How society is erasing preteen culture and cutting childhood short
Chapters
4:37 No market for preteens
10:46 The end of preteens media
15:43 13+ advertising
19:02 The value of the awkward stage
22:10 Overexposure to crisis
References and resources
Where have all the pre-teens gone?
Kids as Young as 8 Are Using Social Media More Than Ever, Study Finds
Ads Served On Youtube Kids Content May Have Triggered Widespread Tracking Of Children Online: Report
Opinion | Social media is eliminating the awkward pre-teen years
Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids
Kids getting older younger: Are children growing up too fast?
Kids Don’t Have A Childhood Anymore, And It’s Our Fault
The right call? B.C. school districts finalizing plans to restrict cellphone use
New Florida Law Aims to Get Kids Off Social Media. Will It Work?
Transcript:
Intro
"Can we talk about the epidemic of like younger kids growing up so fast like acting like they're way older than they are" "I could never spend that much time getting ready don't you worry girl" "We can tell today we're letting our 5-year-old get whatever she wants from Lululemon and Sephora we literally told her she could pick any store she wanted to go to and she picked these two." "I just received my niece's Christmas list what's on it we've got clothes blanket mini backpack." "Drunk elephant skin care". "7 years old what is she needing drunk elephant for?" "What has happened to 13-year-olds I feel like they no longer go through an ugly phase it just makes our generation seem like an idiot." "Why are we letting our kids walk around like they're 30 years old you're 10!"
Preteens who once roamed the malls shopping for spiky rubber earrings from Claire's and gossiping about the latest Hannah Montana episodes are now spending their time filming Tik Tock dances, reviewing Stanley Cups and buying $90 retinol creams from Sephora and it's more than just that: the preteen stage seems to be disappearing altogether. This small sliver of time between childhood and Teenage life was once a transitional phase where children would start to find their place in the world but now they bypass their awkward stage altogether and jump straight into behaving like adults. While it's perfectly normal to want to act growing up when you're a kid, this has been taken to a whole new level where kids are maturing before they're ready.
But when did childhood turn into eight going on 18 and what factors are contributing to the unraveling of preteens hood? Well that's what I'm here to investigate today: why adolescence has been lost and how an abrupt leap into adulthood impacts children's development?
A Right of Passage
If you didn't know the preteen adolescence phase is between the ages 9 and 12 roughly this age is particularly distinct because it's the transition from childhood to teenhood where typically puberty starts. This is a time of self-discovery: trials and errors, a lot of struggles and a lot of firsts, and most of us know from our own experiences at preteens that we did some embarrassing things in the process of finding those identities. It's almost like a right of passage: every generation has their awkward stage and with the advances in technology us Millennials are very thankful that we didn't have Tik Tok to display all those embarrassing moments publicly.
But from what we're seeing of preteens today they aren't actually living through these Millennial fears that we have because what they post online looks like they're actually thriving through teenhood and so it seems this awkward stage has been completely erased. So where did the preteens go? Well they're obviously still there; just the experience of preteens Life as we knew it is gone, with that the interests and styles of preteens are now indistinguishable from their teenage counterparts, and so we're left here wondering where did the voice changes and sudden acne and raging hormones go' Well there are actually a lot of factors playing into those things being hidden
No Market for Preteens
One of the reasons that preteens have fizzled out is because they don't have designated stores for them anymore. Growing up when departing from childhood you would get stores specifically designed for that transition into teenhood: Think Pink by Victoria Secret, Claire's Justice and Ardine, these stores got you out of the childish styles of clothing and accessories while still keeping everything age appropriate. This is probably where you got your first makeup set, where they had the eyeshadow with the little eyeshadow applicators, and of course we were obsessed with our flavored lip smackers. You also needed the iconic best friend necklaces that everyone had in school, you probably went to Pink for your first training bra, a pair of sweatpants and the overly scented body spray. Everything was like entry level into adulthood: you still dressed like children but with an essence of maturity.
But something that I didn't realize until late was that there aren't any new stores for preteens and the stores that previously existed aren't popular; everyone's always like "Why aren't little girls being little girls anymoreW Well, where would you take your little girl to in the mall who's not 5 6 years old, is she going to go is a 10-year-old going to go play in the play center? No she's too big can she go to Sephora? No apparently she's too small. When I was growing up we used to go to Liilu and Justice, there was things in the mall that were tailored to that age demographic, and like those don't exist anymore!
There are a few reasons for this: for one obviously our culture has moved away from shopping malls with the increase of online shopping combined with the effects from the pandemic, so children aren't walking malls as much, which is really hard on foot traffic based stores like Claire's stores, like, these rely on browsing, Little Knick Knacks, and it doesn't translate well into online storefronts.
The real kicker though that cut off the use of preteen stores was the introduction of social media: everything comes back to social media. We will be talking a lot about social media in this video because obviously it plays such a big role in the development of the new generations coming out, but a big reason for the lack of preteens stores is because Children's Fashion influence is now coming from Tik Tok and Instagram rather than their peers at school. One of the most interesting and honestly funniest articles just dropped it's about what twins in New York City are buying and shopping for. let's talk about some of the things they said: these twins are obsessed with skincare at the excess; they're asking what their favorite cleansers are, and definitely love glow recipe. What is super interesting is, everyone's dream is to be a beauty influencer on YouTube but not like Tik Tok or Instagram.
The thing with social media though is that there is a requirement to be over the age of 13 to use their platforms, but that doesn't stop them as we've previously discussed, so as a child you can freely go on any platform and take in any content available to you. The problem is that most of the creators on these platforms are over the age of 13, unless you go through the loophole of having a parent run account and this means that the kids that are going on these platforms are being influenced primarily by adults and teenagers, and this has led children into seeing anything that's made for preteens like Claire's or Adine as cringy because it's too childish compared to everything else they see on social media.
And knowing how preteens can be there is a lot of social pressure even on the kids who aren't on social media to also be following these trends: "This is the cup that we got our daughter for Christmas this is not a Stanley this is a 9.98 Walmart cup that she said she thought was cute. She is 9 years old; on the second day back to school after Christmas break she comes home, she's not crying she's just upset; the girls all the other girls in her grade, I'm not saying all, maybe, she said, 9, 10 of them, all got Stanley's for Christmas and they made sure to let her know that this is not a real Stanley, that this is fake and it's not as cool. So she comes home. she's upset. she asks if she can have a real Stanley. So that being said before, you come at me um if you're a mom if you're a parent and you can do something to keep your child from getting made fun of, to help fit in, you're going to do it, so we went and bought her a 30 Stanley. Did I think that she needed one? No; apparently I've been proven wrong by the children in our school that are making fun of her for not having a real name brand Stanley"
And so it's become a cyclical problem, where children aren't buying from these preteen stores because it's cringy, and therefore there's no Financial motivation for companies to make more preteens stores, and so there are even less shopping options for kids as this jour jist, says Instagram was not created for a younger audience but they're on there, and every brand has to respond to it; if none of these brands can turn a profit for this audience they're going to continue to make content for them, and it's just going to get worse and worse.
And so we're actually now seeing a lot of companies grouping preteens and teenagers together in their marketing ,while trends change these brands haven't been replaced by their 2021 preteen counterparts, rather, brands designed and marketed for teenagers and young adults are including preteens in their marketing strategies: think Brandy Dolls, Kill Fashion Nova, Xen and Amazon: we had less of a product revolution and more of a marketing Revolution.
The idea of aging things up so that the consumer feels comfortable no matter their age: that's the way things are evolving; this is also how Sephora kids became a thing: because it makes sense to include them in their customer base. If you missed all the drama about Sephora kids, there's an epidemic of children using Drunk Elephant S,kincare and Rare Beauty makeu,p which are the popular ITG girl products that are made for adults but are overly consumed by 9-year-olds, and these kids have been selling out these products and preventing adults who could actually use them from getting them, but despite the backlash that Sephora got, they didn't change anything because they want children as their customers.
They draw children in with brands that are made for children, and then lock them in for life as habitual consumers, and brands moving away from child-based marketing is not the only thing kids have lost to guide them through their preteen years, while The Simple Solution might seem to just bring on more preteens' stores, even with that there's not enough meat. Media made specifically for preteens to support them.
The End of Preteens Media
This brings us to the other factor missing from childhood now which is preteens media now: If you grew up when I did - I was born in 95 but any year surrounding that - you will also know the joy of preteen magazines. I remember them being everything in Great 6, remember J14, Shout, Pop Star, M, the list goes on... This is where we were told what to wear, tutorials on how to do our makeup, the hot gossip on celebrities and of course the posters that you had to put up in either your locker at school or on your bedroom walls. Well, as you know there just isn't a space for paper media anymore, and so preteens magazines are a thing of the past.
The other form of media though that fed into our preaching lives was cable television: there were so many shows targeting preteens, but the creme of the top was the Disney Channel. The shows from Disney were iconic and such a big part of so many people's upbringing; think of Lizzie MaGuire, Neds, Declassified, Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly, Play Sweet Life of Zach and Cody. That's so raven there are too many to list.
The thing that made these shows so special is that they taught us about the transition from childhood to adulthood: they addressed things like crushes navigating clicks in school conflict with friends and parents, and just finding out who you are and what you want to be. They were still really silly, of course, but they were so popular because kids could really relate during such a pivotal time, where children can feel so lost.
Now, take a second and try and think of an equivalent to these preaching shows and magazines for kids today: I can't think of any, dude, what are kids watching nowadays, like, for their teen years? What is getting them through, like, are they just watching adult shows? Because I've not even heard a murmur about any shows that are even close to what we used to have. I tried to find some and I can't. I even looked on the Disney website and I found some new preteens shows, but they were few and far between, and also just not popular with the kids as far as I know.
Now the reason preaching shows has ended mostly has to do with the culture around these shows: back in my day the thing that every kid would do or at least wanted to do when they got off school was to unwind with some cable television, and so that meant that most of your friends were watching the same shows usually at the same times, which helped build the popularity. It was something you could talk about in the classroom, and watched together when you went over to each other's houses, because you were all keeping up at the same pace, and with that it brought kids together to form a sense of community over common interests.
Today however kids aren't running home to watch cable TV if they even have cable TV - I don't know anyone who does besides my mom. So alternatively they're running home to scroll on their phones. Not all of them of course but 64% of twin reported watching online videos every day, and 38% of survey respondents said that they use social media. That's a lot of children watching a combination of YouTube, Tik Tok and Instagram; this again means that the majority of children's influence is coming from teenagers and adults, and this warps their expectations of their little lives.
Viral Tik Tok that went around where you have these girls they were 11 years old and they looked like they could have been 16: they look that way because they're dressed a certain way they have the makeup that certain way, they have their hair a certain way and the only reason they know how to look that way is because of the internet, and because of Instagram and because of they can search makeup tutorials, search on YouTube, they can watch this the whole day right? They know what 17, 18, 21, 25, old girls look like, what they're doing: they can have it, they could pull it up next to them, they can dress like that.
You go to Instagram - bunch of those Instagram models basically have where their clothes are in their bio - they have, like, add the link now go add the link like you could buy anything that those girls look like, or what they're, what they're wearing, as this one journalist wrote; instead of tearing out pages from magazines like Miz and YM for age appropriate fashion, instead they log into Instagram and save their favorite looks from influencers models and pop stars, while during our childhoods we only had to worry about getting our homework done and keeping up with the latest episode of Hannah Montana.
Kids now have to worry about keeping up with the standards of grown adults instead of having Media made to help with that transition into adulthood; they're just shown how to mimic adults and so that's what they're doing: they're not only watching social media though, they do still watch shows but they're watching Euphoria and Outer Bakes, which are adult themed shows with sex, violence, alcohol, abuse, drugs, you get the idea, it's everything preteens are not ready for. I get so mad because kids are reading books full of smut, kids are watching shows that have, like, a ton of nudity and, like, are way more mature than anything I ever watched when I was a kid, because they're just watching adult things, and this is again because there just aren't alternative shows for preachings to watch, and so they're just watching whatever is recommended to them by people on Tik Tok, and as you can expect children are being affected negatively from being on platforms that are made for adults.
13+ Advertising
And these implications are greater than just from the influencers they consume but from the actual advertisements they're exposed to. A question I had in all of this was, okay, children are primarily on social media but what's the difference between the advertisements they get there versus the commercials we would get from cable TV? Because, Lord knows, since the dawn of time children have been the prey of advertisements. we grew up getting two minute ad segments in the middle of all of our shows, and as far as we know it didn't affect us, but the difference I think is that we got ads for things like toys and games, and kids now are getting ads for Stanley Cups and wrinkle-free straws. If you haven't looked up wrinkle-free straws, it's a rabbit hole.
But as I found there are actually rules specifically for advertising to children that make social media unique, and that difference is that according to US Federal law collecting children's personal data for purposes such as ad targeting requires websites and online services to obtain parental consent, and using apps like YouTube means agreeing to give up your personal information, so the children watching YouTube videos were being illegally advertised to, but this did change in, I think it was, like, 2017 era. I didn't actually double check that but COA actually did crack down on YouTube for advertising to kids.
This was a huge no no that was going on for a long time, but YouTube got away with it because they claimed that their platform was for ages 13 and up, but obviously children were still on the platform as there was so much content made specifically for kids. A report by analytics alleges that dozens of major ad and data Brokers are harvesting data from viewers most likely children who click on such ads, and that's why, if you didn't know, anything that's made for children, whether the users identify as kids or not, cannot be monetized in the same way anymore. This means for all social media platforms to comply with kopa: they choose to ban users who are under the age of 13 because the alternative would be to instead allow them on the platforms but without the targeted advertising, which is bad for business.
The point of all this being that we were advertised to for kids products because TV networks weren't mining our data, but brands on social media are technically required to advertise to ages 13 and up because otherwise they wouldn't be complying with COPA, so the children who are using social media are not only being influenced by the teenagers and adults who are creating on these platforms, but are also getting advertisements that are made for teenagers and adults! Now, I can't prove this: this is just a connection that I've made, but it just wouldn't make sense for these brands to make ads for an age group that isn't legally allowed on the platform. This is also a big reason why companies have grouped preteens and teenagers together in their marketing because companies still want the money from preteens. Let's get that straight, and when preteens are already acting like the teenagers they're idolizing they don't even stand out as a separate target audience. Alyssa Bonet says when you're trying to target preteens you don't have a specific strategy for preteens then young 20s somethings age. 10 to 24 is treated as nearly one group.
This is yet another Factor that's taking away children's childhoods because kids aren't even seeing fun age appropriate, merchandise that's available to them, if they're only ever on social media and, as you can expect, being exposed to adult content too young.
The Value of the Awkward Stage
And being forced to grow up too quickly has consequences. Despite how much we may wish we could have skipped over, our preteen years they do serve a very important purpose to us. Between having no content or merchandise made specifically for preteens as we're seeing, these kids are seemingly skipping over their awkward phase. This may seem nice on the surface - I mean who really likes looking back on their awkward phase - but it is a really important phase of life. That transition between middle school and high school is vital to finding your identity; missing out on your preteen stage means missing out on personality changes in developing a sense of style, finding your hobbies and passions, finding your friend, groups; you take this time to learn about yourself and the world around you.
The fact that the preteen stage is messy and uncomfortable is what we need to develop into our adult selves. Without this knowledge of the awkward years you will continue to be confused later in life on self-identity and flows over the course of a lifetime. But this period of life is the true beginning of the process; instead, these kids are just following whatever they see online, and this leads to many people claiming that there are no subcultures in teenhood anymore: just trends of cores that everyone's trying to keep up with, instead of having the Goth Kids, the Nerds, the Jocks, the Preppy Kids, we have clean girl aesthetic and cottage Corp and Barbie Corp and recently Brat.
The difference is that these subcultures were identities that would stick with you through teenhood and even into adulthood: they were scenes that you had to find your way into whether that was wearing the right clothing, making the right friends, hanging out outside of the right stores, or excelling at a certain skill set; but once you were in, it gave you a community, and one that you could trust on, and rely on throughout the roller coaster of life, compared to aesthetics which are visually appealing but provide no depth or shared experience.
As this journalist puts it, they come and go and blend and break apart like clouds in the wind. Many within weeks of appearing they have much content but little context: a lot to look at but a very thin relationship to any real life, anything like behaviors and gathering places. And it's not that kids aren't looking for the connection that shared experiences bring: they're desperate to find the same identity and validation in the same way that we were looking for it as preteens; they just aren't offered anything more than these fleeting styles that exist primarily online, the kind of real world cultural community has been replaced by an algorithmic fluidity in which nothing hangs around long enough to grow roots.
Children are missing out on finding their uniqueness, their personality, their creativity, all to appease the online World instead. With all the resources at their fingertips, they take the trends that they see online form their whole personalities around it, and then switch it up every six months, but the worry is that they will enter into adulthood with a false sense of identity that is dependent on cultural planes that disappear every time the trends change.
Now, while this is a real phenomenon that we are seeing in teens, it's important to note that we're not talking in absolutes. Like I said, kids are desperate for that feeling of belonging, and so when the opportunity arises to build community they will jump on it. Things like sports and school clubs will always bring kids together, but the point being that children are getting less and less opportunities to fall into these social groups, when the third places that are available to them are dwindling and they're spending more and more of their time online.
Overexposure to Crisis
The other big issue with children's use of social media at these young ages is that it exposes them to the horrors of the world younger than they're ready for. It all plays into children being on a site that's not made for them, and so they're being exposed to all the dooming news in the world way before any other generation was. There has always been bad things going on in the world and there will continue to always be bad things going on in the world, but we should be sheltering kids from this instead of giving them open access to all world events. Kids these days are getting live streams of wars, economic crashes, civil unrest and a lot more during a time of life where kids should just be focusing on their friends and their hobbies; they're instead taking on the burdens of the world with the rest of us.
They see it and they worry, whether us adults realize it, and this takes such a toll on them in such a sensitive time of life! The average parent allows their child a smartphone at the age of 10, opening up a world inaccessible to previous generations, with unlimited access to news, social media, and other privileges previously reserved for adults, forcing them into emotional maturity before they reach adulthood. I talked about this in my last gen Alpha video but if you missed it...
During the years of puberty a child's brain is developing at such a rapid rate, and the neural connections that they make during this time will stick with them for the rest of their lives; this is a time that defines their perspective on life, their hobbies and habits, and so when these kids are exposed to the horrors of the world it can cause them to lose hope for their future.
Dr Jenkin says that ir is increased exposure to violent or sexual content at a younger age which causes a desensitization and normalization, because children's brains aren't fully developed to process this in a way that an adult brain can. This of course plays such a big role in what we're seeing in children, being that they're growing up too quickly, because their innocence is being stripped away. This journalist laments the loss of childhood to phones, saying that they've spent many hours with their faces in screens, and probably haven't experienced the same authentic joy as many of us have: the familiar feeling of smelling the sweet summer air and dew through our noses as we play outside, the miserable feeling of boredom that becomes oddly nostalgic once life becomes too busy to be bored anymore, the hopes and dreams that we have as children are only able to form when we aren't bogged down by the weight of the world on our shoulders.
Final Thoughts
And so ends another doom and gloom video about kids these days that I apparently love making, but it's not without hope. The effects we're seeing of social media on kids are still so new that there's still time to rewrite the story for these kids. With all the research coming out about the damages of phones on children, things are starting to change. Here in BC this fall marks the first year that there will be cell phone restrictions in schools: varying from city to city but generally the policy is full restriction in elementary schools and allowing use during non-class time in high schools, as well as in Florida this past spring they submitted a bill that would prohibit children under the age of 16 from using social media without parental permission. This is all fantastic news; it's such a great step in the right direction, and in the meantime we as parents can help counter this by keeping our children away from media made for adults. With more parents allowing space for kids to be kids, hopefully there will be less social pressure on children to grow up so quickly.
And if you want to stay up to date on topics like this one now is your reminder to subscribe. I put out video essays every month on topics surrounding parenthood and culture and community. I make these videos not to just bring down the newest generations and their struggles but to bring awareness to the pressing issues that children and parents are facing. But that's it for today; I hope you enjoyed this video and I wish your children a long and fruitful childhood.
"Hey, what... you watching me, I'm just a TV! I mean I'm not even human! You, you've got the remote control: you can change channels if you don't like what you're watching; you can flick me on and off and on and off and... I'm getting dizzy... look at it this way: you can talk to your best friends, your mom or dad, about all the stuff you see on TV and, besides, you have choices: you've got books and sports, and you can go outside and play! Where is outside, anyway... just the TV... You're the smart one!"
Well it's so long see you next time.