Halloween is approaching within the next few days. 

As I go around the Van Nuys community, I realized that as the years pass by, Halloween is dying off. Specifically, the tradition of trick-or-treating! 

I have noticed that the amount of trick-or-treaters out in recent years have been reduced drastically. 

At a young age, teenagers and kids come to a realization that they are “too old” to go out on Halloween. According to the Roanoke Times, the average age that kids stop going trick-or-treating is 12 or 13, which can explain why less teens are seen trick-or-treating.

There’s also an increasing amount of schoolwork that should be factored. High schoolers are more stressed than adults, according to American Psychological Association “Stress in America” study.

Fewer teens are getting the recommended 8-10 hours of sleep, with only 15% claiming that they get that amount every day, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Students are possibly spending more time doing their homework, sacrificing sleep in the process.

With teens getting less sleep, it may not seem rational for some teenagers to go out on Halloween night and sacrifice time that could be used to do homework. This year, especially, when Halloween falls on a Thursday.  

Safety issues have also arisen that lead some parents restricting their kids to go out during Halloween. 

One of the major issues that parents have is that they fear people tamper with the candy by putting drugs in the candy and giving it to children. However, this has been proven wrong.

Snopes, a fact-checking site, stated that there has been no apparent evidence of such tampering with Halloween candy, calling it a “Halloween scare tactic.”

The decrease in Halloween popularity is also due to the fact that less people have been decorating their houses to welcome kids to knock on their door. 

Years ago when we were all kids, there were several people who went above and beyond by creating small haunted houses that kids and teens could go through. 

In today’s community, it is rare to see a person decorating for Halloween. The lack of decorated houses lets the trick-or-treaters know that there will not be candy. 

With less houses with candy, trick-or-treaters may get discouraged to go out during Halloween in their communities. 

We have to save the Halloween tradition for our generation and the generations to come. The future generations should be able to experience the thrill of going out at night, knocking on people’s doors and eating candy when they get home.