Teenagers and pre-teens these days are scary to witness in public and on social media. They all look so grown up and ready to face the world. This generation of kids can’t even handle walking to the corner store to buy milk. This generation of kids can’t even handle a goldfish. How can they expect to handle the world when these kids step outside? The newest generation has lost a lot of common sense along the way. Words such as please, thank you, and excuse me don’t seem to exist anymore. Proper respect for elders is a lesson that many teenagers and pre-teens don’t know anymore. Mothers and Fathers put up with such disrespectful attitudes and actions because they want to befriend their kids. Parents are parents, authority figures, first. They aren’t friends to their children. Giving modern kids this power over authority leads to quick decisions and horrible outcomes. When parents aren’t involved these horrible outcomes fester and create diseases. These diseases lead to pre-teens creating horrible problems when they become teenagers.

More importantly, they have to learn to live their childhoods. Being a teenager only happens once in life, and these kids want to grow up way too quickly. Young girls are developing faster than any generation before them, and they make it a point to show off their new “assets” by whatever means necessary. Most of the time, the teenage girls use mature options such as makeup, clothing, and expensive materials such as phones, cars, etc.

Teenage girls—barely out of middle school—are getting body modifications done (such as belly piercings), and then wearing crop tops, and tank tops that reveal way too much skin for such a young age. Young teenage and pre-teen girls are wearing full faces of makeup, trying to hide away insecurities that shouldn’t be that big of an issue at this point in there lives. Pre-teen and teenage boys are starting to grow egos and personalities that rival men. Except these boys have no idea how to be men yet. They don’t understand what it means to support a friend, to support a family. They don’t even know how to support themselves yet, so how can they be men? Being a man—to these young boys—means getting as much play as they can, and seeing how many girls can swoon at their feet. Those are not the actions of a man; those are the actions of a young boy trying to find his bearings in life.

I understand that puberty and insecurities go hand in hand, but girls but should be girls for a time in their lives, and boys should be boys for a time in their lives as well. There’s no need to rush through life, and I wish these kids would stop trying to live the life of an adult, when they should be living the life of a teenager. There will come a time when these young adults will grow up and have to learn how to handle the real world, but that time isn’t now. They should be thankful for the final years they have to be carefree and explore their options. When these young teenagers and pre-teens decide to create this façade of adulthood, they are setting themselves up for disappointment. You can’t truly enjoy being an adult unless you have the memories of being a teenager to look back on.