'Real World' Star, Now Mom, Says 'NYC Prep' is Bad News

Bravo's hit reality show, "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," is the most deliciously guilty mom pleasure since cookie dough ice cream hit grocery store freezers. Ironically, its teen counterpart, "NYC Prep," is drawing criticism from the same moms (like me!) who sneak "Real Housewives" episodes when their kids aren't around.

Why? Because moms know that when it comes to media intake, adults and teens are different. Teens are impressionable and there is a moral hazard in Bravo's not-so teenage look at the lives of privileged New York City private-school kids: The normalization of very bad teen behavior and the insidious cultural pressure on kids to grow up too fast.

Unlike the glamorous TV rich kids of my generation, these kids don't hang out at the Peach Pit after school. They have completely bypassed the pep rallies, pizza and slumber parties for the very adult world of New York City nightclubs, fine dining, shopping sprees and art gallery openings. The lack of parental involvement in their day-to-day lives is glaring, if not disturbing. One baby-faced 15-year-old actually lives alone in an apartment with her teenage brother, while their parents, who live in the Hamptons, drop in for weekend visits. Left to her own devices, she admits to never doing homework and staying out till the wee hours at nightclubs on school nights.

But even those teens who live at home seem to be pursuing a status-conscious New York social scene alone, without the guidance of an adult who could keep them in check. They spend their days and nights texting, scheming, and making clumsy attempts at adult banter that are painful to watch. Despite their cruel superficiality, I can't help feeling sorry for their lost childhoods.

I was 22 when I appeared on MTV's "The Real World." I found that cast members with the strongest family ties fared best. The teens of "NYC Prep" appear to be in over their heads; they have neither the maturity nor the values to survive the experience with their souls intact. It's really not their fault. Witness how they try on clichés and stereotypes borrowed from both the absent adults in their lives and the conniving characters of "Gossip Girl," the hit CW series that inspired "NYC Prep," and that they seem determined to imitate. One teen boasts, without irony, that prep-school kids are "the elite of the elite," while another girl admits that she is excited about a new friendship because it will, "enhance my social status".

Sadly, without the benefit of caring, sensible grown-ups who can set limits and put the privileged world they inhabit in perspective, these teens are being robbed of more than their childhood; they are losing the opportunity and space to develop their character.

In the end, we learn that parenting matters. And that when rich kids grow up too soon, they get all the dysfunction and none of the graces their social status could have imbued.