Setting Our Kids Loose in Today’s Real World

I have a confession.

I’ve been watching a show that’s so trashy, so salacious, so disgustingly scandalous that I hastily turn it off in embarrassment whenever anyone else is in the room.

It’s called Real World: Las Vegas, and even though its disturbing images haunt me for days, I can’t stop watching.

The premise is the same as you remember from your own MTV days. It’s the story of seven strangers, picked to live in a house and have their lives taped.

Gone, though, are the staunch Republicans, the AIDS patients, the cowboys, the naive Southern girls from the Real World we remember. They’ve been replaced by young men and women whose sole goals in life seem to consist of hooking up with as many people as possible, fighting, and getting fall-down drunk.

This season alone, every single castmate has made out with or had sex with another castmate. One was sent home for repeatedly getting wasted and trashing their penthouse suite. Another was outed as having gay porn videos on the Internet- even though he was hooking up with a female castmate each night and hadn’t bothered to tell her about his past. That same female got drunk after learning about his sexual history and hooked up with another female castmate. Two more castmates endured a pregnancy/STD scare, after the guy admitted he hadn’t been using protection with the other women he’d been sleeping with in Las Vegas. And the scandal and bad behavior goes on. And on. And on.

Why am I watching this trash? For one important reason.

Our kids are going to be watching it, too. Like it or not, MTV continues to be the arbiter of what’s current among teens and young adults.

I remember relating to the Real World cast members when I was their age. On some level, their lives and experiences, their likes and dislikes, mirrored my own and those of my friends. I’m going to sound like a codger now, but wasn’t it important when we were Real World age to stand for something? Sure there was drinking and there were hookups among our friends, but there were also lots of heartfelt talks about the meaning of our lives and where we were headed. There was concern over the state of our government and our world. Relationships were painstakingly analyzed. Ideas were exchanged. Philosophies were tested.

I see none of that now. I see young people concerned only with getting drunk and getting laid. That’s essentially the plotline of every single Real World episode that airs.

And that concerns me.

I’d like to see MTV catch up with these castmembers six months after the last Real World has aired. And a year down the road. And five years after that. I’d like to hear what the castmates have to say about the random hookups and excessive drinking then. I want to know how their pasts affect them when they have their first serious adult relationship. When they marry. When they have kids of their own. That’s the Real World. But our kids won’t see that on MTV, will they?

It’s depressing that sex is portrayed now as being no more meaningful than an extended makeout session. It’s depressing to hear that young, educated men and women are still using the “pull-out method” and going without protection when they have sex with strangers, because that stranger “looked clean.” It’s depressing to see that a night out on the town isn’t really complete unless it ends with everyone doing something they wouldn’t do sober, whether it’s hooking up or fighting or passing out on the floor of the bar.

It’s depressing that this is the Real World our kids are inheriting.

I don’t like it. But I do feel the need to know about it. How else am I going to know what I’m up against?

What do you think about the Real World our kids are entering? Do you see differences from when we were growing up, or do you think it’s no different from when we were their age?

 

Image via MTV