As adults we sometimes tend to perceive teenagers problems as less severe than our own. We can see ‘adult’ problems as much more serious and worthy of real worry. This is an attitude that can lead to a dis-connect resulting in relationship breakdowns and a failure to recognise the emotional toll some situations have on teenagers.
Trying to use parallels of our own teenage years is a worthless task, as the environment and culture that today’s teenagers are living in is so far removed from a few decades ago. I often feel we forget to evaluate the almost unquantifiable progression in society throughout the last couple of decades, when it comes to our perception of teenagers today.
We educate our teenagers for 14 years and expect them to deliver their worth over a 14 day exam period that is used by society as a definite measure of success. Teenagers are, through mass media, constantly sold fiction as fact, expecting them to live up to impossibly high standards while having to juggle with the often hostile battleground of the internet. Our culture, over the years has denounced self-expression and the promotion of real identity in our youth, instead designing a life that they should fit into, rather than a life that fits into them.
Through all this madness we have failed to adequately arm our youth with the coping strategies to deal with this chaos that they often find themselves in. Some parents have said to me that we should not wrap our youth in cotton wool and let them make their own mistakes, or else they won’t learn. Fair enough on some level, but there are many teenagers out there who need help and support, while others might be okay now, but will someday have to know how to call on and fall back on a support system, as we all do at times. There are other teenagers who, like me, found it incredibly difficult to cope and felt isolated, clouded and scared.
The reason I am writing this piece is because over the last few months I have carefully watched some of the campaigns that have been put together to help raise awareness and support for the emotional, mental health and wellbeing of our teenagers. I have found many aspects quite interesting. It is welcome progress to see the positive attempts at getting important messages to our youth but we have to ask ourselves how effective this communication is.
It’s absolutely critical that if we are aiming at getting these messages to a certain group of people that we analyse carefully what type of audience engages with the medium being used to create that awareness. What medium are teenagers predominately using currently? I have to question some of the placements of ads and media campaigns targeting teenagers and how effective they are. Some of them seem careless and not very well thought out which for me is a lost opportunity to reach that teenager that needs to hear it the most.
For me, this is just another example of how we need to work together to develop a long term, practical and pragmatic strategy on mental health in this country. We have incredibly talented people in Ireland, with brilliant brains and abilities. I feel it’s important that we sculpt a much more focused and impactful systematic approach when it comes to mental health.
Communication is at the fundamental core of how we can start to change attitudes and destroy stigmas but just because there is communication occurring, it does not mean it’s necessarily as effective as it could be.
We need to meaningfully connect and communicate wisely with our teenagers in order to help them enjoy their journey towards adulthood.
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