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The SFHS Crier

The news site of St. Francis High School

The SFHS Crier

The news site of St. Francis High School

The SFHS Crier

Speeding up growing up: Time keeps moving kids grow fast

Speeding up growing up: Time keeps moving kids grow fast

It seems to be a law of nature that things will always advance quicker over time. What once took years may now take only hours. When someone gets ill, it takes less than a minute for someone on the other side of the globe to hear about it. So it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that now even growing up is running at 4G speeds. But it isn’t because of countries on the other side of the globe that kids are doing adult mistakes at younger ages; it’s media, family, and most prominently their own ideals.

Between violent television, graphic movies and, well, basically the entirety of the internet, kids are being introduced to mature material well before their time. When you can see Brad Pitt carve a swastika into a Nazi officer’s forehead, or hear about Uncle Charlie’s crazy love life, or hear Adam Sandler’s on-screen children discuss getting “chocolate wasted,” all on FX, you know it has gotten much too easy to see adult content. This is leading to an influx of kids who swear too much, play Grand Theft Auto and steal from the liquor cabinet.

On the values side, between child beauty pageants, teaching lessons about looks before children have a chance to practice division, and basic cable programs showcasing the lives of the now wealthy and famous idiots of insert low-intellect area here, kids are learning that being an idiotic drunkard is fine so long as they look attractive doing it.

But it isn’t just the media that causes these changes. Family is a major contributor. My father smokes and drinks. My brother followed his footsteps, and was drinking and smoking around the age of 15. Sadly, that would now be considered slightly later than the “in-crowd.” But although that has had a negative correlation with me, because I can see how terrible life can be with drugs, I still see familial issues both due to peer pressure, and from negligence.

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My father is a very important person in my life. But I’ve learned to see good attributes and wish he lose his faults. The same applies for my older brother. After all, the apple may not fall far from the tree, but it isn’t too far from the other apples, either.

Video games are my favorite way to spend time, and it all stems from my brother. However, my brother got me into video games not by playing with me, but by playing near me. I thought “Metal Gear Solid” was the coolest thing ever, solely because I had watched my brother play. Now imagine a ten-year-old seeing their brother smoking pot. Easy to see where they could think, “My brother does it, so I’ll do it and be cool just like my brother.”

That’ll come from any role models you pick in life. Your brother, your mother, your best friend; you’ll want to try whatever they do. That’s what I think is really the leading cause of kids growing up to fast; they want to be just like someone else.

What America needs to do is pay more attention to future generations. Everyone needs to recognize that violence, teenage sex and destroying your body with drugs is definitely not cool. I’m also not saying start censoring everything, but parents should consider more frequently what is okay for their children. And we as high school students should start paying more attention to who’s watching us. Because just as we looked up to high schoolers when back in middle school, they are looking up to you and me, so it’s up to us to show them what’s cool. So I’m going to continue to play Xbox, write long-winded rants and tell people how to fix the world. Because doing what makes you happy is what’s cool.

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