Teens

By Yuxi Yang, 17

At 16, I transferred to an online school. My classmates come from the US, Japan, Germany; we each have our own study habits, texting quirks, philosophies. Yet, amidst our panoply of tongues, we are all young people fighting to assert ourselves.

Chinese teens study from 5:00 AM-10:00 PM, nonstop. The Gaokao casts its net over us all. Yet, even under pressure, teenagers find quiet ways to rebel. Secretly brushing on a thin coat of glitter, whispering “摆烂” with a grin, doodling on the edges of math workbooks.

On TV, American teenagers are told they are free(r). This freedom comes with invisible scripts. Sports, hobbies, social media—all are arenas of competition. Teenagers try out, each driven to stand out. They invent words: “no cap,” “rizz,” “bet,” creating languages adults can’t own.

Though we no longer view adolescents as pre-human, the world still flattens us into acceptability. My international classmates and I are lauded for outsider perspectives and carefully-worded comments, for piggybacking and popcorning in Socratic seminars. We get our flowers for every language we speak, except the ones we’ve built for ourselves.

As an aspiring civil engineer, I envision a world built for youth: third spaces, walkable communities, roads that won’t pose danger to teens—or vice versa. The world thinks that where teenagers congregate, crimes and vices abound. That we’re still not quite human, clambering and crawling towards wholeness, knocking into everything in our path.

But I’ve seen the opposite. I know the truth.

Isn’t that so adolescent?