Become a child star

A child star is a performer who has achieved a relatively large amount of celebrity or recognition in the spotlight at a young age (Williams, 2013). A study found that a desire solely for the sake of being famous was the most ubiquitous future goal among children, overshadowing hopes for financial success and achievement (Kaufman, 2013). This trend is being attracted hundreds of debates that whether the kid's popularity is good or bad. From my perspective, although child stars obtain many special things, they suffer from some subsequent destructive effects.

The first negative downside is the possibility of saying goodbye to everyday, normal life (Prince, 2016). Famous children who have long hours of rehearsals and other activities have to give up leisure time with friends to honor their commitment to production (Mink, 2017). When other children spend their time playing and improving their skills, exceptional ones need time to practice due to the difficulties in the entertainment industry. Another factor taking their normal life away is the lack of privacy( Loftus, 2014).

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The paparazzi can be annoying as they are curious about everything even a sudden sneeze of the celebrities (Rujuta, 2018). Child stars are being bombarded both with praise and criticism from the media, blogs and anonymous strangers (Merry, 2018) because there are millions of people who are journalists, fans always follow and write about them every day.

Secondly, child performers are at high risk of becoming emotionally unstable and using drugs, alcohol (Behrens-Horrell, 2011).  Exposure to long working hours and a lack of childhood time that can wreak havoc on the psyche (Serrels, 2016).

According to a study, performers are twice

Become a child star? It is imperfect!

as likely as the general population to experience depression (Taylor, 2017). Because of the intense pressure of childhood stardom, they have turned to drug and alcohol abuse to cope with fame (Serrels, 2016). A survey showed that child actors were three times more likely to abuse alcohol, or drugs than average young Americans (Roberts, 2012). For example, Drew Barrymore started smoking cigarettes at age 9, drinking alcohol at 11, smoking marijuana at 12, and snorting cocaine at 13 (Foresman, n.d.), famously checked into rehab at the age of 13 (Marthe, 2016).

On the contrary, there are voices from opponents arguing that being a celebrity seems pretty great in terms of richness (Pliskin, 2014). Many kids have the potential to be as rich as adult co-stars, they earn more money in a single paycheque than most people do over several years (HardWick, 2014). To a certain extent, they may be right; however, with good amount of money at an early age, the problem is that how much they spend and what they spend it on (Jones, n.d.) . They may become involved with drugs (MSc, 2013), manic spending sprees, strip club blowouts, and fast food binges", plus many things with an inability to manage their finances (Jones, n.d.). Moreover, the highly successful child stars are likely to become their family's chief breadwinner, unscrupulous parents enable them to push the children to do work that they do not want to do (MSc, 2018).

To recapitulate, being well-known at the early phase of life brings lots of detrimental consequences, especially losing normal life and higher risks of psychological issues, being exposed to addictive substances as well. Parents who are responsible for their life should think through before giving them a chance to be in the limelight.