May 4, 2009, 
Tagged I have always wondered myself: why does one teenager want to show he is someone else than what he truly is? Why do some teenagers feel the need of lying and act different than what they would really feel about a situation / a person/ anything else?
I don’t know about you but I feel like my identity is mine and only mine. I agree it was influenced a little in some minor aspects but other than that, I am pretty confident to say that I have discovered my tastes in music, movies, bad habits and all other minor aspects of life that I believe they are personalized to me. But sometimes I feel like others weren’t this lucky or should i say “hardworking”?
The first example that comes to my mind is one of my relatives whom I am pretty sure doesn’t read this blog. Well, if you actually read it, just ignore this paragraph. So, this guy (3-4-5 years younger than me) met me for the first time last year (as I recall, it was around the Moonspell concert in May) and at that point he was listening to punk and had big plans for a large mohawk. Those plans never accomplished since after he met me he became one of the most proeminent metalhead groupies in his town. And I am not bragging here about being a role model. It doesn’t disturb me at all that I have set a print on him, although I never intended that. What is disturbing is to see how a teenager can be influenced so fast and without any effort what-so-ever. I guess that if I had a TV show, I would have an army of wannabe-Victors.
Another example that I could give is of a highschool mate of mine who went to a lot of identities throught the 4 years we studied together: rap, metal, rasta, metal and jazz.
The main problem is that teenagers don’t find their friends according to their tastes but find their tastes according to their friends. Read it again if it doesn’t make sense and it will. How can we change that? Should the parents interfere with their tastes and friends or should they just stay aside? I mean, let’s remember childhood and how sometimes we did something just because our parents told us not to. Yeah, thought that rang a bell.
NO, I am not planning on becoming a parent anytime soon (~10-15 years) but these questions are of a high interest to me. I already feel old although I am only 19 but I feel like the difference between 19 and 15 is 10. Am I getting old or is the world going crazy?
i think that some teenagers just don’t trust themselves, that’s why they don’t share their opinions because they are afraid of not beeing “cool”, and sometimes they want so bad to be included in a group so they start acting, talking like those people and lie about sharing the same interests. you said very well that teenagers find their tastes according to their friends which is a realy bad thing because most of the time they only have the impression that those tastes are theirs too. i think that parents should interfere only by giving advice and trying to make their children to trust themselves, not to impose them to have certain friends and tastes. for me, beeing a good parent means to understand your child, to respect his opinion and to make him realise what’s good for him.
I guess that if a parent would try to impose their kid to have certain friends and tastes, he would do the exact opposite just because. On the other hand, if the parents tell him that they agree with his group of friends he will be happy about that and wouldn’t want to change them. The best thing to do is exactly what you said: make him realize what’s good for him. The only problem is that this has to be done in a very subtle manner and if the kid realizes what they’re doing, they’re fucked
you said that teenagers don’t trust themselves and that’s true but from what I have seen so far in the teenagers now-a-days, they either don’t trust themselves or they trust themselves too much. Why can’t there be any middle class? Everyone seems to fall into the categories “bullies” or “geeks” and that is just not fair and not how it used to be some years ago.
i know it’s not fair and because of this many people are being left aside, people who are misunderstood and who could otherwise be good friends