While walking through the halls on a typical school day, some of the things I see disgust me. Young teens, thirteen and fourteen years old, are groping and making out with their boyfriends in the lobbies. The girls’ clothes are revealing, skin-tight, or barely there. When did young girls decide to look trashy, instead of classy? Why do they feel they need to dress so revealing, and why are girls becoming sexually active at an increasingly younger age?
Pop culture icons and the media infiltrate the young minds of American society. They dictate what’s “in” or popular, and try to mould and shape these people into the “beautiful” and “normal” teen. During adolescence, it’s normal for teens to want to explore their sexuality. However, by being bombarded with magazines, television, and music about sex, many become desensitized to the gravity of it.
Girls want to feel loved. When they date a guy, often they go into the relationship with the preconceived notion that they’ll need to sleep with him to keep him, or that sex will help them grow closer. They associate sex with love, which is the way it was originally intended, for married couples. Guys, on the other hand, often use “love” to get sex.
Our nation as a whole is declining in morality at an ever-quickening rate. I think it is an epidemic. Kids are growing up twenty times faster than they used to. It’s not healthy for them to need to deal with such adult issues, when half of them aren’t even out of middle school yet. What are the parents doing about it? They deny that their child could be sexually active, or rationalize that “as long as they’re being safe” it’s ok. Even if they practice safe sex, that doesn’t prevent the emotional suffering the kids go through afterwards.
There is a lack of self-respect, and dignity in my generation. I hope that someday soon, a generation will come up, and no longer accept it. But I know it won’t be mine.
