Do child stars often have a rough life?

Grace Capdevila, J1 Guest Writer

Imagine this… you’re 6 years old walking with your parents and there’s cameras flashing everywhere. I believe that child stars can have it rough. 

Most child stars get their youth taken from them. Macaulay Culkin, Lindsay Lohan, and Selena Gomez, all grow up on stage. In fact they all sacrificed their childhood so many of us could enjoy ours. Instead of watching cartoons at a young age these stars were working. With ever wanting this, some of them even got forced into having this life. Just like Bella Thorne, her parents couldn’t pay for bills so they made Bella audition for the famous children show known as “Shake It Up”. Although Bella did pursue her career she states “If you spend your whole life, you’ve been raised to only please people, then how do you know, why do you think, “Oh these child stars are going crazy.” Oftentimes being in the spotlight at a young age means growing up too fast to be “mature” for the industry. 

When you are in the spotlight, you must keep a reputation. Sometimes the reputation that society wants these young people to keep is very hard. Everyone makes mistakes, and that doesn’t excuse their actions but we have to remember that they’re just kids. I can imagine how hard it would be to grow up with everyone watching you. Bella Thorne told GMA that “And they can understand that box [because] they’ve heard it before, so they say “OK, every child actor has to be in that box.”. Bella was saying that you have to be in a box, Of being perfect. It can be hard to grow up stuck in one place.

Ultimately having such responsibilities at a young age can cause a child star to have a rough life. I believe that we should take off the pressure on these children.