by Celine Araujo

Created on: September 28, 2008

The treatment of teenagers in today's society really is quite abominable. Considering we live in a North American society, which is all about equality and rights for all, we sure do a lot of unnecessary judging and stereotyping.

While it is true that some teenagers are loud, obnoxious, and inconsiderate, the same can be said for adults. Adults are guilty of drinking and smoking and hollering and hooting just as much as teenagers do. Teens are deemed to be loud and crass by adults, and yet adults do not even bother to look at the horrible things people "their age" do. Adults abuse children, for example. Have judgmental adults ever stopped to consider that perhaps troubled youth have suffered abuse at the hand of a parent or family member? Have these adults ever thought that a troubled teenager turns to drug and alcohol abuse because of terrible experiences inflicted by a fellow adult? I think not.

Although the average American adult thinks that teenagers commit 43% of all violent crimes, the U.S. Bureau of Justice reported that only 9% of murders were committed by youth under age 18 in 2000. In contrast, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that the homicide rate for teens ages 15 to 19 more than doubled between 1970 and 1993, the figure rising from 8.1 per 100,000 teens to 20.7 per 100,000 teens. 1970 to 1993 is a time frame when today's adults would've been teens themselves, indicating that their generation was in fact over twice more violent than the current generation is. Additionally, the rate dramatically declined to 9.3 per 100,000 teens in 2002, which corresponds to the current generation of teens. There goes the "violent teenager" stereotype.

Another misconception about teenagers is that they spend their free time getting high, bumming around, partying, drinking, smoking, etc. Teenagers are misconstrued as lazy and selfish, when in fact the Corporation for National and Community Service in November 2005 (in the U.S.) found that an estimated 15.5 million teens participated in volunteering in 2004, contributing more than 1.3 billion hours of community service. Obviously many teens are concerned not only about their own future, which to some adults seems like quite a stretch in itself, but about the futures of others. According to the same report, 55% of teenagers volunteer their time. As for the teen-condemning adults, how did their age group stack up? A mere 29% of adults volunteer, meaning that almost twice as many teens volunteer

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