Recently, many people have gone to social media to complain about the “Sephora kids”, children between 9 and 14 years old, turning the popular beauty store into a chaotic environment. Being rude to the employees, mixing up products, and buying loads of expensive products not recommended for their age are just some of the things these kids are doing.
Despite all of the complaints, not many people have questioned the reason behind this behavior. With their overexposure to social media nowadays, they have certainly come across videos of makeup and beauty influencers and get inspired by that. One small problem though: the ones who post are normally adults.
According to Alessandra Kovac, a psychologist specialized in kids, these kids were already born in the context of having everything online, but it doesn’t mean they should have unlimited access to it. In this case, parents should be extra careful with the content their kids are watching and following online.
Alessandra also mentions that childhood is very important for a child’s development. By behaving as adults, they are missing out on many fun aspects of being young, and this can also affect how they see themselves as they grow up: “They are living in a state of precocity, which is not maturity. Pre-adolescence should be a preparation for adolescence that should be a preparation to adulthood, by acting like that, they are skipping these steps. This is unsafe for their emotional development.”
Videos on the internet have shown some Sephora stores getting messed up by this behavior, which also shows their lack of boundaries. Alessandra says this impulsivity is an effect of unstable emotional development, and the parents should not be afraid to act in these scenarios: “There, on the spot, they should orient their kids that this is not the way to act, it is wrong and hostile.”
She also includes that being rude and, in a way, authoritarian also shows how we as a society are not dealing with this issue, given that these actions have happened with multiple children.
Even though it can seem very hard to raise a child with all this technology, the psychologist gave some tips on how to do it safely: “Communication is essential between parents and their kids. They are the ones who should know most, not in the way of supervising or controlling, but as in sharing experiences and understanding ‘why do you want to follow this type of content?’. This behavior did not happen all of a sudden, it was a gradual process until it lost control. What is lacking [in these cases] is communication and orientation, showing what is nice and appropriate for their age.”
“Forbidding never works, what is prohibited is always more interesting”, Alessandra summarizes what she means about the importance of dialogue and orientation. Parents’ responsibilities are to limit and show the right way to use the online world.
“There’s also something important: there is no password for pre-teens and teenagers, parents have to have access, it’s not a question of privacy, it’s a question of security. So your privacy ends when it becomes unsafe”, states Kovac.
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The article above was edited by Beatriz Oliveira.
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