Drama Tweens

Is it my imagination or have the teens of today become more neurotic and angsty?

I look at the youngsters of today and all I see is them constantly bitching and moaning about absolutely everything. They seem to think that because they are at school, live with their (controlling) parents and are suffering from the onset of puberty, that they have the right to act like whiny little shits.

They whine because their parents won’t buy them the latest iGimmick. They whine because their parents demand a certain level of respect. They whine because their parents demand they do a few things around the house. They whine because they get assigned homework, projects and tests at school. Then they whine because they fail the abovementioned tests.

I know that I was not the easiest teenager on earth. I gave my mother a good run for her money and then some. Even in my 30s I am still my mother’s most difficult child. I also know that if I acted half as badly as today’s Drama Tweens, my mother would have given me a beating I would not soon have forgotten, and it would have been a beating I would have deserved. Beyond the shadow of a fucking doubt.

Apparently now, according to some “real” research, teenage angst is because of biology. Bull-fucking-shit! Teenage angst is because teenagers have become whiny little shits with more human bloody rights than their parents. If parents today had the rights my parents had when I was growing up, there would be fewer angsty bloody teenagers.

I know I was not always the world’s happiest child either. I was also “misunderstood”. Except in my case being “misunderstood” meant I was a self-centred, whiny little shit. However angsty we were back in the 80s and 90s, no-one actually ever knew about it. The really, very angsty ones were just a little different, and usually ended up being art students. Which is fine, since everyone expects art students to be a little “different”. But, however angsty, self-centred and whiny we were back in those days, we were not a patch against the kids of today.

But with the incidence of Facebook, Twitter and Mxit, I tend to see a lot more of this whiny-ness of the younger generation. Not only are the younger generation in our midst whiny, needy and self-centred, they are also tremendous attention whores. Heaven forbid anyone on this planet should not be paying attention to them for five minutes.

You do not even have to go on Facebook or Twitter to see these little attention whores. Go to any mall. Now, I cannot remember if I ever did this, but you see the parents and five steps behind is the teenager, sulking. Sulking because of being dragged out in public with their uncool parents. I know my parents are uncool, but guess what? Fuck everyone else. They are MY uncool parents. What they lack in uncoolness, they make up for in everything else. Christ, I can swear like a drunken pirate in front of my mother and she accepts that as a part of me. However, I digress…

Apart from the whiny little shits walking five steps behind the parents, they walk with their headphones in their ears. Listening to whatever is playing on their iGimmick that they eventually guilted their parents into buying. That kind of behaviour is unacceptable. You do not go out in public with a set of headphones plugged into your ears. Wrong on very many levels.

Amongst my Facebook and Twitter “friends” I have two teenagers. Roughly a year apart in age from each other. A more depressed collection of youngsters remain to be seen. One complains most of the time about how big a loser it is. How it does not have any friends. How it does not have a best friend. The list goes on. The other just complains a lot, about pretty much everything in its life.

The common denominator between the two, both hate their parents for some perceived wrong doing on the parents’ part. The only wrong my parents ever did was not beating me enough.

I had a point to all of this… Yes! Please can someone tell me if I am imagining all of this? I really cannot tell any more. Have teenagers become tiny, self-centred, whiny little drama queens? I think they have. I think parents should start beating the shit out of their kids again. Perhaps then teenagers will go back to being less self-centred and whiny. They will still be little shits, but they will whine less.