I’m thinking about character building and curious about other people’s perspectives on male, female, being a teenager and coexistence with teenagers.
A lot of the “stereotypes” around teenagers are based on an element of truth. Being a teenager is difficult for a lot of reasons. Probably the biggest one is that physical growth quickly outpaces brain development. They’re kids who are changing into adults but lack hindsight, experience, the ability to analyze risks, and a sense of their own mortality.
I tell my teenager that everyone makes mistakes. An honest person takes responsibility for their mistakes. A smart person learns from them. But, a wise person learns from the mistakes of others. None of those things is easy and they each require a lot of humility. If you can learn to put your pride aside and be a good student of life, it makes things a lot easier.
I taught teenagers for a long while, the things about teenagers that are annoying are also so very relateable. They’re full of hormones, incapable of handling their emotions, and way too busy coping with all of that to be in school.
A lot of adults seem to have amnesia about that time but spending time with whole classes of them makes your own experiences of it flood back.
Like when a guy you liked didn’t say hi to you in the morning and you had a whole existential crisis that nobody would ever love you, cried in the toilet at lunch time, then decided you were a strong independent woman, got over the whole thing, by the end of the day you were like “screw him, I deserve so much better!” then you saw him leaving school and he was like “Sorry I didn’t say hi earlier, I had my headphones in” and it wasn’t actually a thing at all? That’s basically being a teenager all the time.
The most annoying thing about teens is the same thing that’s annoying about adults and that’s you guys can’t accept the idea that you might be wrong about something.
From a stereotypical perspective, some may find teens annoying due to perceived mood swings, rebellious behavior, or being glued to screens. On the positive side, teens are often seen as energetic, creative, and adaptable. It’s essential to recognize individual differences rather than relying solely on stereotypes.
For me, being horny at random times, and navigating the social hierarchy were annoying, as was what I perceived as social injustice.
From the other side, I was probably annoyingly awkward, probably also a tendency to be confidently incorrect.
I was raised in a stupid conservative extremest religious environment that warps my perspective. I’m curious what makes teens uniquely different. I am also partially disabled and in near total social isolation for a decade now, so the overarching question is more a distant abstract idea to me.
That all teenagers must spend all their time chasing girls and going to parties as to not be “losers”. I see this attitude both from older people and from other teenagers, though it annoys me mostly from older people, as they just can’t seem to fathom that some teenagers have interests that aren’t just… Wasting their time? I mean don’t get me wrong, I enjoy doing it as much as anyone but it bothers me when people talk to me like it’s the only thing I should be doing in my teenage years…
And the other thing is the stereotype that you need to talk to teenagers with a belittling attitude, I really don’t know how to explain it but I sometimes feel like older people (not like old old, people in their mid to late 30s) feel the need to talk to me in a different, more “fresh?” or overly friendly way. It’s not just individual people who do this, big companies also do it, and it’s just as annoying. Like, we’re both adults, just talk to me like normal… (I guess this doesn’t apply to teenagers, younger than me but I’m talking about stereotypes that bother me so Idc, I’m 18 and this has bothered me for as long as I’ve been able to notice it)
Oh my, you and I had some similar frustrations. I am 39 and let me tell you what I wish I had known. Most adults are dumber than you. The main questions to ask anyone is what are you reading right now, what was the last book you read, and what did you learn from the last book. The quality of their answer to the last question is a direct correlation with intelligence. Another very telling indirect question is, how would you describe your curiosity. Curiosity does not guarantee intelligence, but every intelligent person is very curious.
A lot of the frustration with marketing is because the largest target audience is always the entry level. Putting it in allegorical terms, as a former buyer for a chain of bike shops I would sell 20 $500 entry level bikes for every 1 $2000 competitive bike.
The lowest level is always the main target audience. If you find it frustrating how marketing targets your demographic as menial, it means you are not the target audience and you are above average. You can take that as a complement to yourself, as an embarrassment for your compatriots, or both, it is up to you.
Life’s experiences will determine if or when you ever feel “adult.” A lot of that is from having kids and the difficulties involved. Most people never really feel adult. There is no moment of transition. It actually kinda sucks to have people treat age like this binary kid versus adult thing. Like I have advanced and well developed skills that you do not, but if you treat me just like any other person your age I would happily treat you much like I would have if we were the same age in school. Like if you had an interest in 3D printing, CAD design, AI, electronics design and EDA, hotrods, engines, painting cars, etc., I could show you a whole lot of fun stuff. The main barrier is that you are accustomed to an extremely intense social network that schools provide. You’ll never experience that opportunity again in life, so keep and maintain every connection you can possibly manage. As you age, life gets more and more lonely for most people. This is the hard thing to overcome in the reverse. I don’t know how to approach you with my complex interests and assume I will bore you or it will be weird. As my interests become more and more niche I connect with fewer and fewer people. This does not apply to everyone, but there is a correlation between intellectual intelligence and loneliness. I don’t mean to discount the value of emotional intelligence. That is just an area with which I am not particularly familiar.
Idk, I’ve always been pretty introverted and never really liked the “intense school social network” it’s not like I fully distance myself from others or anything, it’s just that sometimes, especially early morning, the crowd can be a bit much for me. As for emotional intelligence, again idk, I like to think that I’m somewhat emotionally mature to an extent (been through a lotta shit and all) but I’ve never really been in an emotional relationship before, so I can’t say for sure… Dunno I guess I’m just fine with keeping a small friend group and just being generally friendly with everyone else.
And you mentioned that you have niche interests… Yeah, you should look at my lemmy profile, though I generally don’t feel like having niche interests makes it harder to socialize with people, as if you give them the hint, they’ll usually start the conversation themselves and you can pick up after…
And my problem isn’t so much an age group problem, it’s more of an, as I mentioned above “I’m an adult, you’re an adult, why do you feel the need to belittle me?” type of feeling… And yes, 18 is the legal age for… Pretty much everything, where I live.
Seriously, I would have said all of these same things at your age. You will find yourself in much the same situation I have described.
It is so very difficult to relate how complexity changes and how deep you can go with decades of experience. Things are much more complicated the deeper you go into a range of subjects. Like I painted cars for nearly a decade, to most people I am an expert, but I was still learning all the time. Any idiot can learn to paint in a day. The real skill is knowing how to solve the thousands of random problems you’ll face every 3rd job. Everything is like that or more so.
The most stereotypical thing about teenagers are the people who are charged with bringing them up, or not.
