Why being a teenager is not okay (I promise)

Being a teenager is absolutely, completely, totally, overrated. I will not tell you it is the worst thing, but it is bad because, first, people take children’s issues more seriously than teenagers’ issues, second, there is a huge amount of stress, third, the stereotypes, and fourth, music (though this is not as bad as the other problems). And, to add to the arguments, they will be based in the pandemic context.

So, my first argument is that, unconsciously, people take children more seriously than teenagers, which, considering that people usually consider children babies and treat them so, is saying something. When a child cries, people go and help him or her, yet, when a teenager shows sadness in different ways, people ignore them because they are “just doing it for attention” or it “is just angst”. Adults tend to think that depression is exclusive of adults, and so they dismiss the teenagers’ depression.

Then, there is stress. In a normal year, teenagers would be pretty stressed out because of different things. First, because of the great question of what are they going to do with their lives once they leave school; second, because they know that for the first reason, they will need to get good grades, yet the subjects get more and more difficult; third, in some cases, because of keeping up with the exigencies of their friends, of having to appear to be happy even though they are not. But, with the pandemic, it has only become worse. Now, getting good grades is not only difficult because of the difficulties of the subject, but it is also because of the decreasing amount of exams: when we were able to go to school, we had multiple quizzes, while now the only possibility are the exams. Besides, now we have to think about how to keep our friendships while not being able to see each other and suggesting any theme of conversation spontaneously.

Also, there are the stereotypes. In a normal situation, being assigned a certain “role” was really tedious because it was not necessarily how you wanted to be seen, and it put some barriers between you and your previous friends, besides, it was really difficult to escape a stereotype once you had one, and, from my experience, it becomes a mental trap. Once some years pass, you become accustomed to this stereotype, and this proved to be extremely problematic during the pandemic. From my experience, again, I can say that, as I grew accustomed to my stereotype, which was basically having one of the best grades of the class, the pandemic brought some troubles because, as I struggled emotionally, my grades decreased until being average, which brought the stereotype I had grown confident in down, and I am entirely sure that I am not the only one that struggled with this; for instance, part of the popular ones’ popularity consists in showing themselves in social media smiling in stupid photos, which would become a problem if they ceased being happy, or had emotional struggles in general.

Finally, and in this case the least important, there is music. And why would music be a problem? Because it (somehow) directly affects your stereotype, which is really ridiculous. If you are popular, you listen to Reggaeton (my opinion about that genre may or may not be biased) which is basically a genre that uses the same base to each song and talks about the same themes, but this is a family friendly essay, so I will not mention them. If you are a smart one, however, people practically expect you to listen to Religious music, and, for a really weird reason, Rock is always associated with rebelling. This does not make sense at all because Rock is a really wide genre, and not all Rock speaks about drugs and taking over the authorities, besides the common beliefs. Rock has a wider range of notes and instruments, and the themes are also varied, talking not only about love, but also of happiness, sadness, fury, and many others, and, if you choose the right band or artist, you can get songs that truly express feelings. However, it is generally associated with bad things, while Reggaeton is the genre “one should listen”.

In conclusion, being a teenager is completely overrated. It has some good things, like being granted a level of autonomy, but because of the combination of the romance movies in which every single teenager is good looking and gets to date whoever he or she wants after a series of unrealistic events, and because of the way teenagers are generally seen by adults, it has become an overrated thing, and the dream of every child.