*The Edge of Seventeen follows 17-year-old Nadine in a coming of age comedy about first love and friendships. In cinemas 30th November. *
In an age of filters, selfies and perfect Pinterest lives, two writers cut through the crap to tell their 17-year-old selves what they’ve learnt after spending their 20s negotiating Instagram, Tinder and all the bullshit that goes with it…
Dear Young Daisy,
Right now, you’re thinking about university, and you’re prepping hard for your Cambridge interview next month. This is the thing you want most in the world. You believe that you’re owed a treat, after years of growing up geeky, being made fun of for your book based passions, hiding in the library and even, on one occasion, getting punched for using a three syllable word.
Firstly, I’m really sorry, but you’re not going to Cambridge. You’re going somewhere else, and in your heart of hearts, you’ll be really glad about this in years to come. You’ll write for the student paper, fall in love with journalism entirely by accident, and realise you’re not as academic as you thought you were. And that’s OK. Also, no-one is going to punch you.
A weird thing will happen while you’re at uni. It’s called Facebook, and you will become obsessed with it. You know that now, you check your emails about once a week? The internet is going to dominate your life. The devices will get smaller, and the effect of being online all the time will become much bigger.
Firstly, you are going to break up with your terrible boyfriend - the one you’re terrified of leaving if you end up at separate unis. Oh, how I wish I could go back in time and end it for you, right now. You’ll fall for someone else, and he’ll love you back for a bit, and then he won’t. And you will torture yourself by looking at Facebook for clues, desperate to find scraps of evidence and information about the girl he left you for. You will openly wish that people were forced to reveal more information about themselves online. Dude, this was a bad thing to wish for because it happened.
Years from now you’ll sign up to Twitter, which will allow you to talk to almost anyone in the world. You’ll meet your future husband on there, and loads of brilliant friends. You’ll use it to grow a freelance writing career, ultimately writing books. And you’ll spend a family holiday staring at it, hiding in the bathroom to get internet signal, comparing everyone else’s bodies, lives, achievements and holidays to yours, and feeling shitty. You’ll go to Berlin, staying in one of the poshest hotels you’ll ever visit, with the love of your life and five of your best friends, and spend the night crying because you’re “not pretty enough for Instagram”. You’ll see the pictures people took of you, dancing, hugging, having a brilliant time - and you’ll hate yourself for not looking hotter in them.
It’s going to be hard. Right now, you feel like adulthood is approaching and your teen years are almost over, but immersing yourself in social media will prolong your adolescence until you’re…well, me. But it’s not a totally bad thing. You will learn that constantly comparing yourself to others will make you unhappy. It will be hard to stop doing it altogether, but you’ll have a much better understanding of your own mental health when you start to analyse what makes you feel bad and why. Sometimes, it will bring you great joy too. You’ll discover stuff you had no idea about. You’ll keep learning, and growing, and you’ll realise that you must always try to make a difference, but never make your mind up.
Ultimately, you’ve spent your school days trying to be perfect. You’ve been working so hard to earn the highest marks, to put together the most impressive applications, and to be the girl everyone thinks you ought to be. The pressure to be perfect is only going to get more intense. The older you get, worse it will feel on the days when it seems that you’ll never be enough. You’ll never will be perfect, but you will learn, eventually, that no-one else is, either. You’ll start using social media to read through the lines, and you’ll be able to tell when people are happy, and when they feel as though they have something to prove. Being happy is hard, but you can do it - and when you learn to stop pushing yourself so hard, and judging yourself so harshly, it will come much more easily.
Lots of love
Grown up (ish) Daisy
Catch The Edge of Seventeen in cinemas from 30th November.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.