Why Celebrities Are Bad Role Models 

These days, there are many people who look up to celebrities and worship them like gods, this causes many of those celebrities to feel the need to act more and wackier in order for them to stay relevant. The actions of celebrities are especially concerning because there are many people who look up to them, especially. Their irresponsible actions negatively affect the fans’ outlook on life and how they view others and themselves. Thus the reasons why celebrities are bad role models are discussed in this essay.

Many celebrities like to glorify and talk about drug use and substance abuse. They make music and fashion depicting substance and abuse like its good for you. Many teens don’t realize that the body of teenagers is not meant to handle and process many of those different drugs and substances, and a developing teenage body makes drug use all the more dangerous. Many celebrities also end up going to rehab to help them deal with substance abuse, even though it’s good that many celebrities are going and getting help with their problem, it also sends the message to teens that they can use drugs and different things, and that as long as they go to rehab everything will be perfectly fine. A study conducted in 2005 was done on 229 teens, 183 undergrad students, and 289 adults in order to understand the correlation between love for a celebrity and body image. The results showed that female who tend to worship celebrities more intensely are more likely to have a poor self-body image. This study shows that celebrities promotion of certain body types negatively impacts people, notably teens. This poor body image can cause some teens to develop eating disorders, such as anorexia because teens feel that they are fat and they need to lose weight.

The South Carolina Department of Health states that anorexia is the 3rd most common chronic illness affecting teens. Much of this is due to the fact that many celebrities have a trend of being thin mainly the woman, and this mentally trickles down to many teens, mostly females, as there are more eating disorders among women than men. Celebrities also affect the way many teens view their future. Many teens are discouraged to work hard when they see how glorified the wealth and the lifestyle of celebrities are. In 2010, 1000 teens in were asked what their ideal career would be, and 54% said they would be some type of celebrity. When the teens were asked how they would achieve the goal of becoming famous, 21% said they would appear in a reality tv show and 5% even said that they would date a celebrity. The majority of those who wanted to be famous, don’t even know how they would achieve the fame, but instead, they believe that they had the talent to become a celebrity. That survey reveals that due to the fact that everyday youths are bombarded with screens showing celebrities that are able to do seemingly whatever they want, with very little consequences or repercussions. This makes many teens unable to decide what they want to do with their lives other than becoming famous. Of those children surveyed more than half of them want to become famous as a career when being famous isn’t really a career.

Many teens for whatever reason think that there is no work and effort involved in order to become a celebrity. One noticeable fact is that of those 1000 teens surveyed only 15% said they wanted to pursue a medical career. Which means that more people would rather become famous than assist in the betterment of humanity. In conclusion, celebrities are very bad influences on people, especially teens. Celebrities encourage poor self-body image and eating disorders; encourage laziness and inadvertently cause teens to make a poor career choice. They also cause children to think that drug and substance abuse is cool.

Works Cited

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