The young and the stupid

 

      Today's young adults are constantly stereotyped as being stupid and unconcerned about the world around us. Hollywood blockbusters such as "Mean Girls" worsen the problem by reinforcing the image of airhead teenagers who turn into incompetent adults. In the clip above, the character Gretchen Weiners gives her own unintelligent interpretation of Shakespeare's work. Weiners is supposed to be a junior in high school, yet her English term paper fails to even come close to a thoughtful analysis of "Julius Caesar."
     These portrayals of teenagers harm our reputation as young adults. Personally, I know adults underestimate my intellectual ability based on my peers. It doesn't matter how high my GPA is or how many accolades I earn, I'm still lumped with my peers when adults talk about how lazy and incompetent my generation is. What's worse is that my generation isn't doing much as a whole to kill these assumptions. Instead of defending ourselves when we hear these stereotypes, many of us turn around and argue that our elder generations are too old to understand how the world works today. In this case, it's not just the film industry's fault for giving us a bad reputation. It's our fault for not standing up to shed the stupid teenager stereotype for ourselves.