IS it harder or easier to be an awkward teenager now than in the past?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I think it’s probably easier now in most respects. For one thing, there’s a diagnostic label for everything. I probably would have had a few alphabets pinned on me if I had been born 20 years later, but getting “tested” just wasn’t done when I was coming up. Having a diagnosis doesn’t protect you completely from playground bullying. But if everyone knows you have X, then making fun of you for doing Y stops being cool. And your self-esteem isn’t so weakened either. The kids loved to make fun of me for not being able to do a jumping jack. I had no formal explanation to give them, so I just believed them when they said I was a dumb-ass retard.

Also, there is a lot more awareness about bullying. People can actually get in trouble for it when in the past that didn’t happen. It’s also more acceptable to talk about how bad it is to be bullied. Whenever I’d tell my mother about the names I was being called, she just laughed and asked what I had done to deserve it. I don’t think she would do that today.

But then I think about social media. Being asocial on social media is OK when you’re an adult, but I’m guessing that’s highly unusually for a typical teenager. Yet being on social media puts you at risk for cyberbullying and other meanness. Kids used to be able to escape bullies by running home. Now the bullies are waiting for them there.

This may be a more left-field idea…but another reason I think it might be harder to be “awkward” is because culture is much more youth-oriented than it used to be. I didn’t grow up on Nicklelodeon or the Disney Channel or the fifty million other children’s cable television channels. We had MTV once I got to high school, true. But that was just one channel. I don’t remember being bombarded by constant reminders of how ugly, flat-chested, dorky, socially unacceptable I was. But it seems to me that kids today are beaten upside the head with these messages. They are surrounded by so much “coolness” that it’s considered the norm rather than a lofty ideal. Of course, now that nerdiness is the new black maybe this isn’t such a big deal. But I think I would be more self-conscious as a teenager now than I was back in the 90s. Everyone’s got a freakin’ camera phone. Everyone’s just waiting to post a YouTube video of you clapping off-rhythm during the pep rally or falling on your ass in gym class. To be played over and over, interpersed between Rhianna and Justin Bieber videos. That’s gotta suck.

So I don’t know.

2

Yes and no.

Like you say, social media/YouTube/Facebook is hard, in that your awkward moments are Memorexed forever, and potentially passed around to millions of people.

On the other hand, it’s easier to find other “outcasts” and not feel so alone, even if you live in the middle of nowhere. My goddaughter literally lives in the middle of a cornfield, yet she knows other Wiccan teenagers, can buy incense and altar tools online, ask questions of famous authors and get a response in 140 characters in under an hour. She’s the only “weird witch chick” at school, but she knows for sure she’s not the only one in the world. Lots of us didn’t find that out until we were in college.

3

In a weird way, I think the sheer mass of social media makes it less of a deal. There’s enough twitter/facebook/youtube traffic that no one notices what’s not there. And pictures . . .oh my. There is such a flood, a deluge, a hurricane of photos out there that they drown each other out. Kids aren’t camera shy anymore. I don’t remember the last time I saw a teenager avoid a camera, when even ten years ago a good 25% of kids would actively avoid having their picture taken.

I do think it’s easier to be different these days. There isn’t a single mainstream anything that the great mass of kids belong to. It’s a spin-off of cable: it used to be there were shows everyone watched, because that’s what was on. Nothing has that sort of market share anymore, and the same goes for trends. There isn’t anything that 90% of the kids do, listen to, wear, or value. I mean, there are trends and fashions and things, but they aren’t as overwhelming.