The Future of Teenagers

As years go by, many things change around us. We see these changes in our environment, friends, jobs, education and many other things. However, one thing a lot of people tend to forget is the change you witness within yourself. We grow up and for many of us, this involves growing out of our old mindsets to adopt new ones. Growing up also causes you to look at your past self and judge it according to your current morals. Once you become an adult, it seems as though there is only one era in your life you look towards for judgement and comparison. Of course this era is your teenage years.

Ah yes, the teenage years! An era of angst, high emotions, and self discovery. A time where you were fragile yet curious to see how much of the world you can take on! A time where everything seemed to be coming at you at once...

These years sucked.

Now don't get me wrong, I LOVED my teenage years. However there are parts that completely sucked. Heartbreaks, school, drama, parents, basically everything that a teenager goes through at that age. But now that I'm more of a young adult, I started saying a phrase that I'm sure a lot of you have heard through your parents or anyone older than you. 

"Kids nowadays are just not the same..." 

I look at teenagers now and question so many of their actions and feelings. Especially with social media, seeing teenagers doing the most has me completely shook on the idea that so many things have changed. Then I sat back and realized that these changes are just the way of life. In a way it's a cycle; a cycle that EVERYONE acknowledges once you start to reach the age of 20.

This cycle of "judging the youth" can also be seen in many forms of entertainment. You always see this qualm towards teenagers in television shows, movies, commercials, and even literature. 

A novel that I recall this depiction of teenagers is in the book Feed by MT Anderson

Feed is a novel in which a chip (aka the internet) is implanted in everyone's brain, allowing them to be connected to the Feed all the time 24/7. In the novel we see how main character Titus and his friends act with each other due to the feed and how he begins to eventually want to revolt against the feed to erase his dependence on it.

In my last blog I spoke about how these characters reflect us because of how desensitized they are to the world around them because of the feed. There are many other topics that we can dive deeper into that reflect the stereotypes of youth and older generation judging it. 

One major presentation of this is towards the end of the novel when Titus is arguing with Violets father while she lays brain dead due to her loss of the feed. 

Her father yells at Titus saying 

"We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they were produced, or what happens to them... What happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away." (Anderson 290)

Here Violet's father is not talking about the Feed or even how people Titus' age treat the things around them (more on that later), Violet's father is talking about how Titus treated Violet before and after her loss of the Feed.

What happened was that Titus was really into Violet but once her Feed got hacked he began to disconnect from her life and in a way began to stop caring for her.

Violet's father is obviously presenting an issue of care and actions people like Titus give towards people they claim to care about. This is meant to show how wrong it is to treat a person like this and allows the reader to analyze why violet's father has the audacity to say this. A simple conclusion can be made by knowing that Violet's father is older and more knowledgeable than Titus and this is his way of showing Titus old (correct) methods of treating people. (Just like the pattern we discussed earlier!)

"back in my day!!!"

Analyzing this towards the real world, constantly adults look at the younger generations and judge them on how they treat one another. For example, my father used to always tell me stories of how he sees kids on the street showing extra amounts of PDA (public display of affection) and how this PDA is rude and not right. Whenever he tells me something like this, I never fail to look at him funny in thinking that this is just the new norm and he is just sticking to his old conservative ways...

... Then I turn around and judge all these kids for calling each other bae, showing each other off on social media in the most cringe worthy way and doing the MOST with their significant other... Just like my dad.

So, is Violet's dad right? Is Titus mistreating Violet or is Titus' behavior just the new ways of teenagers.

Well to explain this, there are actions that the new generations do that are either harmless or completely morally and universally wrong. For example, calling your significant other bae or even showing them off in an extra manner is really harmless in the long term. In Titus' situation, he's making the decision to begin cutting ties with Violet because simply does not work the same as she used to. This is something that should be seen as universally wrong. To not care about your close friend (who is also dying) because she simply does not work. Sorry Titus but asshole move on that part. 

This is a prime example of how the cycle can in our favor and how its true that the younger generation can be depicted in a negative manner. Examples like this is scattered all throughout the novel but in a more subtle manner.

If you read the book twice having the knowledge that MT Anderson meant to make you think twice about how the younger generation is represented, you can see Titus and his friend's actions showing the negative representation.

Going back to my previous blog on the topic of desensitization, Titus and his friends do not appreciate the exciting world they live in and everything else around them. Of course the famous first line of the book "We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck" (Anderson 3) shows this perfectly. 

Teenagers seem to always be depicted as a bored group of people. Always looking for excitement. MT Anderson presents this to us but in an extreme (as he always does). These characters are clearly bored and would much rather be sitting around doing nothing but stay on their Feed. 

Indeed a sight you don't see a lot

Looking at teenagers today, this is exactly what they do. Always presenting themselves for Instagram instead of taking on whats actually going on around them. Always wanting to just stay inside and play Xbox instead of going outside and play.

Us adults ALWAYS see this in the younger generation and became a common trend to yell at them to "go outside" or lecture them by saying something along the lines of "when I was your age, I didn't have this, I actually played outside." To combat this claim we all are guilty of thinking one point or another, think back to a time when you were a kid/teenager. What were you doing? Most likely playing outside exploring the world; but a better question is what would your parents always nag you about? For me, my parents who are of asian backgrounds always nagged me about doing work or learning instead of playing. For other kids it would be about chores and hearing parents say "When I was your age, chores were all I did, I barely got to play." What is presented here once again is the cycle ladies and gentlemen.

We can see this cycle happen one more major time in the novel.

In the novel we see characters talking about a new trend going on called lesions. Lesions are basically cuts in your skin and we see all the characters comparing them, getting new ones and going to the extreme to have them. As a reader we see this and think its absolutely disgusting and even dangerous.

When I heard of lesions I thought about a time in my life where there was a trend going around that is now considered a dangerous life style. This time in a lot of peoples lives were considered their "emo days," and yes I admit it, I went through this too.

The emo phase is basically a culture phenomenon where people who are depressed, sad, or even worse suicidal show off their problems by wearing all black, a lot of dark make up, showing their sadness constantly, and even worse cutting themselves

(Now before I get judged or ridiculed for partaking in this teenage phase, hear me out. I NEVER went as far as self harming myself and I NEVER condone any behaviors of this culture. Just sharing.)

Many of us remember this time and as adults we look back at it and understand how silly, stupid and dangerous it was to think this way. I sure did once I grew out of it. It was a dangerous trend that people fell into and a sad portion of it was the trend of people cutting themselves and even go as far as competing who can self harm themselves worse.

Not to downplay or poke fun at this culture (because it is a culture that really needs to be prevented) it still is represented in Feed. Lesions are VERY similar to these self harming actions and people do it because everyone else is doing it in their culture. (Very sad but very true)

Then I begin to think about how adults would look at me when I was in this phase. They would say things like how I'm being over dramatic, over sensitive, too rebellious, and many other things. I would always combat this by being knowledgeable about the time era most of these people grew up in. When they were my age they were surrounded by a ton of things that older generations found to be "Devils play" or "not right for society." Even go as far as say their trends were simply teenage delinquency. This shows our cycle once again but this is where I fall guilty as well.

I constantly look at younger trends and judge them. Suddenly it became trendy to be more disrespectful to elder people. Or it became a trend to mistreat other people or even their loved ones for either a post on social media or a stupid challenge. Then I realize these are the exact same qualms adults had with me when I was being extra and disrespectful during my emo phase. 

So with all this said, what can we say about the future of teenagers. What I believe is that by presenting to all of you this simple cycle of judgement among old and new generations, I can tell you the future is going to remain the same.

With new things going on in the world and teenagers growing up completely differently than how we grew up, we all step back and realize that those teenagers used to be us one day. In a way, we used to be EXACTLY like them. Just a new world around them and new things to talk about. 

Even in Feed where as an adult reader we see the teenage friends of Titus and think how stupid and senseless they are, at the end of the day we can't reject the idea that they used to be us a while back. I believe that's why its so easy to build a connection to the characters. They reflect our real world issues as well as reflect our past and how things used to be but in a different time period.

It makes us question if this is how our future teenagers will be. As of now it looks wrong but once that time comes, we are going to right back in that cycle.

Liam R.
Word Count: 2063
Works Cited:
Feed By MT Anderson