Many children are engaged in compensated employment globally.

This topic brings two main

contrasting views, with some people perceiving it as an opportunity for growing children to
experience work environments and gain knowledge in the future. However, others believe it is
unethical to hire under-aged children. From my perspective, minors should not be allowed to work
due to the following reasons.

Firstly, by normalising children to work, child labour issue can become more pressing, even though
they are willing to participate in employment on their own. When some of the children of their social
circle start working, minors tend to follow the pattern and apply for work despite the fact that they
are physically and mentally underdeveloped than adults. As a result, the decision of working might
lead them to labour exploitation. According to statistics, there are 160 million children are in child
labour which is almost one tenth of all children worldwide. Furthermore, a certain amount of these
children are not morally treated right.

Secondly, since minors are not fully educated to be a part of a professional workplace, they usually
do a job which requires physical effort, resulting in them being exhausted at the end of the day. If
they continue working there, it can cause adverse physical and mental health effects such as
impaired growth, ergonomic strain and fatigue stress.

Last but not least, children who are in middle school or high school should be focusing on their
academic improvement rather than earning a wage. It is difficult to study while they are working
after school. In fact, there is a study that shows countries whose under-aged citizens are engaged in
the workforce have relatively low literacy rates and are economically deteriorated. Moreover,
individuals who have been working since their childhood tend to be unsuccessful in their chosen
occupation due to lack of knowledge.

All in all, children should not participate in paid employment due to potential harms on them
including labour exploitation, health concerns and educational issues.