Does America love its youth? Sure, everybody makes mistakes at that age. Maybe not, “kids these days” are just causing more problems, each worse than the generation before. America can love or hate whoever it wants. America is made up of pieces, those who inspire and work towards change every day. America is its youth. It’s not just the government, or everybody over the age of forty, it’s not only all the people with high paying jobs. Every single person in the country makes up the United States. “It’s youth” isn’t a group of people living in a giant box that everybody else has to keep track of. Legal adults don’t choose how youth function as people. We’re not mindless blobs dragged around on leashes, but that’s what teens have become.

It’s become unnecessary and false common knowledge that teens aren’t capable of anything. It goes to the head of adolescents, suddenly lifting any responsibility that they may have held to themselves. “Teens are stupid, but it’s okay, you’ll grow out of it. It’s just a phase,” is what we’re told by elders. Okay, guess I’ll just go see what happens when I eat Tide pods, light some things on fire, and jump off a roof of a building. It’s okay, it’s just what teens do. If we’re already not trusted with anything, why should we try to be? Teens need to start realizing that they can hold themselves to standards too, even if nobody else holds them to a higher expectation. Nobody is going to immediately start trusting adolescents if we just take what we’re given. We’re letting ourselves be pushed and conformed into what society tells us to. People treated like children when they can think like adults will do whatever it takes to look cool.  “Everybody at school’s putting crap into their lungs in order to make little vape clouds? Guess I should too.”

It’s not uncommon to hear people going on about how clueless teenagers are, but it’s not like we’re fighting to counter that. We need to stop just going with who we’re told to be and try to succeed at life later, taking no responsibility of who we are now. Our choices are up to us, not our age.