Monday, November 13, 2006

Raised by the Media: Are child stars a viable example of how over-media-exposed children of today will become?

A good place to always begin is with the anorexic Olson twins. I gotta say, I LOVED them in high school, and to be totally honest they still seem cool to me. I don’t worship them or even have as much respect for them as I used to, but I don’t hate them. These two girls are only a couple months younger than me so I use them as an accurate representation of growing up with the media.

Their entire adolescence was pretty much put onto the TV show Full House, then they had the remainder of their life pimped out to whoever would make plot-less movie starring them. The price however, of being the richest teenagers in the world is that they are under constant media scrutiny. But can we use their life as a slightly exaggerated version of what might happen to the over-sexed, over-mtv’d culture of today?

Child stars usually end up living an ‘effed up life due to the fact that they are exposed to “adult things” before they are mature enough, or mentally aware enough to handle it in the way an adult would. Therefore it is to no surprise when child stars end up with a drug problem, or drinking problem at a very young age.

I think that this proves my point that if children are exposed to too much adult behavior, be it from their own parents, television, or else ware, then they are more likely to try and strive to be like adults, in usually inappropriate and dangerous fashions.

So my point is NOT to say that child stars represent what will happen if little Timmy watches too much MTV or the movie Hustle and Flow and therefore becomes a drug dealer and a pimp by 14, but that child stars should remind you of what can happen to kids who are over-exposed to adult material and forced to grow up at the media’s pace.

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