From the Jonas Brothers to Justin Bieber and One Direction, the last couple of years have been monumental in developing a practice known as fangirling, an euphemism for the crazy obsession over an individual completely unaware of your existence.

Senior Kendall Ruskin, an avid self-described fangirl, said, “Fangirling is a culture. To be a fangirl one must be passionate.” She compared fangirling to football. “Fangirling is the pop culture equivalent to football fans who can pretty much answer any obscure question about their favorite team.”

While appreciating a celebrity for their artistic talent is perfectly acceptable, the line between creepiness is generally trampled on shamelessly by fangirls. While an occasional reblog of the celebrity’s picture on Tumblr is perfectly acceptable, a complete blog dedicated to someone who doesn’t know you exist is obsession.

Other obsessive tactics include but are not limited to memorizing whole interviews, tweets, and knowing personal histories backwards and forwards. Have the youth of America ever known this much about Steve Jobs, a man who has impacted their life immensely with the invention of the iPhone?

The obsession and misplaced fascination with pop culture among the youth in this country is one of the root causes of why we lag behind in education compared to the rest of the world. When One Direction performed at Times Square on a Monday morning, thousands of girls missed school to see them perform, parents in tow.

Given that and the fact that “obsession is really unhealthy because it focuses all your energy on one thing and inhibits your own thinking time,” according to an anonymous junior, celebrity worship is what is weakening the American concept of the importance of education, producing a generation of youth who look up to celebrities instead of academic pioneers, who have impacted our day-to-day lives.