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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Three Things That Will Ruin Our Youth

What's today? Oh that's right...it's THURSDAY! I'm writing my Thursday post on its designated day for the very first time in weeks! Go me for being responsible and being able to correctly operate the calendar on my computer :) This year, I made a suggestion to myself that I should start writing more meaningful blogs on the rare occasion that I actually post. I love Three Thing Thursday (T3) and everything that it stands for, but lately I've been getting a little deeper with them every week...I hope you guys like it as much as I do. This week I'm tackling the three things that I believe will eventually ruin our youngest generation- here we go!

1.) Television- If today's youth is spending 28 hours a week in front of the television, what is our future going to be like when they are the leading generation? Very stupid and very fat. That's 28 hours that our children are not physically active, mentally engaged, or learning anything valuable in just one week. That is 1,456 hours that they have lost in just one year due to TV. Television is not only causing the majority of our youth to become obese, lazy, and ignorant, but also potentially violent as well. Statistics show that the average child will watch 8,000 murders on TV before finishing elementary school. By age eighteen, the average American has seen 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 40,000 murders. Our adults TODAY are already terrible (average 9 years of non-stop television per lifetime), but I hate to imagine how it's going to be when these children grow up. What happened to children playing outside or reading? Get rid of this garbage, parents!

2.) Fast food- When I was younger, I remember that getting a Happy Meal from McDonald's was a huge treat- it only happened once a month if my sister and I had been really good. Children now would think of that as punishment, but it wasn't because we were poor (we were) or because my parents were jerks (they could be), it was because eating out everyday was practically unheard of 15 years ago. I know people that feed their children fast food at least 3 times a week and I want to shove a Happy Meal toy up their asses. Fast food is garbage! A cheeseburger happy meal with fries and a Sprite at McDonald's has 640 calories and 24 grams of fat; this is over half of the total calories many children should be eating in an entire day! These "restaurants" spent over $350 million on marketing messages aimed at children in 2009; they do it because it works and parents fall for the scams, too. Our youth is going to be even fatter than our adults are today and this country does not have room to get more unhealthy.

3.) Anger & Intolerance- I don't have any impressive statistics for this bullet-point, but I think it's the most important of them all. With the economy declining, the global warming crisis looming, and moms and dads getting increasingly stressed-out, children are picking up on the bad attitudes that our adults have about them. If you grow up around constantly bitchy people, you're bound to end up with a negative attitude after a few years. We should be teaching our children to accept others and live happily and not waste time with hatred and judgement. We're going to end up with a bunch of stupid, fat, bitchy people if we stay on the track that we are journeying down. I don't like the amount of stupid, fat, bitchy people we have now...this needs to be fixed. 

I hope everyone has a great day! I start school on Monday, so I'm sure I'll have more to write about in the future! Yay for really, very, extremely, expensive education that will eventually get me a job that I can do now (before I even start college)!

Oh and here are my sources :) - csun.edu, nytimes.com

See ya!

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for this post Shelby, I always love a little insight!

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  2. Oy mizz shelby. this be mr stroder. not to call you out or anything cuz you are one rad chica, but to make your last bullet point about how annoying it is to have a lot of bitchy people around when your first half of the post was you bitching about other people's lifestyle choices doesn't make sense to me. We can't lift others out of their negative ways by pointing out their negativity. Only by pointing out to others all the wonderful things life still has to offer can we make any true change. not that i don't agree with you on all of these things but i have noticed that to be negative about negativity doesn't make it a positive. just my little observation. love ya girl :D

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  3. My dearest Jon :) While I was writing the last part, I noticed the same thing. I'm glad you said something about it because you're right. Unfortunately it's difficult to be positive about things like the first two points...in order to make change, we have to admit that what most of our society is doing is wrong. I suppose that instead of pointing out what everyone is doing wrong, I could give positive advice to make lifestyle improvements.

    Thank you for your honesty; I really appreciate it :) Love!

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