Thinking of kissing someone you really like surely gives you butterflies in your stomach but kissing at an early age with all the raging hormones comes with its own baggage, both emotionally and physically.
Kissing before 18 can cause an array of confusing emotions to surge within a person. In an age of already conflicting hormones, it adds to the burden and makes adolescents act illogically and irresponsibly. It can also leave little t-traumas that impact future relationships.
Now that we know that kissing can be more baggage than what you might assume under 18 let’s understand exactly why that happens.
Negative Effects Of Kissing Before The Age Of 18
1. Distracting You From Your Goals
Kissing surely triggers your brain to release a cocktail of chemicals, making you feel “oh so good”, especially when you are young and exploring new ways to express your romantic interests.
The thing about being young is that you do not have as much control over your mind and hormones.
You end up wasting a ton of time fantasizing, romanticizing, and talking about a kiss that doesn’t matter much in your life over the things that truly do.
As a student who is already juggling between school, homework, exams, family, and sleep, dealing with a kiss can often be a big distraction from things that matter.
2. Risk of Sexual Health
With the onset of puberty comes an avalanche of hormones leading to increased sexual desires and romantic feelings. At this age, even a kiss is enough to ignite all of your senses, leading to sexual arousal.
As these hormones take hold of your body, you become less mindful of the consequences.
One may feel more inclined to take risks, often resulting in unsafe intercourse, which can have severe repercussions like unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and emotional pain.
There tends to be a larger influence of peer discussions, movies, tv series, and social media content on the internet than real education during your younger years as teenagers find it more attractive.
As a result, adolescents are more likely to expose themselves to risks associated with erotic engagements.
The normalization of engaging in sexual activities at a younger age has worsened the situation by making the idea of “taking risks and having fun” become popular.
Teenagers also tend to rebel against the norms, and strict parental rules seem to push them to “explore their limits”.
3. Emotional Trauma
Teenagers are still figuring out their life and navigating the world. Engaging in serious matters can many-a-times take the wrong turn.
Since sensual engagements tend to have a greater impact on the mind, navigating their own sexuality and relationships is not an easy task. Rushing it can have plenty of consequences.
It is common for younger people to get far too emotionally invested in relationships. Kissing becomes a means to get validation, get their crush’s attention, or seem “cool” to become popular.
These situations often backfire as your partner might betray you, never take you seriously, others at school start name-calling, or ruin your reputation – each adding to the baggage.
Any such experience can hurt you deeply and may even come back to haunt you when you are an adult.
4. Developing A Negative Body Image
Maintaining a healthy body image during adolescence, a period of major emotional and physical changes, can be really difficult.
One bad kissing experience (usually the first), and you tend to rack your brain over and over again. You start thinking: Was I not pretty enough? Or Good enough ? or Desirable enough?
Will I ever be loved or wanted by another?
Continuous pressure from peers or media to fit into a narrow idea of beauty can make you struggle with body image and self-confidence. Often, a simple kiss only adds fuel to an already burning fire.
Comments made by someone you like also has a major impact on body image, and you can get extremely conscious after the incident, which can lead to bad outcomes.
Exposing one’s body to another young mind (who has little knowledge of the real world) and is influenced makes you more susceptible to words that can impact your body image in unhealthy ways.
5. Intimate Partner Violence
Teenagers tend to lack an understanding of social and physical boundaries. They also have little control over their hormones or know how to act.
As a result, they are prone to conducting and receiving violence on an intimate level without even being aware of it.
At such a vulnerable stage, engaging in romantic behavior like kissing too early can result in misunderstandings about appropriate types of touch, which can further lead to emotional and sexual harassment.
Like sexual touching when the partner does not consent or non-physical sexual behaviors like sexting someone without consent.
Any such adverse experience can profoundly impact your lifelong mental well-being and scar you forever.
6. Ruin Your Relationship With Parents
Most parents tend to not encourage adult-like behaviors in their teenagers. There tends to be a conflict between what adolescents want to partake in and what their guardians permit.
Involving in any kind of intimate physical behavior like kissing at such a young age can further cause friction between you and your parents.
This situation can certainly create communication difficulties between the two. As a result, children find it harder to engage in conversations about safe practices or discuss the topic of abuse with their parents.
Without the guidance of a parent or another responsible, caring adult, younger people are more likely to hurt themselves, physically or emotionally.
7. Increases The Risk Of Bad Peer Influence
When you start getting involved in physically intimate behavior like kissing at a young age, you usually start considering yourself cooler than the rest of your peers.
It often gives you more confidence to start experimenting with things you are too young to deal with. You are also more likely to build a social circle around your current interest or activities.
Thus, engaging in one activity can snowball into many others based on the peers you surround yourself with. In short, one thing will quickly tumble into another – because your friends did so too.
8. It Can Increase Stress and Negative Emotions
Adolescence is associated with many psychosocial and developmental challenges, including processing intense emotions.
With all the raging hormones, the desire to indulge in an intimate behavior like kissing is at its peak.
Still, with the existing pressure to be good at everything and accepted by everyone, it can soon become an added tension.
What your friends would think about you, the rumors that go around school, whether your partner likes you enough, and how to break it to your parents or deal with them – all can add to an already stressful life of a teenager.
All of it gets worse if these wandering thoughts end up impacting your grades as well.
Most importantly, at an age when you are trying to figure out who you are and what you want in life, any unreciprocated attachment can become a romantic stressor.
Conclusion
Adolescent years can be quite tricky. With all the hormonal changes taking place, you feel a range of emotions you haven’t felt before.
It is common for you to feel drawn to other people or seek social validation as a teenager. It is all a fair part of growing up and aids you in learning.
However, it is also important to ensure the safety of teenagers through awareness and education so that it does not have lifelong undesirable repercussions.