I have to write an essay for english about what problems teenagers in this generation face.
Heres what I have so far, I like it cause its basically
an oppertunity to write about how
fucked up society is then
get graded!
Self-injuring, eating disorders, depression, suicide, school shootings, zero self-esteem. These are all things that our stupid society has forced our teenagers to. Every teenager has those off days, when they are just like, “Screw the world!”, and that’s normal. But when those are types of days are everyday, and the happy days are rare, that’s when it gets serious. The generation that raised us, our parents, and leaders, basically the adults in our world are saying its our fault, but THEY are the ones who raised us, so how is it our fault?
What happens when our society becomes so revolved around being a size zero, getting laid, looking perfect and being perfect all the time? Sorry world, but that isn’t possible, heck, perfection is only a figment of our imagination. Just a word that means something that isn’t real, and can never be real. Most of us are told at one point or another in our life that we have to be perfect at atleast one thing. Whether that be looking perfect, acting perfect, or having a perfect intelligence and knowing everything. How insane is it that we want to be perfect, when in reality, perfection isn’t real. Never the less possible, or worthy of anything! Anything being hurting, and/hating ourselves so much that we go to such drastic lengths to just finally possibly, maybe feel okay for once. Dictionary.com’s definition for the word perfect is “Entirely without any flaws, exactly fitting the need in a certain situation or for a certain purpous”. How messed up is that, that we go to such great lengths to be that? Why do we even want that?
Girls and guys probably struggle equally with some of these problems, not only perfection, there are many other problems out there that teens, and kids, and adults deal with. Cutting themselves, starving themselves, making themselves throw up, believing that they are alone, that no one else cares, that no one else is going through anything like them, going to the length of suicide attempts to just end the pain because their life is just that bad and torturous that they cant handle it anymore without anyone to help them. Some causes of these could be family problems, self esteem issues, feeling different, not feeling loved, alcoholism, drug abuse around them, abuse, molestation, rape, hate, no hope, lost a loved one, stress, pressure, feeling the need to be perfect all the time, are all things that could have led them to become that unhappy. One of the worst things about this is that everyone around you is going through something, everyone is in some sort of pain, and you cant just tell if they are upset by whether or not they’re crying. The “Plastic smile” is a big way that people hide it, they just smile, laugh and joke around acting as if nothing wrong, when in reality, their world is falling apart.
One smile can save a life. Its true. One person who jumped off the Golden Gates Bridge awhile back, left a suicide not saying that if someone smiled at him that day, he wouldn’t jump. No one smiled at him. Everyone should make it a goal to not just make eye contact with someone then break off and looking the other way and move on, instead to smile at them. Cause subconsciously, whether they smile back or not, or see them smile or not, it makes their day better. So imagine if everyone did that. There would be way, way less suicides. People should just take a step back from what's going on in their world, and look at it from afar, and see it's not that hard to help someone. Then there's stress! High school is like the most stressful thing ever. Then on top of that you have everything else going on in your life! It's like teachers think that your life is just so simple that you have time for the endless hours of homework they pile on you. Then if your parents are perfectionists or have unrealistically high expectations for you cause you're their kid, that can be so intense, and really hard to live with. The thing is, lots of teens have parents like that. All the parent really wants is for their child to have a good future ahead of them, so they're doing all they can even if they are blind to seeing that they are really stressing their child out. So parents don't really mean to be stressful, it's just there way of showing they care.
Parents can also be the cause of other problems in their teenagers life, in ways unrelated to stress, cause most teens parents grew up and went to high school thirty to fifty years before them, so yeah, things change! Parents couldn't possibly understand what it means to have a cell phone in high school, cause they didn't have them! They don't understand a lot of things, so it's not easy to talk to parents about life when they grew up in such a different era. Younger parents are easier to talk to about stuff, cause they get it more. It is a little outrageous to have parents that are fifty years older tho. Twenty-thirty is more reasonable. Parents and teens fighting can get pretty intense too, lead to violence and domestic abuse. That's never good. Parents could also be bad parents, like, drug addicts, or alcoholics, and don't really care about their kid, which can really be hard to live with. Usually in that situation the teen either turns out like their parent, or becomes a good kid. Parents definitly have a major influence on the types, and amounts of problems in their teens life.
All teens need to understand is that they're absolutely not alone. In any way. Even if they are alone at the moment, someone somewhere, is going through something just as bad and is feeling the exact same way. Every teen, heck, every person has pain. Its the same pain, but different yet simaler causes. If everyone just threw their "Plastic smile" in the trash and showed who they really were behind the makeup, fake tans, abs, perfection, and saw the tears, fear, aloneness, hate, sadness, everyone would all see the beautiful, true colors and would see with our their own eyes that no one is actually alone. Someone cares, and no teen should give up hope.
