De La Salle student skewers media’s fake reality

    The following essay by De La Salle sophomore Katie Hansche merited a Top 10 finish in a national essay competition for high school writers sponsored by Creative Communication.

    “We Teens and Our Media” essay:

    “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
– Kurt Vonnegut

    I believe teens today are too involved in media and rely too heavily upon it for advice. Shows like “Jersey Shore” and “The Real Housewives of Orange County” are teaching teens and young adults to act like children for their entire lives. These shows are promoting self-deterioration with tanning beds, plastic surgeries and overdoses of alcohol.
    Shows in this category are encouraging teens to remove the filter between the brain and mouth, the conscience, and blurt out whatever comes to mind, and this is what they call honesty, or to be “real.”
    “Real” people say anything without regard to anyone or anything. These “real” people feel they must dress provocatively to attract anyone, though if they are being real in the literal sense, they would not have to dress provocatively to find someone.
    I think these things, among other fads, have affected our teenage population so much that it may affect the way our country is later. To be genuine, determined and kind are things to live by forever. If you are a dedicated worker with genuine regard for others’ feelings, and you are kind out of the bottom of your heart, you will go places in life.
    Fads, or short-lived, popular topics or material things, will pass through you, but the way you think won’t be swayed if you keep your determination and kindness.
    Hansche is a sophomore at De La Salle High School in New Orleans. She competed against other high schoolers in the “Celebrating what is Important to Me” essay contest and was the only Louisianian to be honored.