Are kids/teens growing up too fast?

I blame High School Musical

Yes!!!
I work for a texting company where I monitor what questions the customers ask.
Most of the users are teens and you wouldn’t believe the questions. Especially sexual stuff. A lot of them don’t believe you can get pregnant when you AREN’T on your period, they don’t know that “pulling out” doesn’t work, etc. Its disgusting.
I really do blame the lack of good parenting. Not a lot of people discipline their children and hold them accountable for their mistakes. Not to mention the lack of parent – child communication.

Human nature is constant, so no, kids are growing up exactly as they always have. It’s just because it’s the current generation that we are living that the problem seems so pronounced.

What is problematic is the state that education is in. Never has there been such easy access to education, and such lack of interest in it. In the past, people did not complete high school because they had to work to support their families. Currently, 20% of the American population is functionally illiterate.

@unit ; as much as I dislike it, I don’t think that’s the whole picture.
@pinkparaluies; yikes. D: and communication is that important, unfortunately
@PandoraBoxx ; so it’s the enviroment, basically. .

@pinkparaluies, Do you work for a texting company and monitor people’s text messages, or do you work for a company that provides sex education information via text message?

@PandoraBoxx I work for the kgb_ texting company. I have to make sure that the questions are being answered correctly, and doing so I get to see the questions asked. Its pretty scary.. haha

@pinkparaluies ; what happens if they aren’t?

@troubleinharlem, in nature vs. nurture. it’s nature. This is the longest time span where we haven’t killed off a portion of our young people with a war, or some sort of armed conflict. Families used physical labor to sweat out undesirable behavior from teens, such as farming, etc.

Even Amish teens go through a period called Rumspringa, or adolescent wildness.

@troubleinharlem off with their heads? :P I dunno. I just score them. I suppose the punishment happens somewhere else lol

Yes. Period. It’s very sad, but inevitible.

I think they’re grow at the same rate as always.

I think kids enjoy what used to be the perks of adulthood a lot earlier today than when I was young. I believe the media and environment encourage and parents acquiesce. If you don’t have your iPhone by grade 2, you are a social outcast!

What’s ‘too fast’? Considering how much our culture is saturated with sex, this isn’t surprising. The parents themselves have no clue as the correct information in relation to sex and STDs or anything…many are in favor of abstinence only education…is that what you consider to be better than what we have now? I don’t think so…in the past kids discussed these things just as much…and worse

As a 19 year old, I have to say yes. We are. I had one past relationship, lost my virginity to her, but I’m clean all around and plan on maintaining that straight edge life style despite the peer pressure around me. I miss being 7 when my only care in the world was what Transformer toy I wanted to buy.

Their is nobody to blame for the bf/gf thing. Love is love. I’m sure everyone has had some sort of high school love or at least a crush. This generation seems to be bolder, and they don’t settle for the crush. They take action. 90% of the time they get their heart broken. And despite this we still ask that girl out in our math class. It’s a stage, and I think it’s a healthy stage. Through it we get badly hurt yes, but we gain experience, toughen up a bit, and sometimes re-evaluate our lives. Personal experience speaking here. Sex is where it gets complicated. Love ends with broken hearts. Sex is a tough one. It’s a natural urge. When you got all these urges built up in you and a guy or gal who trusted you enough to do you, it’s hard to abstain. The best thing to do is support safe sex. My and ex loved and trusted one another. We got tested before hand, we used a condom every time, and we had fun. “But their not ready for sex.” We’re born ready for sex. We’re born wanting to reproduce. It’s just suppressed until puberty. What their not ready for is the consequences. A rash on their vagoo, a stinging sensation when they pee, or someone who calls them mommy and daddy. I’m sure there are a bunch of teens who were like me and ex and aware of the consequences. Thus preforming safe sex to avoid any issues. But then there’s that one couple who has an accident and makes us all look bad.

In terms of drugs and alcohol, I think everyone is to blame. The relation between drugs and alcohol and teens sort of fuels it’s own fire. We put age limits on these things, and being the rebellious jackasses we are, we try to break these rules. We just see “sticking it to the man” as cool.

Overall, I think we just want to grow up. We want to have all this power we see adults wielding over us. All these things we can’t do, but want to because adults can. Because the cool kids do. Not until we grow up do we realize how good we had it.

But this is all just my opinion. Don’t take it too seriously.

It was Rousseau, the social philosopher, who popularized the idea that childhood was a special time that people have to hold off from the responsibilities and angst of adult life. But that’s only in the West. Other cultures don’t have anything close to this “innocence of childhood” idea that we have. And it’s only been in the last hundred years or so that we’ve had this ideal ourselves. Before then, kids were married off and working hard by 14–16. We have had a real cult of childhood only since the late 1800s. Child labour wasn’t regulated until the 1910s! And “teenagers” weren’t their own social group until after WWII. Not that long ago, frankly. Once labour became mechanized and more technologically efficient did we even have any of these phenomenons.

Biologically speaking, when kids are ready to have sex is when nature wants them to reproduce. That’s how we’re built. It’s just that it doesn’t benefit our society for teens to work at real jobs (too many people in the labour force) or have kids (because then teens would have to work and there’d be too many people in the labour force) and that’s why we discourage it. That’s why there’s high school. That’s why we now have college and have, in essence, extended adolescence. But actually, if they’re good to go, Mother Nature would prefer that they go, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Thus, lots of teens interested in sex.

Yes they are definitely growing up too fast. My little sister is 16 and drinks every weekend, goes out to parties, has experimented with weed, and is having sex. I’m shocked! I was never allowed to get away with that sort of thing when I was her age. I don’t what is happening to society but I don’t like it.

@Haroot You said: I miss being 7 when my only care in the world was what Transformer toy I wanted to buy. You mean, your parents would buy you. That was the best part of being seven. I should know – I have two big (read: expensive) teens!

I say no. They may be having sex at early ages but as for taking the responsibilities of young adults, no. I come from generations of American pioneer people who married very early and started families very young, they don’t do that so much now at all. Instead I see more and more relatives staying at home into their 20’s and even 30’s, mooching off parents and grandparents, feeling entitlement to have their higher educations paid for by others, having children out of wedlock by multiple partners and then unloading them on older family members while they ‘grow up’ and ‘get their lives together’.

@ItalianPrincess1217 but for everyone kid that’s like your niece, there are kids that aren’t…anecdotal evidence doesn’t a pattern make…and secondly, when you are parent, you will have a chance to be as strict as you want…

@Simone De Beauvoir I’m aware that not every teen is doing the same things my sister is. But she has a very large group of friends taking part in the same behavior. I’m just saying that when I was her age there were fewer groups/cliques in school that were acting more like adults than kids. It seems like the kids in my town are growing up much faster than before.

Ya know, some girls were forced to marry at 14 waaaaay back when… and it was like that for a LONG time…. And as far as boys go, some even had to go to war at young ages too.

I think kids are just being kids!

I am 16. I never would of thought to have sex as a teen if it wasnt for the media. If you really look into it alot of movies have drugs, forniction, alcohol, violence, and cussing in them they make it look so normal. The media has a great huge influence on youth these days and when youth get depressed or whatever they do what they see making famous people happy. And as you can see in movies sex makes them very happy so they go and have sex, or even kill themselves. Its sad that so many teens have ruin there lives due to the media.
The media needs to get a slap in the face and learn to make better movies for teens…

I remember Dick Clark (Bandstand) remarking that he started seeing this premature “growing up” in the mid sixties.

I thought my generation went crazy-we could get birth control pills when I was 16, booze when i was 18 and we had the Elvis ‘hips’- not to mention the whole hippie time—Sex, Drugs and Rock’n Roll!! Actually we had bootleggers when I was 15. Many of us happily threw our virginity away!!! Drug deals were handled in my high school. Rarely was anyone in trouble for drunk driving-the police just took any visible booze away. So us girls developed mickey tummy quickly. no search of females allowed. And I ended up with second highest marks for grade 12 [450 kids] several of my party mates became lawyers, doctors, and I’m sorry to say, politicians. We wore “hot pants”, no bras under tight tanks, hip hugger pants with a little of our bellies exposed. Surely people remember the late 60’s and 70’s!!!

Uh…raises hand!

Yes!
My little sister is wearing makeup and dark jeans and is trying to act all cool and stuff and she’s only 10! It bugs me soo much! She thinks she’s just too cool.LOL!

@Brenna_o ; so it’s the media’s fault. that’s reasonable.

@troubleinharlem Not 100%, but the media is very influential. They just don’t want to take responsibility for it.

@Val123 ah hah!

I think that there are multiple things that influence a young mind. Sure, media probably has it’s impact. Parents and school theirs respectively. I also think that what their friends and the cool kids think and say makes a huge one. I don’t think we can blame one thing. If there is any blame to pass that is. I think @faye makes a good point, and I think that we just act in our nature, as we always have. Even in ancient Greece they complained about the youth of their day. We will be alright.

I haven’t seen any of that in my family, including the nieces and nephews. I think it may be a different group of people. I suspect that families with both parents working, it might be harder.

@oratio Good point. As I noted, Dick Clark said he noticed the “premature” “growing up” in the mid sixties, but…he was moving into his 40’s in the mid sixties (he was born in 1929) so…it makes you wonder if every generation, going back to the Greek philosopher who said, “Kids today have no respect for their elders!” feels that the next generation is growing up faster than they did…..

They’re growing up slower than people in previous eras. Childhood is a recent societal invention.

No kids are not growing up too fast. It is just that in the absence of real challenges for young people some of them experiment with drugs/alcohol etc to fill the void. In primative times, by the time they reached their teens they would be hunting, gathering and having children of their own, without the challenges these tasks provided our youngsters can sometimes lose their way. It is also very easy to focus on ‘misbehaving’ young people when there are many times more who act responsibly and have strong ethics.