Childhood no longer involves playing with innocent toys and watching silly cartoons. Instead, childhood now involves applying makeup and smoking marijuana. Society has impacted children’s lives in both positive and negative aspects—a negative aspect being the creation of the “tween” generation. Children ages 8 to 12 are referred to as tweens, and are characterized by their premature, adult-like attitudes, looks, and actions. In an unfortunately serious, and realistic essay titled, “Tweens: Ten Going On Sixteen”, author, Kay S. Hymowitz, explains the saddening truth of a deteriorating childhood and the affects the newly named “tween” generation has had on it. Hymowitz provides many factors in which she believes have had an impact on this generation,
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Illegal activities such as, crime, drugs, and alcohol have all played a major role in sucking the childhood out of children. These illegal activities have created rebelliousness in young kids who ultimately would know better if their parents were involved in their lives. However, sometimes it is the parents who influence their children. In Hymowitz’s essay, she provides devastating information reporting, “The past six years have seen more than a doubling of eighth graders who smoke marijuana (10 percent today) and those who no longer see it as dangerous” (184). Kids are seeing influential people in their life like family members, friends, and celebrities, all smoking marijuana. These are the people children look up to, which provide them with the strong eagerness to try it also. The environment in which kids are raised, the people they surround themselves with, and the celebrities they obsess over, all play a major role in a child’s thoughts and actions. Not only are illegal activities getting tweens in trouble, but their glitzy and sexualized self-images are also. Children no longer look at themselves in the mirror and see a child, nor do they feel like one. In fact, “The Nickelodeon-Yankelovich Youth Monitor found that by the time they are 12, children describe themselves as “‘flirtatious, sexy, trendy, [and] cool’” (Hymowitz 182-183). The word choice used by these “tweens” is not what one would consider coming out of an 8 to 12 year olds mouth. Young girls and boys should not feel the need to see themselves as “flirtatious” and “sexy”. Tween girls are being shown by the glitzy and sexualized media-driven marketplace, that being flirtatious and sexy is what they’re supposed to act and look like. They are being taught that these two words will make boys find them more eye appealing, which instead will only win them
Illegal activities such as, crime, drugs, and alcohol have all played a major role in sucking the childhood out of children. These illegal activities have created rebelliousness in young kids who ultimately would know better if their parents were involved in their lives. However, sometimes it is the parents who influence their children. In Hymowitz’s essay, she provides devastating information reporting, “The past six years have seen more than a doubling of eighth graders who smoke marijuana (10 percent today) and those who no longer see it as dangerous” (184). Kids are seeing influential people in their life like family members, friends, and celebrities, all smoking marijuana. These are the people children look up to, which provide them with the strong eagerness to try it also. The environment in which kids are raised, the people they surround themselves with, and the celebrities they obsess over, all play a major role in a child’s thoughts and actions. Not only are illegal activities getting tweens in trouble, but their glitzy and sexualized self-images are also. Children no longer look at themselves in the mirror and see a child, nor do they feel like one. In fact, “The Nickelodeon-Yankelovich Youth Monitor found that by the time they are 12, children describe themselves as “‘flirtatious, sexy, trendy, [and] cool’” (Hymowitz 182-183). The word choice used by these “tweens” is not what one would consider coming out of an 8 to 12 year olds mouth. Young girls and boys should not feel the need to see themselves as “flirtatious” and “sexy”. Tween girls are being shown by the glitzy and sexualized media-driven marketplace, that being flirtatious and sexy is what they’re supposed to act and look like. They are being taught that these two words will make boys find them more eye appealing, which instead will only win them