I’m sure we’ve all heard recent news about R. Kelly’s new 19-year-old model girlfriend, Halle Calhoun. If you haven’t heard that yet, I doubt you’re surprised. But don’t pretend like you haven’t heard about Kyga, social-media reigning duo, Kylie Jenner and Tyga. #Goals, anyone? I’ll be the first to pass.

Let’s hit pause and do a little math; that’s a thirty-year difference between the Ignition singer and his new lady, and a seven-year difference between King Gold Chains and King Kylie. To put this in a different perspective, when R. Kelly was 21 years old, his model girlfriend was not even a thought in anyone’s mind yet, she had yet to even be conceived. Let’s also not forget that R. Kelly has an 18-year-old daughter, Joann Kelly, also known as Ariirayé. So Calhoun was an infant when R. Kelly had a kid of his own. Then, when Tyga was 21, Kylie Jenner was 14. Imagine having your first legal drink and you’re crushing on an eighth-grader. Um, cool bro?...

Celebrities do weird things, the sky is blue, and water is wet. But is this something we should let slide? Should young women and men look up to this kind of relationship? Whether you’re pursuing a cougar or a manther, or you’re just sitting back and trying to make sense of it all, there’s an issue here that we need to address.

Director of the Pediatric Brain Research and Intervention Center and University of Illinois Chicago professor, Dr. Mani Puvuluri, reminds us that teenage brains are still developing until the age of 19 or 20. So what does this mean in terms of relationships? Well, keep in mind that also entails that the part of the brain dedicated to judgement and decision making is still maturing as well (TBT to last weekend, anyone?) Individuals like Tyga and R. Kelly dating younger girls probably know this, I mean come on, they were teenagers once too. Seems like they have an attraction to that young, moldable mind.

Peer pressure is something we all probably relate back to middle school and all the lectures from our health class teachers.

But what we sometimes fail to remember is that peer pressure can manifest itself all throughout our life and it can come from people we think we trust the most. “‘If [a young woman is] with a male who has more power and status, [because he is older], this might make it harder for young women to say, ‘No I don’t want to have sex,’” Dr. Ann Meier, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, said in an interview with the Huffington Post. Yeah, I mean you’re really going to blue-ball him after he gifted you a brand new Ferrari for your 18th birthday? (Yes, you absolutely can.)

Has anyone asked themselves, hey, why can’t this person get a date with someone their own age? Because frankly, if this person has trouble getting along with their own age group, that’s probably a red flag. Lynn Phillips, social and developmental psychologist, conducted a study for Planned Parenthood in 1999 for which she interviewed teenage girls aged 14 to 17 who were involved with men ages 21 to 29, as well as adult women who had previously been involved in relationships with older men. She found when she interviewed the adult women about their past relationships with older men, most felt very angry and exploited, some claimed to even be disgusted. Meanwhile, the teenagers currently in those relationships felt there was nothing wrong and in fact found feedback from their peers to be positive and noted their partner’s material wealth to be a huge plus.

There are several potential consequences to these types of relationships, including physical and emotional damage. Jennifer Manlove, senior research scientist at Child Trends, a nonprofit located in Washington D.C., points out that as the age gap between partners increases the likelihood of using any sort of protection decreases, due to that likely involved peer pressure. Child Trends found data showing young women dating men three or four years older than them were at a higher risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease and, or, becoming pregnant than girls that were having sex with guys their own age. Dr. Ann Meier found in her separate study of the data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health that females grades seventh through 12th who had sex with a partner more than one year older had higher levels of subsequent depression and lower self-esteem.

“This is all sits within this bigger cultural context of media images and cultural messages that absolutely eroticize and hyper-sexualize teen girls,” Phillips stated. “As much as we say we’re appalled by [these relationships] and concerned by them, there are things out there in the culture that make this happen.” So on that note let’s stop hashtagging #RelationshipGoals when we see Tyga buy Kylie a brand new Maybach for her 19th birthday. Our relationship goals are we want someone to buy us fancy cars? Get out there and buy it yourself and throw that hashtag at a meaningful handmade card or a trip to the farmers market.