look at us as a new generation and we can either impress them with their morals and how we go about things in our actions and how we handle