I understand that children always want to be older. When I was a kid, I would dream of leaving my middle school to take on high school, going away to college, and starting a family. Most children can’t wait until they are adults. But as I am now becoming one myself, I can’t help but wish I had parts of my childhood back. In a way, I feel that I voluntarily gave up playing in the snow for doing homework, Disney movies for the news, and goodnight hugs and kisses for annoyed greetings when I get home from school.
What was I thinking?
More and more often, I see 11-year-olds walking around the mall with Victoria’s Secret bags while texting on their iPhones. This makes me wonder not only why their parents allow this, but also why they would give up their stress-free 11-year-old lives for that of a person much older.
According to a 2009 Mediamark survey, 36.1 percent of 10 to 11-year-olds have cell phones and 20 percent of 6 to 11-year-olds have them. While many of those children (hopefully) use them only to call or text their parents in cases of emergency, it is still an unsettlingly large percentage of their population because, really, why do kids 11 and under need a cell phone?
Soon enough, cell phone use will likely increase in younger age groups, maybe even to the point that kids receive them as soon as they can read and write. This is completely unnecessary. In this way, parents are enabling their children to act older than their age by giving them opportunities reserved for older children. This promotes behavior of an older group in younger ages, causing children to think it’s OK for them to act in ways that really aren’t acceptable in most people’s eyes. For example, shopping at Victoria’s Secret or wearing revealing clothing from Abercrombie & Fitch.
Kids are also compromising their care-free lives with the use of Facebook. Originally intended for college students, Facebook changed in September 2006 to allow all above the age of 13. However, Facebook is now flooded with more than 7.5 million kids who claim to be older than they are in order to make an account, according to a May 2011 ConsumerReports.org study. In order to try to connect with their older peers, kids are spending more time on the computer and less time doing things kids alone can do, such as playing hopscotch and watching Pokémon.
I think it’s just plain weird when young kids act much older than they actually are, not to mention kind of annoying. I didn’t have a cell phone until eighth grade, and I got along ust fine. I hadn’t even heard of Facebook until I was over 13 years old, and I still managed to connect with my friends by walking over to their houses, calling them on a landline, or simply talking to them when I saw them at school.
Children acting older can also be attributed to today’s media. Kids look up to celebrities and listen to music referencing things way over their maturity levels. This makes children think that it’s alright for them to act as they see on TV and in magazines. As a result, kids try to listen to the latest music, wear the hottest trends, and know the juiciest gossip. This obsession with being older may even go as far as breeding a whole generation of tiny Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans, and I don’t think the world can take many more of them.
It may be because of the "you always want what you don’t have" phenomenon, but I think it’s weird that kids would want to have a more complicated life. It’s even weirder that they start having boyfriends and girlfriends at times in their lives when I still thought boys were gross.
Personally, I would gladly trade my daily routine of waking up early, attending all my classes, going to sports practices, and plowing through my stack of homework for a day full of animal crackers, coloring, nap time, and maybe a bit of addition.
I wish I had taken more time out of my life to truly be a kid. When you are a child, you don’t get judged for being able to quote every line of "The Lion King," spending your Saturdays playing "Sorry!" with your parents, or going to bed before 9 p.m. Looking back, I think everyone should cherish their childhood and take the time to really experience it to their fullest.
Photo by K. Marhenke