Essay

Adolescents Are Misunderstood

“Teenagers are the most misunderstood people on earth. Treated like children but expected to act like adults”.  What is your opinion on this particular saying? As a teenager myself, I absolutely agree with this quote as adults have been continuously stereotyping us, teenagers excessively.

Adolescents nowadays are often considered as rebellious or moody or undependable, as the society have been constantly exposed to the stereotyping of adolescences. These stereotyping have a way in altering the society’s mind set, causing them to be incompetent in differentiating the reality and the chosen representation, thus leading to the misunderstanding between adolescence and adults.

Adults these days are too occupied with their expectations for teenagers to act maturely and independently that they did not realize that the “rebellious” actions that they continuously opposed of is a way for teenagers to show that they are comfortable with themselves as well as with those individuals around them.

Adolescents are often viewed by adults as being too loud or rebellious or even too irresponsible because these adults may have forgotten what it is like to be a teenager. Therefore, causing them to judge the teenagers unfairly as they had not fully understand the matter. Even though there are some adults that may not have any intention to treat these teenagers wrongly, there are still several adults that expect adolescents to act in a certain way or dress in a certain way as they feel that these are the actions that are appropriate and ethical. However, these adults have failed to consider their feelings and only act in their best interest.

The public interpretation of adolescents have portrayed teenagers as “bad” or “naughty”, leading to the believe that all teenagers are ignorant, immature and reckless due to how society sees the majority of teenagers. Several have also believed that teenagers have to be constantly controlled or kept an eye on, as apparently they are untrustworthy and impulsive to the eyes of adults everywhere. Unfortunately, the public have failed to realize that only several number of adolescents behave this way as some have successfully made world-changing discoveries while showing remarkable talent and potential to develop the world further in the future. For example, a sixteen-year-old teenager have discovered an inexpensive way to detect cancer in a human’s organ.

            It was stated previously that teenagers have been stereotyped these way because of their uncaring or immature behavior, such as, throwing tantrums about everything, even small and pointless matters. However, the society has failed to take into account the reasons to why they might behave this way. The first reason available is due to the occurrence of rapid growth of synapses or connections in the brain, which have started in the early stage of adolescence. Evidence have proved that a part of the teenager’s brain, namely the prefrontal cortex, which functions is to make decisions on situations and helps control impulses and emotions, is less mature in a teen brain than in an adult brain, therefore, causing teenagers to feel misunderstood, make poor decisions and also appear uncaring or impulsive (Source: Edmonds, Molly. "Are teenage brains really different from adult brains?" 26 August 2008. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/teenage-brain.htm> 02 May 2013.)

Adolescents are assumed by adults to be liars and unreliable as they have observed and come to a conclusion that all teenagers would carry out any actions, including lying, in order to have fun and enjoy their life, which will bring us to our second reason. Lying has become a result of differences in how teenagers produce a certain hormone called melatonin, which will regulate waking.

Have you ever heard of the quote "Age doesn't define maturity"? If you have, do you agree with this quote? I personally agree with this quote as adults these days have unconsciously show several signs of immaturity in their actions, as they grow older. Psychologist all around the world have even agreed with the regression theory that was created by a psychoanalyst, named Sigmund Freud (Source: Sigmund Freud. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 May 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud). This particular theory states that as adults grow older, their brain will develop a defense mechanism, which will lead to an alternation of the ego and personality at the start of the age of development, causing them to develop childish manners, rather than handling the matter in a more adult manner.

It’s time that these stereotyping and misunderstanding come to an end as we, adolescences have been stereotyped by the society for way too long and these debates on whether who’s right and who’s wrong is just plainly useless. I personally feel that it’s time for someone to make a change and these changes can start from you!