So I came across this little gem while skimming through my Twitter feed, from user @youthvoices, a young girl’s blog post on their site:

Why do teenagers rush to be adults?

Well I came up with this question because me and my mom were talking about it. In a movie it would show a girl teen trying to grow her boobs because every other girl has boobs.Then for the guys it would be who has sex first and its ridiculous. Lol

This makes me laugh because teens are in such a rush to have a job, marry, live alone but I bet when they reach the adult hood age that they would want to be a kid again.

Just tell me what you think if you agree or disagree with me. Plus a good example of this is 13 going to 30.

This sadly is a very common sentiment, and this one in particular operates on a couple of assumptions:

1) That the “foolish” notion of teens wanting to be adults is somehow less valid than the foolish notion of adults wanting to be teens.

2) Since the writer bases this claim on movies, that movie directors have some infallible 20/20 insight into the mind of Every Teen.

There is an important difference between teens wanting to be adults and adults wanting to be teens. For one, the former is NATURAL. Teens are living lives where they have almost no control over even the most basic aspects of it. Teens have little or no right to vote, drink, be outside at certain hours, make decisions about their own bodies, choose their own religion, speak their minds, earn their own money, associate with people of their choosing, enjoy certain kinds of entertainment, decide their own schooling, shop in certain stores unaccompanied because clerks think they’ll shoplift, recourse if they are physically abused, or a myriad of other things adults take for granted. So, you adults who wish to still be teens because you’re so sure it’s such a stress-free, blissful time period that current teens are too spoiled to appreciate, why don’t you try it sometime? I dare you.

As for the second point, yeah, these aren’t even the views of real teens this piece is based on. It’s about teens in movies! Movies that are, I should point out, written and produced entirely by ADULTS. Teens are merely seen and not heard in this scenario, yet teens must bear the responsibility and blame for words that adults are putting into their mouths. In movies that make teenage life look like some blissful utopia that adults wish to go back to, often deciding the movie is a better representation of their own earlier lives than their actual memory, so much so they’d sacrifice their very independence, freedom, and autonomy to get it. The idea this sentiment is considered normal, healthy, and expected is what’s sad, when really it should be a sign of irresponsibility and delusion.

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