Of Sponges on Roller Coasters

Jordie Guasch

11.11.10

Pd. 5

Of Sponges on Roller Coasters

Teenagers are like sponges; they are capable of absorbing massive amounts of caffeine, chocolate, greasy foods, and outside influences. However again like sponges, teenagers come in all different shapes and sizes.  Adolescents who can deal with the hardships of their story transitional period where a kid wants to be an adult and the adult still acts like a kid can be contrasted to big sponges. They can absorb all of their trial and errors without all of it bleeding out. However, this only covers a certain amount of teenagers. The remaining teens are ultimately similar to small sponges; they can only soak up so much before the pressure makes them burst. The vacuum that is teenage life is unbearable due to the fact that stress can pose a very heavy burden on these unready backs.

Due to copious amounts of stress teens experience early on in life, consequently they are more likely to engage in risky behavior.  Adolescent emotions are similar to a roller coaster—one moment they’re up and the next they’re down. This makes teens prone to making unwise decisions, such as participating in harmful activities. Some of these dangerous activities include substance abuse, self-mutilation, engaging in criminal activity, and eating disorders. These unwise decisions can be heightened to due the pressures that a teen may feel, whether it comes from the home, school, or peers.  Anxiety caused by family problems such as divorce between parents, the passing of a loved one, or abuse. Obtaining good grades at school or comparing oneself to a higher achieving student can degrade a student’s will to persevere. Friends can cause difficulty in a teenager’s life through fights and rumors.  All of these are ‘normal’ factors of what causes teenagers to stress out and what makes them vulnerable to making big mistakes.

Incidentally because of the negative stereotypical behaviors and body images portrayed by teenagers in the media, in time the draw to join the crowd becomes too great for teens to resist. For example, teenage girls obsess over their appearance, and many turn to the media for guidance. What they don’t know is that many body images shown on TV, in movies, and in magazines are nearly impossible to attain unless you were either born like that or photo shopped. The most commonly known issue that influences a teenage girl would be their weight compared to the weight of the women in magazines and TVs The pressure to become just like the models on the television is so great that some girls think that they’ll never be skinny like the models in pictures, so a few girls either become bulimic or too depressed to eat. Others may start abusing drugs to lose weight to attain this stick figure physique. This is just an alarming example of how easily it is to leave a large impression in a teens’ life.

         Teenagers aren’t grown ups, nor are they still helpless children. They have the power to decide for themselves at some point, and some teenagers know that and abuse it. This behavior is mostly likely due to the fact that they have had a lot of influence from many places that would tell them what is right and what is wrong. In a sense, they don’t really know any better, and to escape the pressures of life, they take matters into their own hands. Whether or not their decisions are good or not, their actions are made because they are trying to find a way to deal with their tremulous lives. Though some teens have control over how stress will affect them that does not mean that all teens will have that ability to deal with the pressures of being a teenager.