![]() Under the gentle swoop of the bangs lies a world of debauchery. "It's like the hair in front of their eyes shields the world from seeing the moral breakdown. "It's a generation marked by promiscuity and disobedience under wraps," he said of his peers. The emo kids were poppin' pills, doin' it all," said an 18-year-old from Hoffman Estates, Ill., who kept a keen eye on the scene and worries that what is now almost a joke among college kids has snared serious attention from 7th graders. "When I was in high school, kids crushed up Ritalin, Adderall, you name it. If Ritalin works for you, maybe it'll be good for me, the thinking goes. What's most worrisome, she and others report, is that kids are swapping psychiatric prescriptions the way they used to swap Twinkies for chips at the lunch table. There's some sort of coolness in, `My moods are so wild, I have to take this.'" "A huge surge of kids are taking anti-psychotic drugs. `Wow, I'm so messed up, I'm seeing a therapist and this is the drug they put me on,'" said Lisa Schubring, a marriage and family therapist in Green Bay, Wis., whose practice is devoted primarily to teens and preteens with issues related to the computer. Psychologists and mental health experts say that in the last few years, especially among teens and preteens, there has been a huge attitudinal swing about mental health issues whereas 10 years ago a kid might be ashamed to admit even seeing a therapist, now it is ultra-cool to have such mood swings that you are on prescription meds and diagnosed with childhood or adolescent bipolar disorder. You can Google "emo" and find step-by-step pictorial guides for "emo makeovers." That is, how to transform a geeky guy with a pencil tucked behind his ear, working at a copy store, to a "bona fide emo boy," who is shown dying his hair black, ditching the smile, slipping on a black T-shirt and scarf and, in the final photo, putting razor blade to wrist, from which something red is spilling. And it has spread, thanks to the Internet, faster than you can type, "Seeking desolate landscape populated by preteens."Ĭheck out MySpace _ a virtual hangout where teens glue themselves to the computer and hook up with kids far and wide _ and you'll find some 17,331 groups that identify themselves as "emo." ![]() You can find the ever-more-youthful emo trend in cities and suburbs. This emo (phenomenon) plays along with that." More kids today see therapists, they're on medications. Emotionally speaking, our kids today, they've seen more, they probably hurt more because of broken homes. "Their heroes are these drug-addicted, strung-out musicians. "I think now we have more kids who are messed up, broken," said Steve Pearce, principal of Margaret Mead Junior High in Elk Grove Village, Ill. These words crawl beneath the blood-blotched arm: "I got a Boo-Boo!" ![]() Im dead."Īnd then there's Emo Tim, whose blog shows video of his forearm, a lattice of red cuts. why don't you just end it, shoot me with ur gun or some (expletive). Someone who calls herself I Am the Happy Emo Girl Named Amaya!, whose bedtime is 9 p.m., by the way, writes in her blog, "i don't know who i am. Only some grown-ups and even older emo kids themselves worry that young teens and preteens might be in over their heads in a scene that's wrought with self-injury, prescription swapping and long hours venting their dark side on blogs that they forget can be read by anyone. According to kids, teachers, and therapists, it has become the latest cool thing in junior highs, where cool is everything. Now emo is a subculture with a dress and drama all its own. It started with a form of indie music _ noted for its whininess and its lead singers who would sob on stage _ back in the 1980s and caught on a couple of years ago with high schoolers drawn to its melodrama and misanthropy. All this on her blog on MySpace, a virtual meeting place for any kid with access to the Internet and the unofficial base for all kids who call themselves "emo," short for hard-core emotive. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |