The schism between teenager and adult is older than most adults, having really kicked off in the 1950’s when young people started riots in cinemas while watching Rock Around The Clock. Ever since, there’s been friction between the people who’re coming of age and the adults that form the generations above them.
Well now one 16-year-old has waded in - arguing that oldsters complaining about the behaviour (or misbehaviour) of young people need to realise that any of their misgivings are simply anger at the legacy they’ve been left by the older generation. Jenni Herd has written a letter to The Times arguing that the newspaper's article 'Moods and meltdowns: what’s inside the teenage brain’ was taking teenagers apart and prodding them as if they’re not quite like the rest of us. And given there are 1 million young people unemployed in the UK, global warming is getting tangibly worse and there's constant arguments that a sex-crazed media has destroyed whatever young people had left of a moral compass, Jenni is pissed off.
That’s what she said in her letter to The Times, at least.
‘Sir, I am getting increasingly annoyed by articles about teenagers, and the adults who keep trying to explain our behaviour. ‘I am 16 and a straight-A student, like most of my friends. We are not as irrational and immature as adults seem to think. We’ve grown up with financial crises and accept that most of us will be unemployed. We no longer flinch at bloody images of war because we’ve grown up seeing the chaos in the Middle East and elsewhere,' she writes. 'Most of us are cynical, and pessimistic because of the environment we’ve grown up in – which should be explanation enough for our apparent insolence and disrespect, without “experts” having to write articles about it.’
It goes on. ‘Has no one ever seen that we are angry at the world we live in? Angry that we will have to clean up your mess, while you hold us in contempt, analysing our responses as though we were another species? ‘I would like adults to treat us not as strange creatures from another world but as human beings with intelligent thought – a little different from yours, perhaps, but intelligent thought nonetheless.'
And Jenni signs off decisively: ‘Stop teaching adults how to behave around us, and instead teach them to respect us.’
Whilst we're totally with Jenni - our younger selves are also a bit concerned that we never thought to speak up in this way. Maybe it’s that teenagers are a lot more socially aware and active in campaigning than we ever were? A recent survey by Demos shows that, contrary to stereotypes, today’s teenagers aren’t only Tumblring odes to Harry Styles then sexting near-strangers. The report found that 88 per cent of teachers said that their students were just as, or more socially active than their predecessors.
What do you think? Is Jenni making a valid point about today’s youth culture? Or is it just the same old, same old?
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
**Picture: Getty **
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.