CRITTERS
Soomin Choi
Teenagers must have a difficult time finding the blame in their everyday problems. Sometimes it is the environment, but sometimes it is the inner scape of intricate issues, dilemmas, and trauma that lace through the complex minds of youth. The explosive increase in social media platforms and communication technology enables these “troubled youth” to constantly find new, sometimes more drastic ways to portray their vulnerability. But often the response is consistent; teenagers are “stupid,” “crazy,” and “spoiled.” But even if they are, why are people pointing fingers and making fun of this debacle? Isn’t that the first SOS signal sent up in dismay, panic, and hope?
Think of teens—the horrifying ridicule of those “vibrant” years. Truly, maybe, the most apparent years of simplicity fighting with complexity, struggling to find the way out of the tunnel, the mazes that confuse us. How do teens survive? Their problems are sometimes the most valuable moments in one’s shaping of character, yet popular culture glazes over the teenage issues with mock sympathy and condescension.
Many scoff the at word “guidance” and easily point fingers to the disconnect between society and the distressed teen. Everyone either forgets too easily or too scarcely about these years that some called cursed and others blessed. Nonetheless, the numbers are as real as the individuals that form the statistics, the percentages, the “blob.” But let’s not forget that each dot on this grid is a life, a being, a youth that struggles to articulate one’s emotions, or its dysfunctions thereof.