Teenagers Are Better Than Writers Think

My dad sent me photos of Little Brother all dressed up for prom.

News flash: Maybe I just have an exceptionally handsome brother, or maybe it's that I've known him since he was a chubby-cheeked baby and therefore still see him as such, but I think Little Brother looked cuter than any boy I've ever seen at any prom ever.

Not long before Dad sent the photos, I was struggling through a young adult novel about a girl the same age as Little Brother.

Now, it's my opinion that most of the best literature in the world is aimed at children or young adults. A very small percentage of the novels I read are from the adult section of the library. Why? Well, my experience is that most novels aimed at adults are actually poorly written. They hook people by being full of foul language, gratuitous violence, and smutty sex. The actual intelligence or originality of content is pretty low.

Unfortunately, the quality of young adult novels seems to be deteriorating now too. I mean, sure, there have always been some poorly written young adult novels, but usually the content is pretty PG-13. It's just the last couple of years that I've come across more and more young adult novels that should probably be in the adult section.

This novel was one of those. The character's point of view was pretty original and described skillfully. But the language got increasingly worse and worse, and the events got more and more degrading. I eventually quit reading and flipped to the back just to see how it ended. Guess what? Everything tied up with a murder-suicide.

While all that was hardly uplifting, there was something that bothered me even more. It's bothered me for a while, actually, because even young adult books that are pretty clean tend to feature this one thing. And that is this: unsupervised teenagers drink, do drugs, and have sex. That's just what they do. It's what they want to do, and they spend a lot of time working out ways to do this so that their parents don't find out.

I realize that I grew up in a fairly straight-laced, conservative community, and it's also true that I held myself to specific standards of my religion, but I'm skeptical that teen drugs, drinking, and sex actually happen anywhere near as much as YA writers portray, even in other communities or with teens who don't have as rigorous of standards. Because YA writers, even good ones, usually don't portray reality super well. For instance, it's my experience that teenagers have a hard time being honest with each other. Heck, not-teens have a hard time being honest with each other. It seems a large proportion of people who are mutually interested in each other never actually end up dating because they never get to the point where they feel comfortable talking about it. Sad? Yes. But true. And, even when they do talk about it, they're nowhere near as eloquent as portrayed in literature. Yet so many high school kids in novels are in relationships. Or for another example—physical bullying. A lot of teen novels include characters who will physically bully other students in their school. I had a conversation at ward book club about this. The conclusion was that maybe this happened a lot when our parents were kids, but it hardly ever happens now. Yet it's still portrayed a ton in teen novels.

In other words, a lot of things are portrayed in young adult fiction that don't seem to jive with reality. And while I'm sure there are some high school kids who experiment with drugs, drinking, and sex (I knew some), it seems to me that a lot of kids actually don't do those things in high school.

I can only support this hypothesis with my own experience, so don't expect me to present a lot of peer-reviewed studies. But here are a couple of truths from when I was a teenager.

Truth #1: Drinking, drugs, and sex never occurred to me. Guess what? I had no curfew in high school. Nada. None. I was allowed to stay out until two in the morning if I wanted (although I had to have a ride home because there's no way my parents were going to come get me). The conditions upon which the no-curfew law was predicated were 1) I'd better tell my parents where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, and when I anticipated being home and 2) if I ever gave them a reason not to trust me, I would get a curfew so fast I wouldn't even know what was happening.

Basically, though, I really could have done what I wanted and my parents wouldn't have known. Yet in spite of that, I didn't do anything inappropriate. It wasn't that I was afraid my parents would find out. It wasn't even necessarily that I was all, "Oh, I'm LDS, so I shouldn't do those things." I just didn't even think about it.

Truth #2: My friends and I could be kind of stupid, but we were also kind of shortsighted. I have often said that teenagers don't handle relationships well (I even implied it a few paragraphs ago). This is true. It's also true that most teenagers don't handle most things well because they lack adult-level skills like foresight. Even though I didn't do anything bad as a teenager, I can't say I always made the wisest decisions when I was with my friends. Red lights were run. Graveyards were possibly trespassed (the rules were a little unclear). One of my friends tried to chase a herd of deer up the side of a mountain. One time, Dostoevsky was mad that his more-popular sister was throwing a party, so he threw all of her friends' shoes outside (and we helped). However, none of these things was premeditated. They just kind of happened. Doing something like obtaining drugs or alcohol or getting alone with a person with whom you could have a sexual encounter would require the kind of premeditation that a lot of teenagers just don't seem to have. At least, they would require premeditation if their parents aren't okay with their kids having those kind of mature experiences. And it seems like most parents, even if they're not against drugs or alcohol or premarital sex per se, don't necessarily want their kids engaging in those things as teenagers. Most parents have rules about those things for their teens, and purposely breaking those rules often requires a beyond-teen-level foresight.

In spite of those truths, I can't tell you how many young adult books I've read where the protagonists have or attend an illicit house party while parents are away, and everyone at said party is drinking, doing illicit substances, and having sexual encounters. Does this happen in real life? Probably. But I doubt it happens anywhere near as much as young adult novels portray.

I think that teen novels should stop portraying these wild parties and start portraying more realistic teen things. Like trying to navigate situations where you like someone and they like you and you know you're experiencing a mutual attraction and everyone considers you a thing but you're not actually dating. Or trying to handle a situation where you and another girl like the same guy but she's a really great girl and you're trying not to dislike her just because she has a better chance with the guy than you do. Or not even anything about boys at all but just trying to get along in class when all your friends go to a different high school than you do and you feel like you don't belong at your school. Something. Anything. Teenagehood is interesting and complex and full of so much potential, so why do people keep writing about teenage drugs, drinking, and sex, especially when it seems to be the exception and not the rule?