The Influence of Family Ecosystem on Youth Violence

Youth violence is increasingly becoming a serious issue in many countries, which can have far-reaching effects on individual development, social stability, and national progress, underscoring the need for greater scholarly and policy attention. The family ecosystem, as an important perspective, can be used to analyze adolescent violent behavior. This study integrates existing literature, analyzes influencing factors, and constructs a new analytical framework to further reveal how family factors shape adolescent violence. Youth violence exhibits diverse patterns across specific domains, manifesting as both physical and psychological aggression. These behaviors can undermine mental health and peer relationships of adolescents, and elevate the long-term risk of criminal involvement. The paper finds that factors such as dysfunctional family relationships, poor family functions, exposure to domestic violence, and socioeconomic disadvantage each play a role and systematically produce effects. Cultural beliefs within the family can also affect adolescent violence. Based on these findings, five suggestions are proposed, including improving family communication, enhancing parenting education, addressing parental deviance, strengthening family cohesion, and mitigating the impacts of socioeconomic disadvantage. When relevant stakeholders value and regulate the risks of the family ecosystem, and adopt various strategies to prevent or reduce youth violence, they can help adolescents grow up more healthily.