Recently I came across a news report about one Alexandra Wallace. If you have not already heard, Ms. Wallace was a student at UCLA who authored a video that she then posted on the Internet. This video was what can only be called a diatribe against Asian students who annoyed Ms. Wallace by talking loudly on cellular phones in the school library. As is the fashion of the day, the video went "viral," and now Ms. Wallace is the at the center of a controversy involving free speech, racism and the college administration's responsibility to provide a safe environment for students. I'm not going to discuss whether Ms. Wallace was right or wrong in doing what she did, because I think we are missing a much bigger, more alarming, issue.
With the dawn of the Internet age came information sharing on a global scale and the creation of a much smaller world society. Unfortunately, as with most advancements, along with the benefits came a darker, more sinister side. You frequently hear it said that once something hits the net, it's "out there forever." This is true without a doubt, and therein lies a hidden danger. The permanence of media on the web means that an entire generation of young people no longer has the luxury of making the same youthful mistakes that generations of youth before them made and recovered from. Our society is, quite literally, destroying childhood for the youth of today. One of the major factors contributing to this trend is the ease of producing and disseminating homemade video.
Nowhere has the insta-video craze taken hold more than among our children. Every 12-year-old with a cellphone now has the ability to upload and instantly distribute any movie shot by their own hand, and they frequently exercise their ability to do so. What they do not do, though, is take the time to consider the consequences of their actions, mainly because they are still children.
Before the Internet existed, children and young adults could take solace in the fact that their youthful indiscretions would be considered as just that -- mistakes made by a mind not fully formed. These mistakes made during childhood and the teenage years that follow would not cling to them into adulthood. Even the legal system realizes that a 17-year-old mind does not weigh the consequences of decisions in the same way that an adult mind does. More and more these days, though, these acts are documented by or result in the production of media that ends up dispersed throughout the information superhighway. The consequences of this "scarlet e-letter" can last well into adulthood.
The fact that we are requiring that our children be responsible for their actions at a younger age is tragic, but it is indicative of a larger issue that is much more alarming. Everywhere I look nowadays, I see an ever-increasing amount of propaganda telling our children that they should be acting just like their adult counterparts. Most of this media is racy and provocative, and to a child, "being an adult" almost always equates to one facet of adulthood alone -- sex. By now, most of you know that children are becoming sexually active at earlier ages. You may be thinking that it doesn't affect you, but it would be naïve to think that your neighborhood was immune to the trend. I had my bubble burst when I talked with a friend who works as a teacher's aide in a local middle school. When I spoke with her, she shocked me with her description of what went on under the roof of a building supposedly dedicated to education. Sufficed to say, mathematics was not the preferred subject. She caught students red-handed with their parts entwined frequently, and the rest of the student body talked about sex as if it was just as normal as attending a baseball game or playing video games. I've never thought of myself as a prude, but I didn't become sexually active until well into high school -- as did most of my friends.
Of course, the subject of consequences arises with any discussion of sexuality among our youth. Any human being can perform the act of intercourse, but understanding the ramifications of the act requires a mind much more developed than one of a 12- or 13-year-old. Psychological consequences aside, just the simple physical results of sex are lost upon a couple of that young age. Sure, they vaguely understand that "babies come from sex," but none of it registers when things get hot and heavy. Even adults sometimes have trouble heeding the potential results of capricious sex. Undoubtedly, this is why we see another "pregnancy pact" story on the news every year.
Some of the factors that have contributed to this tremendous problem are obvious. In fact, only this past month, the clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch once again added fuel to the fire. The clothing items available for this coming summer include a padded bikini top for seven- to 14-year-olds. This is the same company that marketed thongs for a similar age group that had words like "wink, wink" and "eye candy" printed on them. Let's put aside the fact that a seven-year-old has nothing to push up or show off with a thong, and simply ask what is the desired result of these items? It seems to me that there is no other purpose but to sexualize children at a wholly inappropriate young age -- children who are being bombarded with media that adds to the likelihood that they will be forced to make adult decisions well before they are ready.
It's a sobering thought to consider that childhood may be no more. It may sound alarmist, but if nothing is done, it will happen. We need to figure out how to teach a generation of children -- the first generation to never know life without the Internet -- to understand that there are new rules for making mistakes and for being young. Yes, there is a danger that in doing so, we will bring about the very event that we fear, but we have to make sure that there is a happy medium, or we risk ending up with a generation of maladjusted adults. Youthful indiscretions can now follow children for the rest of their lives. We must figure out a way to allow kids to be kids despite that fact.