YJC Summer Fun Editorial Entry: Through The Eyes Of A 13 Year Old

Written by Aishwarya Baskar, Class of 2016, Sophomore Cempaka

Parents these days do not understand what a teen’s life is like. Hormonal teenagers have a lot of things on their hands and barely have enough time for themselves. The stress that teens experience is very different from what it was like in the 1900’s. Back then, teens barely had stress till they started working. Now, we experience stress even before high school. Teens have homework, household chores, baby-sitting, peer pressure and the list goes on and on.

Just the other day, I was deprived of one the most important necessities in my life other than nasi lemak, my iPhone. It was confiscated for a month and I was devastated. I begged and cried and begged but nothing worked. For them, it is simple: if we could live without a phone till we were in our 20s, you can too. The older generation do not understand that we have been exposed to technology since a very young age and thus it has become a necessity in our very short lives.

The other thing that parents often do not understand is the difficulty of trying to juggle classes outside of school and homework. For instance, I play the piano and the violin, I do Taekwondo and I also play badminton. I often find that I barely have time to do revision or even talk about practicing the piano and the violin. In the 1900’s, students never had much homework and had more time to practice other skills and be more well rounded.

Also, many teens this days have bags under their eyes. This is no doubt the cause of lack of sleep due to overloading of homework. Homework has become a major issue among teens these days. The amount of homework given by teachers is literally so exorbitant that my bag returns home overflowing almost every day.
Peer pressure. Peer pressure is one of the main causes of suicide these days. Peer pressure has became a major worry in today’s world. Peer pressure is basically when

a teen feels pressured to follow their friends. Suicide occurs when their friends tease them due to something they do not have or because of their body size or even because they are smart. Peer pressure often makes teens make decisions that they will likely regret later on in life. I find that teens are often very insecure because little things like friends calling them ‘fat' or teasing them can actually cause them to commit suicide.

I think a lot has changed since the 1900’s. Things have affected the way people behave and how technology has evolved from large telephones to small pocket-sized mobile phones.