Question: I have been learning Japanese for about 9 months and can understand the basic grammar in this sentence well, but the meaning of it seems **ambiguous** to me, and I wonder *which* meaning below is right, and *how* can I adjust the sentence to express the other meaning?  

(1) The young people's value has a strong influence on the society.  

(2) The young people's value is strongly influenced by the society.  

Or, neither is right?

P.S.  

I **have used** google translation and it tells me the first one is right, but my teacher has a different idea.  

Any thought will be appreciated. Especially IF you are a native Japanese speaker, your answer will be more convincing and may you tell me about that.

Answer: 
I'm a native speaker and I took this sentence as (2) intuitively. (So anything below is more of an afterthought.)

Technically speaking, this sentence is indeed ambiguous, and 社会的な影響 probably means "influence **on** the society" more often than "influence **by** the society". Still, 価値観 is something personal, and it is not usually regarded as something that affects the society, at least directly.

FWIW, DeepL Translate [did translate](https://www.deepl.com/translator#ja/en/%E8%8B%A5%E8%80%85%E3%81%AE%E4%BE%A1%E5%80%A4%E8%A6%B3%E3%81%AF%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E7%9A%84%E3%81%AA%E5%BD%B1%E9%9F%BF%E3%81%8C%E5%BC%B7%E3%81%84%E3%81%A7%E3%81%99%E3%80%82) this as "The values of young people are strongly influenced by society." Compare it with 消費税の増税は社会的な影響が強いです, which was translated by DeepL as "The consumption tax hike has a strong social impact."

To express (2) unambiguously:

* 若者の価値観は社会**からの**影響が強いです。
* 若者の価値観は社会**による**影響が強いです。
* 若者の価値観**に**社会**が**与える影響は強いです。
* 若者の価値観は社会**から**強い影響を**受けます**。

To express (1) unambiguously:

* 若者の価値観は社会**への**影響が強いです。
* 若者の価値観**が**社会**に**与える影響は強いです。
* 若者の価値観は社会**に**強い影響を与えます。

(You can use 及ぼす instead of 与える.)
I'm not a native speaker (which I say merely because you seem to believe that will change the value of my contribution).

But that being said, let's parse this sentence piece by piece.

> 
> 若者の価値観は社会的な影響が強いです
> 
> 
> 

To do that let's simplify it a bit to

> 
> 影響が強いです。
> 
> 
> 

which means "its influence is strong" or "it has a strong influence".

Now let's build this up gradually.

> 
> 何かは影響が強いです。
> 
> 
> 

Which like above we could translate as either
"Something's influence is strong" or "Something has a strong influence."

> 
> 何かは社会的な影響が強いです。
> 
> 
> 

"Something has a strong societal influence".

And finally,

> 
> 若者の価値観
> 
> 
> 

Let's simplify this a bit too to

> 
> 若者の価値
> 
> 
> 

This would mean simply "the value of youth (young people)". But, when we tack on 観 it gets a little harder to translate this. 観 means "view, perspective" or, by extension "how we regard" (think of the root meaning of *regard* in English as to *look*). So, for

> 
> 若者の価値観
> 
> 
> 

I'll go with "How we regard worth of our youth".

Now putting everything back together we get

> 
> 若者の価値観は社会的な影響が強いです
> 
> 
> 

> 
> How we view the value of our young people has a strong societal effect.
> 
> 
>