Most teenagers are starting to realize that growing up isn’t as exciting as they imagined it would be. When we were kids, we desired to grow up quickly. We dreamed of staying up late, eating candy for breakfast, and having the freedom that we believed adults enjoyed.
However, now that we are teenagers, we regret spending our childhood wishing to grow up. Due to the pressure of school, college, careers, and overall responsibilities, we find ourselves wanting to revert back to our childhood. Our childhood was a time where we had the freedom to be carefree and not worry about the responsibilities that come with adulthood. The easygoing days of playing with friends are fading away, and teenagers are now faced with the stress of responsibilities and the constant fear of the future that comes with transitioning into adulthood.
Teenagers no longer have the time to live the carefree life they lived before, as they are constantly being bombarded with schoolwork and extracurriculars to appeal to colleges. But now that we’re closer to having freedom, why do teenagers now miss the life we had when we were kids? Why were we so desperate to grow up? This could be because as kids, we were always pressured to grow up. As kids, we were asked to think about what we wanted to be when we grew up, and what college we wanted to attend. As we transition into our teenage years, we are constantly having societal pressure put on us to meet the status quo.
First, why did kids want to grow up so badly? Now that we’re teenagers, we’re realizing how much responsibility comes with being more grown up. As kids, many of us resented our early bedtimes. However, now that we’ve grown up, we feel so much nostalgia and desire towards those once simpler times.
When we were kids, learning was fun. As teenagers, school feels less about learning and more about the future, what colleges we’re going to, classes, and exams. To some extent, becoming a teenager has helped us become more independent in our lives. We wanted to grow up so that adults could take us more seriously. Now, as teenagers, we are taken more seriously; however, a lot of us miss the much lower expectations we had as kids.
Many kids were raised to be naïve and to always look on the bright side of things. Now that we’re teenagers, we have more knowledge of the world. As kids, we didn’t realize how good we had it. We were too busy having fun to realize how fast time was flying. As kids, we would spend all day outside with our friends. Now, as teenagers, extracurriculars make us get home late, and once we get home, we have so much homework to do that we barely have time to go outside with our friends. According to the Children’s Society, the amount of children unhappy with their lives increased from 3.8% to 5.9%. Schoolwork contributes to this, as the percentage of students unhappy with their schoolwork is 11.1%, as opposed to 2010, which was 8.9%.
As teenagers, we experience a lot of stress from school, family, friends, and ourselves. According to a study done at NYU, teenagers nowadays receive high levels of chronic stress, which negatively affects their ability to succeed in school and maintain good mental health. This makes us wish that we could be kids again in order to escape our difficult lives. A lot of teenagers feel like they grew up too fast and missed out on experiences during their childhood. For example, when the Coronavirus pandemic hit, we lost a lot of time, and it felt like we suddenly became teenagers. It was a period of isolation, and every day felt like a blur. My days went from hanging out with friends to sitting in my room by myself. I was 11 when the pandemic hit, and I turned 13 a little bit after we were allowed to go back to school. I lost my tween years, and it felt like an awkward transition into adolescence. When I came back to school, I felt like I was really behind socially and academically. I was afraid of the sudden changes being made to my life. I was 13 but I didn’t feel like 2 years had passed; I felt like my life had unpaused, and I was 11 again.
Being a teenager is a strange experience, as you’re starting to move forward and move past being a kid into adulthood. At this point, we’ve spent the majority of our lives being a kid, and it’s scary to think that one day we won’t be kids anymore. It’s scary to think about the amount of responsibility that we’re going to have, and a lot of us panic because we don’t have our entire lives figured out yet. As kids, we didn’t have all those issues on our plate.
While we wanted to grow up as kids, a lot of teenagers end up finding themselves enjoying activities they liked as kids, such as playing certain songs or games. It’s a way for teenagers to cope with the fact that they aren’t going to be kids for very long and for them to realize that growing up isn’t going to completely change who they are and who they were as kids.
During this difficult period of time when teens have so much pressure put on them to grow up and figure themselves out, it’s important to them to hold on to something that they treasured as a child, whether that is a favorite meal, a favorite show, or a favorite object. As teenagers, we often need something to distract us from the amount of stress our lives give us, and we often use our fondest childhood memories to escape from our troubles.
An example of this is the way that teenage girls, like myself, still like Hello Kitty, even though Hello Kitty is a character designed for kids. Hello Kitty was a large part of my childhood, and it’s something that I have fond memories of. Hello Kitty is a way that I am able to hold on to a small part of who I was as a child, which allows me to understand that growing up doesn’t necessarily mean giving up everything I had and was as a kid. Hello kitty allows many teenage girls to revert back to much less complicated times, both internally and externally.
Additionally, teens often enjoy watching comfort shows such as Spongebob, that are marketed towards kids. This is because those shows provide them the same feeling of comfort that they received from those shows as a kid, which is another way that teens attempt to hold on to their childhood.
As a teen reflecting, many of our youthful years were not as amazing as we remember them to be. For me, a huge part of that was constantly worrying that I was going to mess everything up. My childhood gave me a sense of naivety and innocence, which allowed me to, up to this point, live life freely without being tied down with the impending worry and anxiety of growing up. However, now that I’ve grown up, I constantly worry about what the future might hold. I realize that the life I had as a kid was much more innocent and easygoing than the life I have now. However, now that part of me is fading away, and I have to keep moving forward into adulthood.
Being a teenager is a strange experience, as you’re starting to move forward and move past being a kid into adulthood.