Bruce Friend Research Paper

ready. Innocence is losing its grip on children, and the length of childhood is decreasing over generations. The innocence of children is losing its grip to premature adolescence. Bruce Friend, an employee at Nickelodeon, simply puts it, instead of caring about what children should be concerned with, “they are very concerned with their ‘look’” (183). When children begin to feel they are ‘too old’ for Barbie dolls or action figures, the begin to search for something to fill their time such as working with their appearances. Once how they put their visage becomes a priority, it spawns an entirely thought process within them and they begin the downward spiral of losing their innocence. Even at school, peer pressure pushes children of young age groups to commence actions they never thought of committing. However, it’s not just girls being pushed into certain pressures, most “boys felt pressurized into being interested and [sic] girls and sex before they were ready” (Rosemary, 2). Children of young ages look up to this generation advice for flirtatious ideas and clothing, and kids are receiving the ‘okay’ to sex and other explicit desires

Since kids are beginning to despise “any symbols of their immaturity, tweens now cultivate a self-image that emphasizes sophistication” (Hymowitz, 182). Ever since the dawn of time, sixteen was the age of maturity and growth. Now, since children have a multitude of access points to beauty products, clothing, and accessories, the age group of growth has dropped from teenagers to tweenagers. Instead of sixteen, the ‘mature’ age is much lower. Rosemary states, “Childhood now ends at 12, four years earlier than a generation ago” (1). Usually, parents have children at age twelve worrying about their doll’s hair being messed up. Now, kids at twelve years old worry about their own hair and how their appearance. The age-range of childhood has decreased and continued to