I'm Scared of Teenagers!

My oldest child is only nine so I know I have some time before I need to worry about raising a teenager. (Although he's 9 1/2 which makes teenagedom only about 3 years away...yikes!) And he is a boy and not subject to some of the skanky role models that seem to be plastered all over my television. In fact, my only daughter is not quite two yet so I know I shouldn't worry about it too much yet.
That being said, I can't help but worry. Britney Spears just shaved her head, added two new tattoos and then promptly checked herself into rehab. Personally, I have never been a fan but know there are millions of teeny-boppers out there that idolize her and someday my daughter might be one of them. Hopefully Ms. Spears will be totally out of the limelight by the time my little one is old enough to idolize anyone but me, but I'm certainly not naive enough to think there won't be ten more just like her by then.
Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Tara Reid - the list goes on and on. No, these girls aren't teenagers anymore but they are the role models for such and I can't help but wonder how many 17 year olds stopped wearing underwear once some of these girls made it headline news?
I live in a small town where everybody knows everybody and thankfully, it's just not "cool" to be skanky. The teenagers around here are good kids with good values and good heads on their shoulders. My boys worship Drake and Josh and The Naked Brothers Band from Nickelodeon but they also worship the starting five on our high school basketball team and I'm grateful for that - they are role models I want my kids watching. They are good-looking kids that work hard at school, (most of them Academic All-Staters) at sports and at their church and community service. This weekend we are going to the 2A State Basketball Championship where our boys and girls teams are #1 seeds in the tournament. Once we return, I know my boys will pick one of our high school starters to mimick when they're outside shooting hoops on our home court. There's not one of them that would make me cringe. On the other hand, I have to carefully monitor which NBA stars my boys want to become most like.
Why is it that the more trouble a celebrity gets into, the more their stock goes up? Why do we hear so little about the people that just try to live a good life? This is why teenagers scare me. It is going to be up to me to isolate the good stories and bring them to the forefront of my kids' minds when the worldwide media is working against me. The responsibility I have as a parent is so overwhelming to me and I know the world is only going to get worse as my children get closer to caring about what goes on outside of their little circles.
I know I can't keep all of the negative influences away from my kids and I know they aren't sheltered from the outside world just because we live where we do. But I wonder - if I blow up pictures of some of our high school basketball stars and turn them into posters to plaster around my kids' rooms, maybe the outside influences won't seem so important as the superstars they see everyday around town.