Older adults look at teenagers as being lazy, spoiled and ungrateful. According to the November issue of “Seventeen” magazine, here are the five most frequently stated stereotypes about teenagers:
1. “Teens these days are all lazy.”
2. “You kids these days are always up to no good.”

3. “You’re just too young to understand anything about life.”

4. “You wouldn’t last a day without your phones.”

5. “When I was your age, we helped others. You kids only care about yourselves.”

These stereotypes are false in so many ways. Many teens have jobs, play sports, and work hard in school. This generation is all about the advancement of technology, meaning most teenagers do own a phone. Adults don’t understand what growing up with a phone feels like, because they didn’t grow up with them. Even though we own phones, that doesn’t mean we can’t live without them. We are lucky enough to be able to do many productive things with our phones, such as typing essays, reading books and communicating with classmates.
When adults say that we’re too young to understand anything about life, that doesn’t make sense because we’re barely learning how to live life and loving it.
Many teens out there are doing amazing things to help others, like starting their very own foundations to help their communities and making the world a better place. A group called “Interact Club” on campus volunteers to help with marathons, and serve food at shelters for people in need. Another great club on campus is “Heal the Bay.” They volunteer on Saturdays to clean up Venice Beach.
Miranda Rector, a senior, has already accomplished great things. She volunteered at Koreatown Youth and Community Center for two years, went to Nepal to help out people and is the president of the Good Neighbors chapter at Venice.
Some of us teenagers do even better things than many adults, and yet we get criticized for being teenagers.