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Is being a teenager the most challenging thing in life? Part 1

Many people may assume that being an adult is a very challenging experience in life, taking care after kids, paying bills, waking up early in the morning to go to work etc. However, although that may be true to an extent, it can be argued that being a teenager is the most challenging thing to be in today’s world.
The reason I argue this statement is because before you enter adulthood, you are a teenager and how you set up your teenage life allows a smooth transition into adulthood. In today’s modern world, such a transition does not occur, teenager’s lives are a constant war between themselves and what it means to be yourself. The expectations of the society they’re part of, friends and peer pressure and the well wishes parents have for their children which is usually looked down upon due to the above mentioned issues. Due to these reasons, teenage life is very tricky as an individual teenager would have to meet and please the above factors which oftenly contradict each other, resulting to a life of confusion, doubt and loss of self-respect. These experiences are felt by all teens and can be applied to any average teenage from anywhere, whether they are an Omar and Aisha, a Juan and Isabella, Prisha and Aarush or Steve and Helen. Wherever they are from and whatever background they come from the experiences are pretty much the same.
An average teenager would start his or her day getting ready for school, for many, school is a place where a child would go and learn how to read, write and ask meaningful questions. Although that is true to some extent, most children do not see it this way, being a teenager and having a firsthand experience of what school life was like, most children would spend their early morning getting ready to take part in the debates that occur on the school playground. These debates have nothing to do with studying or the next assessment task or what is going to be studied today. Rather these discussions are centred around the latest movie, the newest hairstyle of a celebrity or that funny post on Facebook or even did you like my new Instagram photo. These children would be on the same table as you in class or on the same lunch table or even doing the same sport. For many teens, the aim is to be fully engaged in such discussions as possible, so you would rather spend time looking at the latest celebrity gossips and news, constantly looking at Facebook and Twitter posts so you know what everyone’s chatting about. The aim is to sell off the best information you can carry out, that’s why schools have transferred into a market where each child is selling themselves off. They sell and exchange information about the latest clothing and hairstyle trends, gossips about friends and ‘uncool’ students or comment on each other or other students appearances and attitudes.  

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Kids attitude to school enforced by other students on particular students 


 Here is where peer pressure is formed, a student must imply him/her self to the conventions established by the kids around them. This can be considered as the kids unwritten code of honour where each child must follow the rules set in order to be not just a kid but a cool one. This means that a kid would have to abandon the desire to be his/her self in order to fulfil the requirements of this law or he/she is not qualified to be an ideal kid. This law categorises kids into a system similar to a hierarchical system where each kid must know their place. Cool, wealthy, popular, fashionable kids are at the top and the kids considered to be geeks, nerds, new or unpopular at the bottom. This system in some terms is quite similar to the survival of the fittest theory where each child aims to survive from being at the bottom of this system and find their place in the top rank. To do this, children are psychologically enslaved by those on the top of the system to follow in their pathways in order to be respected. If they refuse they will be considered as the ‘rejects’ of the school and getting other kids to be around them would be very difficult. So although many of us believe that kids are receiving a decent education for their future that is not entirely the case, kids are too busy trying to find their place in this survival to the fittest system to be worried about and education. Their basic survival depends on them developing a personality that will help them survive throughout their schooling years. So 8:30-15:00 is not about reading and writing for a kid or teen but it’s about survival.

When the school day ends for the typical teen it is time to go home and meet the second phase of their daily life, Their parents…..     

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