Teenagers Need to Have More Leeway

It is true that expectations have changed, and indeed increased! But it is still wrong to say that teenagers have it the worst now compared to past years.With regards to social life, I have to completely disagree with your statement that teenagers have less friends than adults. I want to steer this argument away from your own personal experiences (it may be true that your parents have more friends than you or your own friends) and push it towards the average teenage experience, as I don't know your personal situation and it would be unfair to me to comment on it and I don't want to seem patronizing. Facebook friends is not completely indicative of real life friends but it gives a good estimate. It's pretty clear that teenagers have more friends than adults. I would suggest asking your parents how many friends they see on a regular basis. Now compare that to the amount of friends you see every day at school. You will only find as you grow older that friends slip away, that is not a trial of the teenager, that is simply a fact of growing up. As someone who has had to move away from their hometown for work, I have gone from having a good social life (even though I studied hard, got into a very good school etc) of catching up with friends while at school, and then often seeing them on weekends to just being acquaintances with 2 or 3 people from my area.I think you are making an unfair comparison from the most hard working of teenagers to the average adult. While it's true that the average adult may only work from 9-5 (which still equals a school day + homework), you are using the example of an incredibly hard working teenager. The maximum legal limit for working hors during the school week is 20 hours. So in a week we have 6*5 hours of school + (for the most hard workign teenagers) 4*5 hours of homework + 20outside work. Then lets say on top of homework they have a special assignment due in on monday which takes up 6 hours on sunday afternoon (I'm well aware that extra deadlines can mean way more work, I had plenty of them at college!). That adds up to 76 hours in a week, a lot to be sure, but I have never met a teenager who realistically works more than this, and I have friends who have gone to Harvard, Brown, Oxford & Cambridge. Now to take an example of an intern in their 20's, have a look at this article:http://www.theguardian.com..."We typically work 15 hours a day or more and you would not find a harder worker than him.""Six and a half days is standard. You will go in at the weekend, you might get a Sunday afternoon off." That works out to almost 100 hours a week, 20 more than the most hard working of teenagers. Such hours can end in tragedy such as in the article where an intern died. Now you may be saying that this is way more than the average adult, but the hours you quoted are far more than the average teenager. Many adults put in less time than this, but so do many teenagers. There are plenty of teenagers who simply don't care about getting into a good school, or can do it without putting much work in (we all know one student who seems to get the highest grades without doing any work). I have a younger sister in high school and while I do think she works very long hours (especially for her age, 15) and has a few hours of homework each night, while also attending dance classes, she still has time to socialise with her friends, sometimes going to the mall or something with her friends. Not to mention that extra curricular activities are usually a break from stress! Most people would consider dance classes or athletics training to be a break from stress for them, a few hours a week where they can run off their energy. If you are treating extra curricular activities as extra stress, then I think you're approachign them from the wrong perspective. They're meant to be fun!Your example about size 0 model can just as much refer to adults rather than teenagers. Most of the models in magazines (male and female) are in their 20's, and these ads are as much targeted to adults as they are to teenagers. I would also disagree with your comments about dress in the workplace. A teenager can wear jeans and a t-shirt at school, while most adults are required to wear uniform or muted business wear. Your comment regarding piercings and tattoos is simply false, plenty of people (adults and teens alike) can have piercings or tattoos. And even if you have them in places that isn't covered in an item of clothing, lots of retail stores (hot topic for example) will allow their employees to have tattoos. However you are more likely to be allowed piercings/tattoos in a retail job (which have a higher % of teens), than in an office.Finally if you have had 5 different therapists then I think that your experience is hardly indicative of the normal teenagers. It may seem like adults have it easy going, but that is often because they have learned to deal with stress through growing up, parents often keep issues such as divorce and monetary issues away from their kids, which can cause a lot of stress for the parents. When I was a teenager I was super stressed with getting the right grades and getting into a good universrity, but as I've grown up I've realised that these things are a blessing in disguise. Having exams and universities to get into you means have goals, things you can aim for in life. Teens have a summer holiday that they can look forward to, a sense of closure and progression at the end of each year. Now that I am an adult I have (along with most other early 20's) been thrust into a world where you suddenly have to figure out what you are going to do with your life on your own, and take on responsiblities such as bills and rent, and deal with the thought of only having 2 weeks of vacation a year for the next 50 years!