With college came my first opportunity for total self-actualization. But, as higher education gave me a supervised test run of adulthood, I realize now how much of my past excitement of growing up was blind to how much I’d miss my youth and the simplicity that came with it. 

POV: It’s 2009 and your first grade class is having a Halloween party. Your teacher is playing the “Monster Mash” and everyone is dressed up in their costumes, drinking apple cider and eating doughnuts. There are no worries in the back of your mind about work you have to do, only excitement about going trick-or-treating later.

It rests on our collective conscience to avoid the unnecessary exploitation of a generation who cannot yet spell the word privacy — let alone understand its importance.

Television needs to depict the tragedies that have occurred in the unlawful killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other unarmed Black people, instead of making us root for our favorite actors.