Dear children of this generation, you are growing up too fast.

I can look back and honestly say I still had a yearning to play with Barbies and dolls in middle school, but today, I see middle school girls wearing more makeup than a clown and clothes that magazine models are wearing. When I was in middle school, I was practically branded Aéropostale and Hollister, I was not wearing crop tops or body tight dresses. We can blame plenty of outside factors for the “mature” younger generation, but the only factors we can truly blame are social media and our society. Every other tweet, Instagram picture, Facebook post, or song on the radio consists of “relationship goals,” “body goals,” or “life goals,” or getting money and doing drugs, which embeds these young girls and boys with the ideas that their life, as they grow older, will be like these edited photos on social media and like these songs sung by what are known to be influential people.

Young children do not see or comprehend the Photoshop or staging that is put into these photos and the danger that will occur if they follow what these songs are saying. All they see are unrealistic expectations of the future and a painted picture of what a fun life is supposed to be.

There is no better way of explaining this epidemic than downloading puberty at the fingertips. The biological process of puberty may not be occurring in these young adolescences bodies, but their outer features are maturing faster than their genetics are. This causes problems in every aspect of life, such as inappropriate attention from others, insecurities that develop in those who are developing in a natural matter, and much more. We cannot stop nor protect the children of the future from what they see and hear, but we can show their generation what real “goals” are. Please allow your younger brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, and own children be actual children for as long as possible, they will thank you later.