Is it really our fault? From going outside for hours and playing in the woods to scrolling on TikTok for hours till your thumb starts cramping, you don’t even realize the time flying by till it's dark outside. Hours wasted while watching other people’s lives cause you’re too tired to live your own, losing touch with reality because everyone is locked up in their house with a pandemic taking so many lives. Adults are blaming kids for not having the energy to talk to people because they got so used to being locked in their room on their phone. Is the result of so much disconnectedness really our fault?

Staying up until 3 am on Zoom, waking up at 2 pm, scrolling on TikTok, going on Zoom, and that pattern repeated day after day. The world created its own routine for us and gave us no control during the years we were supposed to be finding ourselves. I believe that’s why kids are now so addicted to their phones because that’s what we depended on for 2 years when we could barely leave our house. For the older generation they don’t have many things that help them to understand what it feels like for teenagers because they didn't have a worldwide pandemic growing up.

The pandemic has led teenagers to compare themselves to the people they see on their “for you” pages, forcing them to change things about themselves because they think they would look better  with or without it. Not going out because you feel like people are going to judge you since you’re so used to seeing prettier girls. Planning funerals since the pandemic was taking so many lives. Getting in trouble for staying in your room and being called lazy since you don’t go out anymore. Going from a starring A student and getting 100s on everything to giving up on your work because you’re so drained. Teenagers got so disconnected from reality cause we got addicted to social media.

Teeangers get blamed for so many things that really aren’t our fault since the world shaped our daily routine for us since March 13, 2020, disengaging us from reality and talking to people. We lack years of education about how to engage with people since we were isolated and we stayed in our homes for about 17 months without school forming our Monday through Friday routine. So now after reading this, is it really our fault or did we change to fit into society's expectations when it comes to growing up?

© Ilhan. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.