By Nora Schindler

It’s not a new thing, the issue of girls growing up fast. I think the concept of a girl growing up faster than the others around them is one thing almost all girls can relate to. 

During middle school, dynamics shift and the maturity gap between boys and girls seems to expand. After all, there’s a clear difference between the two middle school groups — one is jumping to hit the top of doorways while the other is spending time deciphering how much lip gloss they can put on at once before their lips fall off.

When you’re in the classroom as one of the middle school girls, it’s easy to get distracted and annoyed by the outbursts of your peers, but stepping back and doing the research, I would say that it’s detrimental for a girl to be so focused on what’s ahead and not in front of them. When doing a deep dive into why this is such a common situation and asking why girls are in such a rush to get where they’re going to end up eventually — faster—one can find that there are numerous studies and evidence displaying the many ways/reasons girls can feel pressured to grow up, ranging from social media to parental pressure. 

The big focus around the effects of social media are the people who call themselves “influencers,” usually appealing to younger girls despite most being over the age of 17. They thrive on using expensive skin care products and marketing them to girls as young as eleven, a phenomenon deemed problematic on many levels. The pressure to buy such products being advertised to you just to achieve conformity to unrealistic beauty standards is unhealthy. This idea has been around forever, the point of makeup and skincare being to manipulate young girls into thinking there’s something wrong with them and something they need to fix. Immediately they are focused on the appearance of looking older and more mature, followed by a need to act more “mature.” This cycle then continues to affect others around them.

The amount of older daughters being forced into parental positions — also known as parentification — their own self care taken from them, losing time and even motivation to complete tasks for themselves. When you push a girl, specifically in middle and high school, to step in that position, it only pushes them to grow up faster. The chain reaction is to go from taking care of siblings to taking care of themselves last, and not to mention doing it alone. Parents sometimes unknowingly have their children assume full responsibility for the younger siblings. 

In addition to girls growing up too fast, women are starting to backtrack and bring back their youth after having it stolen through a series of internet trends. A new trend has quickly developed everywhere online, where women in their teens, twenties and thirties have begun adding a bow to their daily routine — usually small and pink. On first glance, it looks like a cute decorative piece, but there is a lot more to it. It symbolizes some sort of innocence and responsibility-free life, typical in childhood.

So, tweens are in the face cream section of a makeup store and women are in the girls section buying bows for their hair. It’s an interesting contrast — and something that will continue to evolve and change as new generations shift to be older and others become young women.

We need to give girls a break — acting kinder towards them on social media, giving them the benefit of the doubt — and maybe they won’t feel the pressure to be better than the best they can do.