When you think of the teenage experience as a child, there is a lot to work forward to, so many firsts. Your first kiss, your first car, your first dance, etc. Reality is that while a lot of those things are great, being a teenager is nothing like what it’s cracked up to be in the media. 

As people grow, they want independence, to buy their own things with their own money. This is usually where the biggest first comes in, the first job. Waiting to work until you’re in your teens hasn’t always been tradition. Historically, most started at the age of five working in factories and mining facilities. Naturally children are clumsy and many ended up seriously injuring themselves to the point of amputation, and occasionally, death. This was why child labour laws were placed in the United States, to protect the youth from being exploited or injured. 

Recently State officials across the country have been working to remove and weaken several of these laws. According to the Economic Policy Institute, several states have been working toward allowing teens of age 16 and up to work for unlimited hours without breaks, even during the school year. 

As a student who does not work, I’m usually seen working on homework and studying until at least one in the morning. It is difficult to keep up a social life and not let your grades slip away at the same time, and this is just thinking about an average student with no extracurricular activities. For someone who has to keep up with things like sports, that takes away what little time you have to study and take care of mental health. 

Add on a job that’s working students to the limit without so much as a break and there’s no way students are getting more than two hours a night. For comparison, the average recommended amount of sleep for teenagers is 8 – 10 hours. 

Many states have also been working to make it to where students can work for less pay but more hours if the establishment they’re working for is owned by their family. While it’s great to help out a family business, there is a limit. While I can understand how and why parents may think this way I can’t help but disagree. Kids are their own people, they have their own identity and deserve to be paid as a valued employee would.

Many children in the countryside find their first jobs being in the agriculture industry. According to the The American Federation of Teachers, children are “regularly exposed to pesticides, greatly increasing their risk for cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that children are three times more susceptible to the pesticides’ carcinogenic effects than are adults”.

Even when child labour laws weren’t being torn down left and right, companies still used children as employees. Children are often seen as gullible labor machines, because they kind of are. Kids do not have the real world experience and guidance to be able to make good financial decisions for themselves, and companies use this to their advantage. Often these illegally employed children are immigrants, looking for cash to make ends meet, easy to take advantage of.

For many of our elderly one day, they might find themselves with a new type of “first”, being taken care of in the old people home by a 16 year old with several scars or burn marks from work. For the sake of America’s future, children should continue to be protected by child labour laws so that we don’t regress, but rather follow the path of progress.