Become a Child Star? It Is Imperfect!

A child star is a performer who has gained a relatively large amount of celebrity or recognition at a young age.

A study found that a desire "solely for the sake of being famous" was the most ubiquitous future goal among children, overshadowing hopes for finance, achievement, and a sense of community (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 some subsequent destructive effects.

The first negative downside is the possibility of saying goodbye to "everyday, normal life" (Prince, 2016). Being in the spotlight is very difficult, and so many children do encounter difficulties and get into perhaps just a little trouble along the way to adulthood (Sikkema, n.d). Child actors, athletes and artists who always have long hours of rehearsals, travel, and coordination with school and other activities, they may need to give up leisure time with friends to honor their commitment to the production (Casey, 2017).

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Another factor taking their normal life away is the lack of privacy (Loftus,1995)( The Other Side of Fame). The paparazzi can be very annoying as they are curious about everything even a sudden sneeze of the stars (Rujuta, 2018). There are millions of people who are journalists, fans always follow and write about them every day, so they have no private time and space with their family or friends without being taken thousands of photos.

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). Performers are twice as likely as the general population to experience depression, according to the 2015 Australian Actors: wellbeing study (Taylor, 2017). Because of the intense strain of childhood stardom, many famous children have turned to drug and alcohol abuse in order to cope with fame (Serrels, 2016). A survey shows that all were child actors, three times more likely to abuse alcohol, or drugs than average young American (Roberts, 2012). Take Drew Barrymore, for example, she 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 opponents arguing that being a celebrity seems pretty great in terms of richness (Pliskin, 2014). Many child stars have the potential to be as famous and as rich as adult co-stars, they earn more money in a single paycheque than most people do over several years (HardWick, 2014). That opinion is true in some extent; however, the highly successful child stars are likely to become their family's chief breadwinner, unscrupulous parents enable to push the children to do work that they do not want to do (MSc, 2018). Moreover, with a lot of money, they become involved with drugs and take very large quantities as they can afford to do (MSc, 2013). Similarly, their prosperity leads them to "manic spending sprees, strip club blowouts and fast food binges", plus many things hinting at an inability to manage their finances.

To recapitulate, being well-known at early phase of life brings lots of detrimental consequences, especially having no normal life and higher risks of mental and physical issues. Parents who are responsible for their life should think through before giving them a chance to be in the limelight.