Let’s pretend for a moment this article couldn’t be summed up entirely by writing, ‘hormones’. For the sake of discussion, let’s go a bit below the surface.
Teenagers have different lives than we do. While it’s easy to trivialize their whole existence, their lives are clouded by cynicism as everyone in their age bracket starts to sort out who the hell they are as people.
So you play by the rules and heed the constant judgment lest you run the risk of getting left behind – the kids ahead of the curve who don’t care one way or the other won’t emerge as total geniuses until somewhere around high school. These ones are a rare breed as there’s just too much pressure to fit in.
When your worldview is entirely dominated by the opinion of your peers, you’ll probably place a lot of time & energy into sorting out what’s cool. It sort of serves as your right to entitlement, This chick is a loser, that shirt is straight out of Aeropostale. At this age it’s perfectly acceptable to write someone off completely if you don’t like the cut of their jib.
After enough self-loathing, something curious happens: everything can be lumped into categories of either ‘lame’ or ‘gay’. Hey, we’re having dinner as a family tonight! Lame. Hey, the Olympics are on! Gay. Your eyes do not deceive you, in the world of the modern teenager there’s really not much room for positivity.
The sobering reality that popularity doesn’t carry over into life following graduation comes to us all. If success in life was measured off how cool you were in high school, that guy I knew who allegedly finger banged that one girl from government class and bragged about using his mom’s prescribed painkillers would be running Google.
Teenagers are susceptible to the same demand for normalcy as adults, the parameters just don’t happen to include working 40 hours a week and paying a mortgage. They also lack the life experience to run a proper filter, too quick to issue dismissal and too green to appreciate merit.
Or maybe it’s just hormones.
