Teenagers And Stereotypes

We know of teenagers as a group of young adults that are ‘on the brink of maturity’ or ‘almost to adulthood’ and that age range is generally classified as ages 13-19. Despite the age cohort making up around thirteen percent of the American population, the negative connotation of the word teenager extends to all those that fit into that age cohort, despite the group being vast and diverse, which should make the age group immune to generalization. However, many people will use the word teenager negatively and associate that group of people as those that are lacking maturity, lacking foresight, and lacking knowledge 'due to the experience that comes with age’. The belief that all teenagers are irresponsible, immature, unknowledgeable, and strong-headed

This is due to the fact that Muslims are often defined by the worst in their group, in this case, fundamentalists that share Islam as the common Muslim population become more outspoken and become represented in media more often, and so commonly, yet incorrectly, Americans will have a fear of these Muslims under the belief that they are all extremists and that the Islam religion is violent. This same principle extends to teenagers. Many people only hear of the misadventures of teenagers that act without thinking and then extend that view upon almost all teenagers. People then chalk up that lack of foresight and rash nature to the fact that bad decisions are commonplace of people without the experience that comes with age. When a small group of teenagers, which is not an accurate representation of the teenage cohort, do something stupid, people (commonly adults) will scoff and use their age as an explanation, saying that ‘that stupid things are common nature of teenagers’. However, when a small group of adults do something stupid, people look on

Adults will commonly ignore my opinions on an issue and express their belief that my opinions are irrelevant because my age has not given me enough experience, which makes me and many other teenagers feel discredited and ignored. This makes it difficult to express my own opinions to people that are of an older age than me. Everyone should be allowed to have their opinions on different matters without being subject to disdain, especially if they have an argument to be made on an