Are kids really growing older younger?
It can be hard to grasp parenting in the digital age, this is not a youth we can always relate to, or can we?
Parents, educators and experts regularly share concerns about children growing up too quickly. Parents point to play fizzling out early, clothing trends and styles being overly sexualised and interest in adult themes trickling down earlier and earlier. But how true is this? Are kids literally growing up and maturing faster or just responding to the culture around them in a way that matches their developmental stage? Can their life stage even handle a shifting culture and accessible content landscape? What does a sophisticated always-on communication style do to the developing minds of kids?
If we consider biology first then there is ample evidence to suggest that yes, kids are in fact growing up at a fast rate. Researchers have been trying to investigate possible causes for puberty sliding into earlier ages for some time now. This is especially prevalent in girls, although boys are also affected. This research was triggered by observations of breast development of girls aged 6-7 which falls under the age of the earliest normative timeline for puberty to commence which is 8. There has been no definitive cause evidenced for puberty happening earlier in populations of children, though 3 universal candidates have been suggested; stress, obesity / sedentary lifestyles and chemicals from plastic/foods. Possibly a combination of them all are suggested as the most likely suspects, this article published in the NYT in 2022 provides a good summary for further reading.
I’m no scientist but during my research career I tracked the shifting pop culture of ‘Generation Alpha’ and continue to do so. My views on this topic are not conclusive, as a parent, I believe there is plenty to be rightfully concerned about, but spending time directly with young people I think some of their world is also misunderstood by adults and looked at through a different lens, one that can be more sinister and critical. As the kids would say ‘it’s not always that deep’.
Let’s dive in with the thorny topic of beauty and body image. Filtered faces, endless make-up tutorials, doctored images of unrealistic body shapes, eating disorder communities, skincare as a ‘hobby’, I could go on. This is not the world any of us parents grew up in, it’s more intense, far reaching and hard to get away from. But the themes are not so new as we might assume.
As a 90s kid I had no access to YouTube tutorials on make-up (it showed, blimey I feel so lucky to have my eyebrows back), but there was still an interest in adapting our look and beauty was a goal. As was ‘skinny’. Hairstyles were experimental and pretty bonkers, sometimes linked back to subcultural interests. Clothing was more limited in terms of being an individual, we all sort of wore similarish things and shopped at the same places. When I was at uni I did a lot of clothes hacking, grating, dying and shredding various bits of denim until there was just enough left to cover my arse. Sure there were trends, but they were less frequent and stuck around for longer. It’s easy to glance back at this time and see it as innocent and fun - ‘it was all much sillier back then, we weren’t so serious, we were still kids’. Is this true? Despite the absence of social media pressure, with the help of magazines and real people I still managed to grow up thinking I was a fat kid and developing an unhealthy relationship with my body. I didn’t need the internet to help with that. There were no messages of body positivity, no alternative role models beyond the trend for ‘heroin chic’ and kate moss, there was no self-care, no talk of being authentically you. Nada. It was just circles of shame and real-life shaming.
The point I’m moving towards here is that when we gather up all the inputs that we can stick a red flag into, there's more than enough to make a knot form in the stomach. A maternal instinct that makes me want to bundle them up and live a life of LEGO and pooh sticks until they’re old enough to process this stuff. A parent said to me recently ‘they’re doing coke in the toilets at school, they’re 13, I don’t know how to keep them away’. Fuck. And you can find any equivalent of this tale, just slot in any theme and there will be some scary burst of activity amongst a population who it’s hard to imagine should be doing anything other than playing in the park.
On a different slant, having spent hours interviewing boys and girls I also know the counterculture messages are seeping in and perhaps not enough to overcome all issues, they are making some headway. There is an empowerment energy that is different about these kids, more so in girls. What is often overlooked in the conversation about kids growing older younger is their ability to participate in popular culture movements that we might not approve of, or feel uncomfortable with, whilst still holding a parallel belief in themselves, in their own authentic beauty, in searching for the ability to be themselves. This message is now drummed into them by us the parents and by their media and whilst it's a great memo to receive and they’re on it, they need some space to take a long experimental road to figure out how to do it. In other words they can still use the serum and perform the tiktok routine whilst instilling a deeper value about inner beauty, authenticity or however they prefer to connect to it.
I’ve had a lot of really cool conversations with girls about beauty. At its best they see the face as a canvas, it’s a new way to play. They move from sketch pads to their face and whilst we may have triggered feelings about that, there is an artistry in how they approach their nails, eyelashes and other beauty trends. It is easy for me to hark back to how much more innocent we were but lets face it, the products were crap and we had no clue what we were doing, perhaps there was a freedom in that, but perhaps we also missed out on the experience of upskilling, taking our time, exploring looks that worked for our natural features and skin tone?
I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a ‘face filter’. My gut check says that’s not ideal. When your body and face are changing at a time when you are becoming a lot more self aware and social relationships are becoming more complex, yet you’re still a novice, I’m not sure throwing around A LOT of imagery in the mix is a good idea. I can imagine it warps a perception of how you look and perhaps a disappointment with reality. I have heard girls say just as much whereas others find this a form of play. Again, we must note their context; world builders and avatar designers, their digital play has paved the way for them to move between what is real and what is not in a way I cannot relate to, because I didn’t have that kind of training in my formative years. Some of them can handle it, some of them find fun there, but there is an alternative for those with a less stable sense of self that is right to be cautious of.
The communication systems for our youth today have moved faster than our development - aside from the suggestion that puberty may be happening earlier for some, our brain development is still pretty much the same throughout the life stages. I find that pretty crazy to think about when we consider how much more information, imagery and communication channels we now use, especially at stages where the brain is still developing (full adult brains don’t form until 25 years old - wowzers!). I imagine that smartphones in the hands of kids have changed teaching. Endless social dramas, wandering attention, social unrest, contagion and an open channel for bullying, this addition to kids’ lives must have radically changed the role and requirements of educators. I feel for teachers teaching a digital generation and believe that an evolution of this role is needed to support kids in the digital age. Kids today have more autonomy, more agency over their interests and inputs, they are researchers, creators, hackers even (not always a bad thing), but it all requires a lot of handholding for much longer than we might assume to reap the benefits and not slide off the mountain of social sophistication into the abyss.
It is possible to come out of contemporary childhood ok, I think that belief in this is declining and that in itself is not a good place to protect and parent from. The lure of things that encourage and inspire kids to grow up faster is real. The dangers they bring are also real. But the opportunities for them are also very real. Education is no longer what happens at school or what shows on the grade card and whilst that may be hard for us to relate to, kids already know it, even if at a subconscious level. They see a disconnect between how they move through life and how the world operates because they feel it in their DNA. They have new world eyes looking on an old world and it doesn’t make sense to them. Unlike the generation above them who are very good at problem identification and solving, today’s kids will be more likely to divert from the problem and rather than fixing it, go outside the box and create something new. Probably the thing I worry most about however is that which side of the abyss you end up on - the opportunities, upskilling and carving your own path versus the darkness, pressure and sabotaging is a matter of environment - the more vulnerable being at risk, or luck, a chance wrong turn at the wrong time can a long time to recover depending on where the destination is.
I believe in order to level the playing field and to help today’s quickly maturing kids we need to spend less time debating if they’re maturing too quickly and more time thinking in a more creative way about what are the best ways to support a child growing up in the digital age? What adjustments do we need to make to lifestyle, education, mentors and activities to make it easier for them to find the light and the opportunities in these tools around them and have the confidence and knowledge to guide themselves away from the dark? There are two things I think they need higher levels of that I would prioritise - coaching and non digital free play. Coaching because life is so much fuller. It’s packed with social interactions, messages, notifications, pressure and tasks. When you take more on, you need more help. Period. Teachers and parents are the main source of support for kids and whilst both play an instrumental role in shaping kids and guiding them I think there is a missing spot for a kind of ‘third space’ coach, someone who feels on their side, who’s not ‘professionally invested’ in their success, but is embedded in their world and has a deep understand of the platforms and channels they use. And non digital play because it’s the closest thing to magic we humans have and it’s decline earlier and earlier is depressing and undervalued on the impact it’s having on our teens. The ability to participate in free play, preferably outdoors regularly so kids learn how to do it safely and socially is transformational. So many of the issues they are facing, they literally need to play out. Take off the make-up, the trendy clothes, the facade and drop the social status and take risks together, physical, messy play repeated over and over so it’s not strange for them to do it, it’s just normal. This is the most effective therapy I can possibly imagine. Perhaps if we put play at the heart of our culture the kids would still do the things that make us feel us on edge but instead of fretting over a population growing older younger, we’d shrug and say, kids are still kids.
I really enjoyed this read Emma! I wholeheartedly agree that the best thing I can do as a parent is to keep encouraging and joining in playing outdoors and keep being silly….there is plenty of time for more serious stuff later.
So glad you mention coaching for kids. My 9 year old son is currently having coaching and someone who's not a teacher or a parent, but who gets what they're going through, is a brilliant one. Kids these days have a lot to juggle, and having someone in their corner to help them out can make a world of difference. Thanks for highlighting!