• TEENAGERS today face a disturbing future.

Certainly their lifestyles are more complicated than mine at that age, when walking to the local cinema was once the high spot of the week.

Nowadays these lives seem more about discos, loud vehicles, phones, and screens.

We now know that unborn children can hear pop music and other noises. This might explain why youngsters crave for discos so loud that the music throbs through their bodies. Many will be deaf by the time they reach their middle age.

Young motorists and motorcyclists relive the war by getting their machines to skid, stutter and bang, scaring other road users.

Speed is in their blood and they race by unconcerned, some of them without number plates, an extraordinary omission in our age of surveillance.

Walking while looking at one’s phone is now so commonplace that it rarely promotes comment. Many a time I have had to wave an arm to prevent someone sauntering into me.

A recent report suggested that by the mid-century half the world will be wearing spectacles.

ANTONY PORTER, W9