The infection of using a foul language embedded with a variety of curse words, is spreading like an epidemic, especially within the tween and the teen community. I call it ‘The Profanity Epidemic’.
The initial exposure usually occurs sometime between entering Middle school and entering High school. It begins with the symptoms of ears becoming accustomed to receiving some filthy words. Sources of such phrases or words can be many like, Internet without parental controls, watching age-inappropriate movies/videos, listening to songs that usually have a catchy rhythm but are teeming with repetitions of offending words, buying and playing video games without ensuring the aptness of their content, and of course mildly to severely infected older friends at school or neighborhood.
As the contagion starts rising, mucky words erupt out. Rarely at first, and becoming more frequent, appearing in the form of spoken or written or typed words. There is a high risk of vomiting filthy words even if the speaker may not understand their meaning. The urge to throw up can be due to multiple emotions that differ from person to person. For some it may be a way to show off the newly acquired vocabulary, for some it may be a way to act ‘cool’, for others it might be a way to dump out some kind of frustration or anger.
Any other person who happens to come in close contact, if not already ill, is most likely to get badly hurt, insulted, or infected, this way gaining the potential himself to spread the contamination further.
Knowing the severity of this illness, it’s long duration, the devastating after effects and as responsible parents and human beings, is it not our duty to save our kids from this deadly disease? Imposing restrictions on kids or warning them to abstain from bad language for the fear of losing privileges might not be the correct remedies. Instead, the best medicine might be to help the kids realize for themselves, that using a profane language is ALWAYS inappropriate for anybody, anytime, anywhere, regardless of age, culture, country, religion or anything at all. They should realize that curse words make the language absolutely foul and repulsive. There are much better and beautiful words in any language to communicate with. They should beware of the consequences of getting into the habit of using them, as they step into adulthood.
Would you ever wish for your cutie little sweet pie to grow up into a loathsome adult spitting out filthy words every now and then? Never! So, let’s join hands to eradicate this epidemic and save our kids. Let us help them become role models for younger siblings and friends, and guide them towards becoming wise and respectful human beings!
