Teen Exhibitionism

Some remarks today about the growing number of 12 to 17 year old kids who are posting sexy pictures, self promoting music videos, and Yu tube eccentricities of themselves on line. I think it's a sign that the realty TV world has crept into their lives beyond the endless hours of time they spend rotting their brains watching those vapid shows on TV. They are becoming what they soak up in our vapid culture.

Surely, kids have always wanted to emulate adults who appeared as celebrities, who stared in magazines on TV or in the movies. But teens today aren't emulating real people who have real talent. Instead, there is more an attempt to be like the reality crowd that are far more allusion than substance. It's a desperate attempt by kids today to find an image. But is it a good image to copy the stupidity of the reality world?
Instead of studying or working for something of importance for their futures, they go online and create a false and gratuitous persona. Achievement for the teen exhibitionists is redefined as simply being the ability to attract attention. That's it!

If they have nothing to offer on line it does not matter, for to be seen by the most people, in whatever it is the teen shows him or herself as, is the entire point of it all. With today's technology, this sort of celebrity is not just a dream it is all to easy to achieve. Teens can create it for themselves. The new mantra is not substance, but rather appearance. Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! They chant as they degrade themselves in order to be seen by more and more people. Often the ones who most "succeed" only draw vicious comments, threats, sexual propositions and other real life degradations that do not help a teenager build self esteem and find a place in normal society.

The culture of childhood is being changed and the normal pre teen and teen years are disappearing as 12 year olds act, or pretend to act, like 18 year olds and older adults. Those things that young people once knew at 18, they now know at age 12. Innocence is lost and it is a crime, for through experiences that nudge our innocence we learn what the real world is and what it really expects of us. No one quite knows the effect of this is and will be. But I fear it is not good. Most importantly, too many teens seem to be growing up without learning that there is a distinction between respectable behavior and getting attention. Better adult role models would help. The selfish and clue less parenting we see everywhere being replaced with more responsible modeling today would be one remedy for much of this teen exhibitionism.

But are the parents of those teens any more realistic than their children? Maybe this is just the beginning of the 'Age Of Lost Innocence' for teenagers.