Girl? Guy? Why does it matter?

I think that almost everyone questions their sexual orientation at one point or another.And it's a difficult thing to understand. For some people, understanding their orientation and getting to know themselves better isn't always a good thing. Discovering who you are could ruin your life. But it shouldn't be like that. Once someone learns what their orientation is, they do not always come out and tell the world. For most people it's probably embarassing and they don't want to be judged or ridiculed by their peers. So they hide it. They pretend to be "normal", or at least what is accepted by society. But they shouldn't have to. Teens are confused about what to do when they finally come to a conclusion about who they are. They shouldn't have to hide a part of themselves just so their "friends" won't make fun of them. Everybody could make an effort to help out their confused friends or even that quiet, quirky kid in your math class just by accepting everybody for who they are and not what they're not. Treat all people equally and help to spread the love and acceptance:)

Today's Pressures

Teens today have a lot of things going on. Perhaps too many things. Some people may argue that teens don't know what stress is and that we should wait until we have a job to keep and a family to support until we are able to fully comprehend stress. But contrary to popular belief, teens are under pressure every single day and we have EVERYTHING to worry about. Instead of jobs, we have class. But not just class, we also have extracuriccular activies, like after school clubs. And we need to be a part of these clubs so it will look good for colleges. We always have to be performing our best so that our grades don't start slipping and we don't start to get caught up in the wrong things. Most teachers and adults may not understand how difficult keeping up in school can be. Newsflash, things have changed quite a lot since you were in junior high.
However, the stress doesn't end at academics. Both guys and girls are struggling with more emotional issues. For instance, a ridiculously high amount of girls are struggling with eating disorders because of the pressure of looking just like a model straight out of a Victoria's Secret catalog. Not to mention wanting to impress your boyfrind, girlfriend or even crush by having the "perfect body." The South Carolina Department of Mental Health estimates that 8 million Americans have an eating disorder – seven million women and one million men.
Issues like these can lead to severe consequences, such as depression. And being teens and not yet fully mentally developed, we are at an extremely high risk. As many as one in 33 children and one in eight adolescents have clinical depression. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for ages 10 to 24.
As of today, teens are battling with a wide variety of problems. And most of the time, we don't even let on to what's going on with us. We are under just as much stress as adults are, maybe even more. So give us just a little slack once in a while.

Teenagers

The majority of people seem to think that all teens are little devils working to ruin the fabrics of our society. True, we don't exactly follow the necessary rules and precautions that adults set up to keep us in line and out of trouble. But a little fun never hurt anybody, and when it comes to "fun" we know our limits. Sure we get into sticky situations, but when was the last time that somebody got hurt? What we do isn't as dangerous as people portray it to be.