Quarantine: Adults vs. Teenagers
As a teenage boy who is quarantined due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is painful both to my mental psyche and emotional well-being.
Many adults think teenagers don’t care about the reality of life let alone a pandemic. A pandemic such as this is also causing many people world-wide to suffer mentally and emotionally because of the extreme lock-down, and the very restricted quarantine that we have to practice due to the outbreak.
Even in such a world-wide crisis like this, adults might still think that teens could care less about the effects of such an outbreak. They might think that we are still going to only care about are phones and friends, and what is the latest clothes and technology that is out there, not even giving one thought about a serious deadly virus. But in my opinion, this isn’t how I would assume most teens or even young adults would look at the pandemic this way.
I can understand why older adults would look at teens and some young adults this way, during this matter. We are very dependant on our phones and video games, and for some, it’s reading comic books or partying. But it’s gotten to the point where the way adults are starting to perceive us is stereotypical
In a world-wide crisis like this, people might see teenagers and young adults going to parks, or partying and acting as if they don’t care about catching the virus let alone spreading it to someone else. I can see why it is easy for adults to think of us teens as being pure apathetic creatures. But, I assume the only reason that some teens are behaving in a carefree way in a serious worldwide crisis is because of the young age. We, teenagers, understand that this worldwide crisis poses a threat to the welfare of the human race both mentally and physically, but we have a very low mental endurance for the pressures of life let alone a pandemic.
We try to find other ways to cope with the reality of the world being shut down and isolated from the outside world, therefore, leaving many of us trapped in our house almost 24/7. It is as if we are in prison. Many teenagers and young adults don’t have the mental endurance, especially in times like this. Instead of looking for ways to better the community during this pandemic, or accepting the harsh reality of it, we try to look for ways to escape the reality of the global melt-down.
Playing video games and constantly being on our phones scrolling through social media. For some it’s breaking the quarantine lock-down rule, for example, partying or going to a closed park. All that I have listed might seem like we don’t care about the effects of the Covid-19 outbreak. Some might not care.
Although, there are some teens and young adults (and anyone in general) who do care about the real dangers of the Covid-19 outbreak. A few are posing to the human race, both individually and as a whole, that not every young adult is partying, and that they know the risk of catching or spreading Covid-19 to others. There might be plenty of teens who are still using their phones for unnecessary reasons, but just to have fun. You can’t blame them. With nothing to do while being quarantined in the house nearly all day, I mean who wouldn’t be on their phone. Adults might use their phones for different reasons, instead of always being on social media, many of them are using their phones to read books or play random games like scrabble.
Most teenagers do not care about the dangers that Covid-19 is posing to society at large. However, that doesn’t give the right for many older and elder adults to say that we teens or young adults do not care. Many assume that we are only concerned about only our mobile phones, as many adults were saying this even before this pandemic broke loose. It is just a belief deeply rooted in our society about teenagers. Although there might be some truth to this, rather than randomly joking or criticizing us for this, try to get to the root of the problem.
Just because teens have very low mental endurance, due to the little experience of living on this planet to go through the actual difficulties of reality, compared to most older adults, is not an excuse. This should not be an excuse for teens, or parents, to use to show or tell why they are addicted to their phones. Even going out partying, especially knowing the dangers of catching the virus and spreading it. Many adults would think this is just highly stereotypical for both young adults and especially for teens everywhere.