> I'm afraid. I'm afraid that the adolescents of my age will one day take over the world. Recently the faith I have had in teenagers has taken a sharp drop as I watch their festering media-rotten minds leak away any maturity, intelligence, emotion and ability they had left. I have always felt a little out of the crowd, and that may contribute to my blistering opinions of them, but I simply cannot comprehend what drives them to drink recklessly, smoke, toss their virginity out the window, and/or not care at all about anything that really matters in life. I just want to know if someone could help me understand these people.

I think I should start this with a quote by Orson Scott Card which seems quite relevant.

"I think the reason for that is that all human beings almost always feel like outsiders. I don't know a person with whom I have discussed this matter who does not readily admit that no matter how close he or she might feel to a group of friends or a family group or some other community, he or she still feels like 'the one who doesn't really belong.' "

The reason why some teenagers drink recklessly, smoke, and, as you would say, toss their virginity out the window is due to two little words:

Peer Pressure.

I know that a lot of teenagers, simply want to try out new things. Most of us aren't even sure about what we want to do in the future. Moreover, there's this little thing about popularity and independance. For some reason (and I don't know why) most teenagers prefer peers who are more outgoing then themselves, and peers that are doing whatever is considered to be "cool" at the time. This is where the media kicks in, as that's where people find out what's in and what's not... which boils down to who has the best ad. "Yeah....smoking is so cool...everyone should smoke....don't worry, it'll only kill you once....oh, and while you're at it, buy some Morphine! It will make you so c00l" I'm actually suprised that there are people who fall for that sort of thing....

Of course, I don't believe that the multitudes of teenages actually do this. It's probably less then 5% that mess it up for the rest of us.

Personally, I feel lucky. I'm in a good environment with people like myself, who actually have a clue. Compititions for "Who can drive the fastest and not get killed" that I've heard occur in some other schools in the city are replaced with compitions like "Who can get the best essay written in the least amount of time" at mine. In fact, our school only has one person who smokes in it - and he's a teacher. With an entire school that actually values education, I don't feel out of the crowd like you might. Of course, a lot of people from other schools think that ours is weird, but they're entitled to their opinions. After all, it can be fun when you meet some of these people from that other school (I'll keep the school name unknown in order not to offend anyone from it that might read this post) and they say something like "You're from OSA? And you actually DO your homework? And you don't smoke? Jeez, man, you've got no life!" and then I look them in the eye and say something like "At least I'll have one 10 years from now."

-Ka"15 and loving it"z!