Troubled Teens

Troubled Teens

American teenagers spend 10 hours and 45 minutes a day on media consumption (Miss Representation). Young girls are given the impression, through media, that their value and worth is based on how they look.  The idea that they are not perfect causes depression and suicide rates to rise, the number of teenagers having sex to go up, and ambition to fall. Young girls need to know that the people who are being portrayed in the media as perfect are nowhere close to being as perfect as they seem.

53% of 13 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies and by age 17 the percentage rises to 78. As young girls try to fit in to how society thinks they should look, like they lose self-esteem. Depression rates doubled from 2000 to 2010 (Miss Representation). As depression rates rise so do suicide rates, in 2004 4,599 young adults, ages 10-24, committed suicide (nbc.com). Although there is no accurate count for suicide attempts so the number would be twice that if more people were successful.

More than 20% of teens have sex before the age of 14 (Miss Representation). This is partially because girls are trying to fit in and be considered cool. When I was in middle school I knew a girl who was going around having oral sex with guys because she heard it in a rap song and she wanted to be like those girls.  One day she said she was going to go home and drink bleach to try kill herself. She was being talked about but it was not in the same way the guys in the song were talking. Now working with young girls I see and hear in elementary school some of the things that my generation did not think about until high school. I hear fourth and fifth graders talking about having sex and my jaw drops. The part that saddens me the most is that young girls are growing up entirely too fast. I see these girls wearing short skirts and shorts that when I was their age I would have been spanked for even asking my parents to buy. They are wearing make-up at the age of six or seven because they see all the singers and actresses wearing it. A lot of young girls now look a lot older than they are and in turn are being forced to act older by having sex with boys and men, who are much older and more mature, to fit in.

Seeing the way females are being portrayed in media can cause a young girl’s ambition to fall. Who would want to aspire to be successful when the successful women are given the most grief? To see and hear things like a female will never make as much money as a man at one point women made seventy-seven cents for every dollar a man made. The pay gap has dropped with females making ninety-three cents with MBA’s and even that is less a nickel less than before (bussinessweek). A woman will never be president or hold a real position of power is something that has been said for centuries in America. Women are described as bitchy, catty, and violent, these are some of the reasons that they cannot get ahead of their male counterparts. To a young girl hearing things like this all of her life this is a real ego buster. 

As adults we need to guide our young girls and teach them that it is alright to be their selves. We need to explain to them that everything they see on television or read in a magazine is not always accurate. Models are being photo shopped so that they look a certain way when in reality a lot of them do not look quite as good in person as they do in print or on the big screen.

As the next generation of young women begin to come into their own it is up to us, the older generation, to show them that there is more to life than what the media portrays. If we can steer our young ladies in the correct direction then our suicide and depression rates will drop, teen sex rates will go down, and overall female ambition will rise. Our adolescents need to know that with positive reinforcement they can be whatever it is they put their minds to. They do not have to settle for the stereotypes that is portrayed by the media.

Works Cited

Damast, Allison.“MBA Gender Pay Gap: An Industry Breakdown.”  Businessweek.com.  7 Jan.

2013. Web. 30 Mar. 2013

Miss Representation. Dir. Jennifer Seibel. Girls Club Entertainment, 2011. DVD.

“CDC: Suicide rate jumps for kids,young adults.”  Nbcnews.com. 6 Sept. 2007. Web. 29 Mar.

2013