Teenagerdom

Personally, I don’t think adults know what it’s like to be a teenager anymore.

It’s a controversial statement, I know, but it’s just my opinion.

They may understand key terminology, such as peer pressure and bullying, but I don’t think they really understand what it’s like in this day and age. When I say that telling us “I was a teenager once too you know,” is one of the most aggravating sentences you can say – I mean it. We know you were our age once, but you aren’t our age now and there’s a huge difference between the two.

It’s almost impossible to find a group of friends where at least one of them doesn’t vape or has tried a vape at some point. Groups of girls and boys gather in single cubicles to vape with each other as if it’s a social activity. If you don’t vape, you’re left out of conversations and plans because you’re choosing to protect your body over your reputation.

The same goes with drinking. If you don’t drink, you don’t get invited to parties. If you don’t get invited to parties, you start to lose friends. If you lose friends, you become a social outcast. Of course, you can watch the parties online, and see what you miss out on, but then you just get fomo (fear of missing out). However, if you don’t watch the footage, you can’t join in on conversations at school which also gives you fomo. In the end, you’re left with the choice of going to the parties and forcing yourself to be in situations where you may make some stupid mistakes, or stay at home and be in a situation where you feel miserable and lonely.

For those of us that prefer to focus on our grades don’t have it easy either. Obviously, adults know what it’s like to feel the pressure of work and exams, but I don’t think they realise how much worse it has become. Failure is not an option to us unless we’ve got rich parents, and our schools remind us of that daily. We’re told constantly that our grades are terrible and we’re the worst classes our teachers have ever seen in their 17 years of teaching, making us feel useless and demotivated. We work our hardest, can spend hours studying and yet it’s still not good enough. They show us the grades of the past 8 years of students and tell us if we don’t get better grades than this, then we’re letting down the school, our parents and ourselves, as if we weren’t already drowning in the stress of work and exams.

We’re surrounded constantly by reminders of school through advertisements of revision websites on platforms such as TikTok. We surrounded by drugs, self-harm, eating disorders and sex. We see it online as well as at school. Where home once was a safe space, it’s now as much a prison as the four walls of a classroom. We can never escape the expectations of modern society, and if we don’t succumb to it then we’re considered ‘undesirable’ and are shunned by our peers.

I’m not saying adults were never teenagers themselves, I’m only saying that next time a teenager makes a mistake or does something dangerous, you don’t immediately get angry at them. You just listen to them and understand that many of us are struggling. Even if we can paint a smile on our faces, there’s always a small part of us that holds their breath every time they open their phone – worried about what they’re going to find.