“Teenagers.”
That’s just a word, right?
Say it with more angst, cynicism, and teeth grinding.
“Teenagers.”
Now it has context.
But... why?

That specific pronunciation of the categorization of the younger group of people in the world that are on the cusp of adulthood is what a person is most likely to hear when anybody over twenty-five is asked about the generation that’s currently in high school. Teenagers are the most heavily idolized and envied age group in society – youth is something the majority of our population have long since stopped trying to hold onto. These older people have replaced their energy and optimism with ideals of being “grown up” and “productive”, and majority lead boring lives. They hang onto those morels of being responsible as consolation for the lives they’ve left behind – like somehow losing yourself to work and earning money is something that’s unavoidable, something that’s necessary. What they don’t realize, is that they’re prisoners of their own devices – that it’s nobody else’s fault besides their own for their unhappiness and monotonous days.

These people that hold the belief that ”age brings power” work tirelessly to beat the idea into young adults that teenagers seriously suck. They tell them that they are dangerous, that they are unpredictable, violent, shallow, and care for nothing besides themselves. They tell themselves that these kids have no morals, that they’ll fall for anything, and they thank God that they themselves aren’t that stupid anymore.
They say that there’s no hope for the next generation.

They say that they are young and reckless.

This, of course, is the prejudice I faced as soon as I hit that awkward, growing stage of thirteen. Suddenly, I wasn’t a kid anymore – I was something else, something venomous and wild. A teenager. I had moved into a new neighborhood that had at one time been a retirement community, so naturally there was going to be more resistance to my existence there than anywhere else. I quickly befriended the half-dozen other kids my age that resided within the Springwood Condominiums’ walls and we all promptly became best friends and started growing up together. We spent our long summer days swimming for hours, playing football, manhunt, and any other games we could come up with. To put it simply, we lived outside.

The problem?

To the people of Springwood, we weren’t playing – we were sowing the seeds of destruction, mirth, and quickening the coming of the apocalypse. They would call the neighborhood security at even the slightest sign of fun, laughter, or innocent joy coming from outside – 911 wasn’t an uncommon number to be dialed either. So, then some figure of authority would roll up in his golf cart or cruiser and give us a stern lecturing on the fallibility of youth and to listen to the adults with blind faith. They would tell us to stop whatever it was we were doing and go home.

But… where’s the fun in that?

Naturally, we rebelled.

We bolted every time we saw a cop car or security – it became a knee jerk reaction I’m still having trouble ignoring. We played football where we wanted to and swam when we wanted too. Any attempts by adults to stop us was met with empty air, as we were already long gone. I built up a hair-trigger pair of legs and an endless lung capacity during that time, and I’m pretty sure I can relate my success in track in high school directly to my rebellious streak.

Naturally, the couch warriors and power mongers of the Springwood Condominiums wouldn’t take this kind of rebellious insolence.

So they declared war on the teenagers.

They posed a curfew to anybody under eighteen. We deliberately broke it. When that didn’t work they said that we couldn’t even be outside without somebody over eighteen. We deliberately broke it – hourly, actually. It became a game, their side creating barriers and our side having a blast proving them a waste of time.

What they didn’t understand is that they were creating their own problem.

We only did what we did because of their prejudice, but at the same time we proved them right by reacting in the way they’d expect us to. It was a vicious circle, one that we had a great time propelling. They gave us the reason to be unpredictable and violent… by telling us that we were unpredictable and violent.

Things mellowed out between us and the all-seeing authoritarian government of Springwood when we reached high school age. We spent less time outside playing games and more time doing other more mature things, which was fine by them.

I noticed something among my friends though.

They became rebels without a cause.

They grew so used to fighting against the oppression, when it was removed, they had to find something else to put those aggressive, unpredictable impulses towards. They started to party and drink and smoke and actually get arrested and form criminal records. They were re-branded not as rambunctious but as dangerous.

They then broke the law more in response, following that deeply ingrained rebel reaction the adults unwittingly bred into them. Through my high school years I’ve seen them get so used to it, they party and smoke and drink not because somebody told them not too, but because it’s what they know. They became shallow and stupid because everybody told them they were. They acted like teenagers because they were told that’s what teenagers do. They took satisfaction from acting their age – not much like that particular older group of people I mentioned earlier.

So why did I tell this story?
Because it’s not mine – it’s the tale of millions of young adults across the country and developed world. We try to tell ourselves that we aren’t a product of our environment but in the end, our natural behavior is to fight back – even if there’s nothing to fight back against.
Because of this, society doesn’t know what to do with teenagers.

That is a fact I can back up with more personal experience, with my eighteenth birthday literally a few weeks ago. As a person that can newly count himself among the ranks of “adults” now, there’s already some things that don’t line up. At this age I can be conscripted into the military if there’s a draft, I can shoot a gun and take lives and die… but I can’t drink? Because I’m still considered an irresponsible teenager?
Society just doesn’t understand its youth.

Ever so shockingly, they’ve made no steps to further their comprehension of how being this old works in the modern age. “High School Musical” isn’t exactly a documentary.

There are these “rehabilitation” boot camps and programs that any parent can send their wayward son or daughter to. These “rehab” programs are nothing more than weeks of hiking through woods, malnutrition, dehydration, un-researched and un-regulated violent “therapy” from un-licensed “counselors”. Tens of thousands of teenagers are sent to these programs every year – it’s a legitimate business based upon the oppression of the future generation. So, since society doesn’t even want to try to make a reasonable appeal to young adults, they think that a solid week of nothing but endless hikes, fireless nights out in the cold, and screaming meatheads with the power to do whatever they please will fix whatever the hell is wrong with Billy. Most of the time, these do absolutely nothing for the poor kid that’s forced to endure it and it often makes his or her problems worse than they were before.

Teenagers are treated like something exotic and strange, like they are something that shouldn’t be looked at as human beings, but something that should just be repressed and shaped into “productive” citizens.

If sitting in an office cubical for hours on end earning just enough to pay my rent, put food on the table, and to slowly lose my humanity and soul to the corporate grind is the daily life of the “productive”, that’s something I hope to never be a part of. This opinion that I have, my mindset against the tracks of mainstream society, was forged explicitly by the mainstream society.
So then why are they so surprised when I chose to express it?

I’m their product after all – since I turned thirteen.
While we were thirteen and in middle school, we only acted like we did because we thought it was fun to mess with the security and authority because they told us we shouldn’t. In high school we rebelled subconsciously fight back against this misunderstanding and repression.
And I’m not the only one that can see this.

I can tell you that almost everybody in high school is a closet intellectual – it’s hard to believe, I know, but hear me out. If you can get them to open up they’ll have some meaningful things to say, trust me. That deeper side of themselves has just been repressed though by the relentless pounding of, “you’re just a kid, you don’t know anything. You’re just a young, dumb, arsonist.” Somebody will believe anything if they hear it enough times. If you tell a person that he or she is incapable of being successful in life every day, for a year straight, they will at the least subconsciously believe it, and that insecurity will rest in the back of their minds their entire lives.
So then, what does this all mean?

Society is creating its own compromises in the next generations.
Like all circles, this one hasn’t an end.
Prisoners of our own devices.
Young and reckless.