Throughout my life, I have experienced many different types of cultures within the United States. I have attended schools in Arizona, Washington, Alabama, and now Indiana, and the reoccurring theme I have seen during my time in the 3 high schools is the depleting values of how we as teens present ourselves.

Now I hear everything so when I’m sitting in class and I hear freshman say “Damn I took so many pills last night I thought I was going to OD.” it makes me disgusted. Keep in mind that these are 14 and 15 year olds talking like this.

It gets even worse; I overheard fellow juniors talking about how much they’re going to get messed up over spring break this year and how they’re father is going to buy their whole entire group hard alcohol. I know this isn’t all teens but as I’ve grown older I have seen the party mentality spread to kids who used to get all their work done, who used to respect themselves, it’s disheartening to see old friends turn to drugs and sex it’s really sad.

Now it’s not all the kids fault for acting like this. They have to learn from somewhere, and I believe the parents should be held responsible as well as the kids should.

Parents should maybe take a second look at who their son/daughter is hanging out with. They should look at where they are hanging out at. Parents need to be in their sons and daughters lives, don’t let them get raised by social media.

Social media is in my opinion the worst thing the internet has brought to us, maybe if parents saw what some of their children were posting on their social media accounts they wouldn’t be so trusting of their kids. I also blame the media, because some stars can represent such bad role models for the next generation of teens and with the ones that some kids worship now, it’s just going to get worse.

Overall my generation is arguably going to be the worst group of people with a few diamonds in the rough and to all the teens that have stayed away from drugs, sex, partying, and alcohol I salute you for being true to yourself and who you want to be. This is from what I have seen in America so I can’t say anything for the international landscape but I fear it could be just as bad. Let me know how you feel on this topic, and to my international readers let me know what it’s like for teens in your respective countries, or cities.