Teenage Stereotyping

Teenage Sterotypes By Louis Cash

Jock, prep, emo, slut, nerd, wannabe? Have you ever called someone that to their face? Behind their back? Or just thought it? It hurts them. Has someone ever pegged you as one of those? I know I have, and I know you have to, because you cannot go through middle school, or high school nowadays without being stereotyped. It is something that we cannot help, we do it just by glancing at them.
I remember my freshman year in high school, this girl overheard my friend making fun of her clothes, I laughed along, but I felt horrible for doing it, we found her crying in the bathroom during lunch, I wish I had apologized for making fun of her, but I never did, and I regret it, I can just imagine how that made her feel. But at the moment it made me feel better about myself, but only for awhile, and now I am feel guilty about it every time I think about it.

It isn’t just teenagers that are stereotyping, parents are stereotyping teens, they are so afraid of us mucking up that they don’t trust you and assume that you are going to mess up, get pregnant, do drugs, or shoplift, not every teenager is like that, I’m not, "Watch out! - I am from the evil and hated generation. Believe it or not, not every single teenager around my age goes around beating up people and smashing up cars. Can you seriously claim that today's youth are that much worse than the mods and rockers of the former generation? My generation never gets a positive thing said about them - GCSEs for example - we do better than the past generation and the courses must be getting easier - obviously. Is it really any wonder then certain youths rebel?"
I’ve seen it all the time, parents thinking that some kid who is dressed a certain way is a awful nasty person, but they aren’t , that is stereotyping. Stereotyping never ends, it will follow you through college, and your job, people will always judge people for how they look, its sad, but its true.

I think everyone's getting very excited about this but what they don't realise is that every generation fears the next one, believing them to be source of all evil. I have a little notice hanging up in my house which complains about young children not standing up when adults come into room and other things. These are the words of Socrates. All this goes to show is that this has been a problem for a long time. We mustn't be afraid of teenagers, instead we would be better off starting off a conversation with them instead.

There is no such thing as a typical teenager, it is wrong to try and classify all teenagers as being one of the same. Because of their age, teens are unfairly accused of being lazy or moody, I think this is because teenagers don’t have anyone standing up for them. Young children have their parents speaking up for them, adults speak up for themselves, but teens don’t have anyone speaking up for them and aren’t old enough to speak up on their own. Teens are stuck in a limbo between being too old and not being old enough to get what they need. If we want to address the issue of why teens with cancer aren’t treated the same as children and adults with cancer, we need to address how our society treats teens as a whole. We need to start treating teens with the same amount of respect that we give adults and address how teenagers are stereotyped, because not all teenagers are lazy, moody and untrustworthy like some adults believe. Teens deserve a lot more credit than they get.