The Struggles of Young Life
As pre-teens enter the 'oh-so-scary' stage of adolescence, they are faced with a lot of pressure and decisions, and especially from society around them. Today we are going to explore a a few reasons why young life can be hard.
To Always Look Good. According to a report, one third of seven to ten year olds feel they are judged on their appearance. Shockingly, this is before the majority of them even begin puberty or mature. Therefore, the pressure to look a certain way is obviously a big problem in the younger society. If you don't own the freshest brands or wear expensive clothing, some young people tend to judge and talk down on you. This can have a bad impact on young people's confidence. Almost a quarter of youths say they feel they have to look perfect all the time, leaving the house with clear skin and not a hair out of place. This is a lot to do with society and social media pushing what the 'perfect image' is. Unfortunately, the focus is so heavily based on looks nowadays that personality and our abilities can be viewed as less important.
Stereotypes. You may heard sayings about teenagers such as 'they're always moody' and 'not bothered about anything'. However, this isn't the case with every young person. If you think back to your adolescence, the changes and emotions you went through were a confusing period of life. So a young person might seem 'moody' but instead they may just be adjusting to new feelings and thoughts. The stereotyping of certain clothing has also affected young people. For example, teens who walk around wearing hoodies are at times seen as dangerous by other people and that they are going to rob someone or harm them. These stereotypes actually make some well-meaning young people rebel and succumb to them as they don't see the point of proving them wrong. But this is an important quote we should all remember: Don't let the minority influence your opinion on the majority.
Lack of communication. Some research on a group of young people of this generation has shown that as they are happy to be very talkative and out there online, they find it difficult to speak directly to others and think of small talk. This can mean that a lot of young people don't feel comfortable in engaging with people in real life. This may also mean that the youth do not fully understand how others perceive him in real life. Unfortunately, this can have a negative effect on their futures, for example struggling in job interviews and the workplace.
Video games. I'm sure we've all heard of young people talking about Fortnite and Fifa at some point. This is because video games have been very popular for years now and continue to be a big source of entertainment for the youth. This is not surprising as these games are easily accessible and draw people in. A few reasons young people love video games are that they can be visually stimulating, they can create an exciting identity for themselves and they can experience things impossible in real life. However, this can become an addiction when it takes over their lives and other priorities get pushed aside like school and friendships. This can negatively affect their social lives and school lives.
To conclude, young people have to go through a lot of positive and negative things as they transition from adolescence to adulthood. Whether we are young ourselves or older, we need to support each other to make this transition a little bit easier. Let's try to be more open-minded about everyone's situations!