Recently I’m sure you or someone you know has seen that gas prices are going up at a swift rate. That’s alarming if you think just how high they could be in weeks or maybe months. If they continue to go up at a rate this fast, we could be seeing costly gas prices soon. This would significantly affect middle and lower class America and would be even worse for a family with multiple cars. “Yes, I have. They’ve been going up pretty quickly, actually,” Robbie Matley (11) says. While on the other hand, Stillman Bozman (11) hasn’t noticed much of a change: “I haven’t really noticed. I don’t drive yet.” Not only will these families be paying more, but they will be multiplying the amount of money they have to pay for gas per person and or per car. This will affect the “breadwinners” of the house but also everyone else… including the children. This could affect them by simply having them get a job, which sounds simple enough, but with them juggling school, out-of-school activities, and trying to navigate or find where they want to go in life, this could be a problem for them and their families.

For students, being in school is stressful enough, with some classes having extreme workloads and having homework after the school day is over. ”It will probably affect how I’m spending my money; I’ll have to think more about what I’m buying,” Matley admits. While again on the opposite side, Stillman Bozman thinks differently about if these prices affect him. “I don’t think it will. I don’t pay for gas. I don’t have a car.” While some may think it won’t affect them, only time will tell if it will. If it does, Having to balance a new job can really complicate things for a student. This would get in the way of completing any work outside of school, now having to go to work after school ends. This would also bring new stress into their life. With grades most likely dropping, they would face too many decisions to make that could affect their families and themselves. Now, if the student decides they shouldn’t have a job, their gas prices fall into their parents’ hands, who are already paying for their own gas. This could be financially damaging to the family as a whole. Robbie thinks, “It will also affect how they are spending their money and how they deal with what they have to focus on now.” Stillman isn’t so sure it will affect his family, stating, ” I don’t think it will at all. Maybe my mom and my sister, but I don’t think it will have a hard effect on us” So, again, some students, maybe not be affected by this situation. If so they do, getting a job as a student is a huge responsibility with now taking care of yourself but also being taken off your parents “payroll,” knowing that if you go back to not having a job could damage your parents spending limits is a big thing to worry about daily which could also further affect their schoolwork and their job performance. With all this new stress, the issue of mental health can be brought into the situation, kids haven’t had to juggle so many things at once, so this would take a big toll on how they feel every day and what they’re thinking about every day. This could also affect their priorities, possibly putting school below their jobs and taking a bigger role at work than in school to earn more money.

Sticking with the narrative that the student would quit the new job and go back to being a student would affect the parents. With a busy work schedule, parents might not take their kids somewhere like an afterschool activity, or if they need to go somewhere, this would mean they would have to provide gas money for their kid or kids take a chunk out of their money. With their kids taking more money now, this could also affect their work hours, possibly having to work more hours a day. This could affect the parent’s mental state now, having to worry about finances even more with the new daily bill of gas piling up for them. This would obviously depend on how many children they have, but having one is enough to have problems depending on their weekly/yearly income. This would all pile up into bigger problems for the family and could be an issue for years to come if the gas prices continue to go up.

This begs the question, should the gas prices be lowered to help the people and the economy? Robbie says it could have one…” It could hurt a lot of low-income families and possibly jobs, it also depends on how much oil is wasted. But I could see it having a bad effect on the economy”. Bozman has the same ideas for what could happen: “I’m not really sure; I don’t pay attention to that stuff…I guess maybe lower class people? But it could affect how everyone pays for things if it keeps going up.” Personally, I think they should; they have been going up 10 cents every other day, which means if it doesn’t go down soon, it will be an uphill battle for the next few years. Hopefully, change will soon come to lower the gas prices; slowly lowering them would help tremendously.