I have realised that there is a lot of things that I do or think that does fit with the convention of being a stereotypical teenager. It frustrates me that the older generation all dub us with the same brush; For example, I am completely different from my older brother personality wise and we are blood so what makes people think that teenagers are anything like each other just because we happen to fit in the same age category? I therefore thought I would write this post to prove that actually no, not every teenager that walks past you is going to mug you, their hood could just be up because, oh look at that, its raining.
"Teenagers don't care about their education, they would just rather go out drinking and doing drugs"
I think this is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard. I know that the majority of my school year are splitting hairs over our GCSE examinations. Obviously there are a few that don't care; but for the most part, our entire lives are taken over by the inundation of revision we are doing each night; losing sleep over exams, not eating because of stress and completely avoiding all entertainment so that we won't get distracted. So for someone to say this is absurd, the majority of us work hard and whilst the results may not always pay off that is by no means a reflection of the amount of work we have put in but a reflection of harsh marking from the exam board or simply just not knowing the answer.
I personally wouldn't rather go out drinking and doing drugs, in fact I have never even seen a drug in real life. I'm fifteen years old and I have never seen a drug: so why should I be categorised under the 'druggy teenagers' that society has branded us with? Obviously I would rather be doing anything other than revision, but why would that mean that I would want to go out drinking? Only the other week I was offered the opportunity to go out and drink to celebrate leaving compulsory education, but I turned it down and enjoyed a night at a McFly concert along with several others in my year. I do understand that a lot of teenagers drink but not everyone gets off their faces which is what I think people honestly think that we do. Please do not offend us by saying that you never even touched a drop throughout your entire teenhood. You're just being hypocritical over something that you yourself did as a teenager.
Yes, teenagers mess up and make mistakes, sometimes the mistakes that we make are irreversible and in that case we will accept responsibility for those actions but we are allowed to make the occasional mistake because that is all part of growing up. Adults mess up every single moment of every single day, well so do teenagers; so why do teenagers get more stick about it than your average adult? Why is there such a sigma around being a teenager in this day and age?
This morning after my exam, I came home and as I was revising This Morning was on in the background. They were discussing lowering the consent age for sexual relations from sixteen to thirteen. These kinds of conversations really frustrate me not because of the actual topic (and for reference I don't think the consent age should be lowered because if it does it makes it easier for paedophiles to pry and if people want to have sex then they will do it, they wont care about the law.) but because of the fact that this subject affects us: teenagers. So where was the teenage person? Only adults that don't really have a clue what its like to grow up in the society that we live in today, they never will understand because time has moved on since they were teenagers and its bloody difficult.
The same goes with the education especially, this affects us more than it will affect any adult, so why are we not asked our opinion on the matter? If you want to get teenagers more interested in politics then ask their opinion and make sure that it counts. I can guarantee that that would increase interest in politics. If it seems that actually you do care what we have to say about situations that will affect our lives then a more concious effort would be made to keep up to date with what is going on. It would also ensure that there would be less chance of the law being broken because it would have been influenced by ourselves.
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