If You Are a Teen
Today I started thinking seriously about teenagers around us, or ‘teens’ as they are informally called.
The teen years as you know fall in the age-group of 13-19 years. Whenever I have got a chance, I have tried to observe them carefully. I find them an interesting lot.
Their behaviour, body-language, thinking, dressing, style and attitude is something that’s never boring. When I was a teen, I guess my teen years were comparatively boring. But the connected teens of today are aware of so much at such a young age, that often, if you pay attention, you can learn quite a few things from them.
As far as handling technology is concerned, you can definitely learn much from them. In the tech field at least, the teens are our gurus. They know more about computers, smartphones and social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or Vine more than their uncles, aunties and parents combined.
Teenagers today seem more confident about themselves than when I was a teen so many years back. What gives them this kind of confidence?
Probably, its the information age that they live in that makes them so much better as a teenager than their counterparts 20 years back.
If it is possible, select any seven teenagers today from 2016 and put them in a time machine. Now take them 20 years back to 1996. Next, introduce them to the same age-group teenagers of 1996 who are in the 13-19 age group. Within 30 minutes of leaving them together you will know, which group has sway over the other.
Here are some things I notice about you from a distance, if you are a teenager:
–> 1. You look strong and confident and have an air of strength about you.
–> 2. You are sensitive to criticism. You would prefer that if you are at fault in some way then you can be told quietly about it. You just don’t like to be ticked away in front of anyone.
–> 3. You have this air of knowing more about things than other older guys know or understand.
–> 4. You are quite particular about appearances and how you look.
–> 5. You are willing to listen to your elders if they make sense and if they can pay attention to what you have to say.
–> 6. You are particular about bonding with your community of friends and they mean a lot to you.
–> 7. You have a better idea of where you are headed in life and the life choices that would be good for you. You are open to advice and suggestions, provided they make sense and even more important, the person giving advice hears you out too. If they don’t, well, you are a good actor, you can pretend to listen quite well.
These are just some observations of mine. Now, you may feel that I am wrong in all my observations about teens, or maybe some of them are right. That’s ok.
But point is, teens today are intelligent, much more intelligent than what their parents were at their age.
Question is: How do you handle this kind of intelligence in a young person and get them/encourage them to do what you as a more experienced elder want them to do?
That’s a test of your intelligence. 🙂
I both agree and disagree in the sense that I too have noticed these things about teens too. However, I have to agree that although most of this applies to me now, it definitely doesn’t apply to me as I was 3 years ago. I think your description suits older teens more, but maybe some younger ones too (who knows?) So yeah, that’s my opinion.
@Dainelle: Hi, Yes, my observations would connect more with older teens, but I found that some younger ones too exhibit certain qualities that I talked about in the post. Thanks for sharing your opinion. Appreciated.
I think most of your observations are true. Being a teen myself, I usually feel a lot of these things – but the one thing I don’t feel is confident. We’re under so much pressure, from friends and family and the media, to look correct and act correct that a lot of us aren’t confident, and have so many insecurities about a lot of things.
@Elm: Hi, I think I will have to agree with you on your point. Yes, you guys are under a lot of pressure from different sources. In my time, I didn’t feel this kind of pressure. Of course the mandatory parental pressure of good school grade/marks was there for us then, but that was it. Rest was smooth sailing. But this pressure that you guys are in nowadays, does need a fair amount of confidence to handle. How you can build this confidence inside you is something that you, me and elders around us have to seriously figure out quickly.
I quite agree with you on that – I think we are rather confident. But because of the different pressures we have to face, insecurities and worries manifest in different forms for us, ones which sometimes people from other generations don’t understand – through no fault of their own.
@Elm: Ya, I guess that could be the case. I intend to understand more about the current teen psyche. I will be talking, researching and exploring more teen aspects in further blogposts of mine. Let’s see how the posts go. Hope my understanding will increase.
I’m sure it will. Good luck!