As Hong Kong has become modernized and people wealthier in the past few decades, many parents indulge in spoiling their kids. They overprotect their kids and give them what they want.

That is not a good sign for this city's future, I am afraid.

The upshot of a prospering society is that people have more money to spend. Parents want their children to excel in every aspect of life. They send their children to ballet and piano classes and buy them expensive smartphones. Some spoiled kids have an inflated view of their abilities and sometimes resort to aggression to get ahead, a recent study of the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) shows.

A CityU professor said our kids often rate themselves a lot more highly than youngsters in Western countries and some of them could turn into violent offenders. A shocking double-murder case in March 2013 set alarm bells ringing. A young man beheaded his parents, blaming them for forcing him to take piano lessons as a child against his will and other failures in life, including his inability to find a girlfriend.

The CityU professor tested 9,400 11-year-olds to detect their antisocial traits. The average level of narcissism displayed by our youngsters was 3.89, higher than the 2.9 recorded for kids in the United States, 2.81 in Australia and 2.36 in the United Kingdom.

Spoiling and narcissism seem to be highly correlated. The feeling of self-importance among our youngsters could lead to undesirable consequences. The CityU professor warned that 16 percent of those tested in our city showed signs of becoming aggressors or bullies. They scored 6.23 on a 14-point scale, equivalent to that of adolescent criminals in the US and Canada.

This is scary indeed and it's time we naval-gazed.

I believe most parents in Hong Kong wouldn't heed CityU's findings. They will continue to nurture their kids to surpass their peers because "being successful in life" by whatever means seems to be many parents' core value. Values such as "empathy" and "sympathy" ring hollow to them. Parents, I believe, should change their way of bringing up their kids. In addition to nurturing them to become successful in life, kids should also be taught to "love thy neighbor" and "help the underprivileged".

Ironically, despite the full attentive care endowed and showered to the youngsters by their parents, young people don't seem to have the confidence to complete a university education, which may hurt Hong Kong's competitiveness in the long run. This apparently is the result of parents' overprotection of kids.

A Chinese University of Hong Kong survey released on April 25, 2013 showed that 47 percent of Hong Kong's 15-year-olds think they would finish a university education, which is lower than 81 percent in South Korea and 70 percent in Singapore. That's sobering news for Hong Kong's economic growth. We need to produce educated people to keep Hong Kong rolling. University education is necessary to produce professionals to meet the needs of Hong Kong in a globalized world.

Overprotection of our young may cause them to become less independent and less confident in planning their own future. I would urge parents to educate their kids to become more self-determining. We need to do more to make our youngsters work hard for what they covet, become more responsible and less selfish.

Hong Kong's GDP jumped 6.7 percent, 9.5 percent and 3.8 percent, in 2006, 2007 and 2008 respectively. The GDP fell 3.3 percent in 2009 due to the worldwide financial tsunami. It rebounded and rose 7.7 percent in 2010 and 5 percent in 2011. For the prosperity of Hong Kong's sake, parents should "grow up" now and stop spoiling their children.

The author is coordinator of the B.S.Sc in financial journalism program at Hong Kong Baptist

University.

(HK Edition 04/30/2013 page1)