Youth culture

Teenagers have different life than adults. You can say they have life in another world, because they don’t have to solve problems adults have. Most of them don’t have to take care about food, bills and other stuff adults have to. It could be said that their have easier life, but they don’t thing it is so.

They have to withstand a lot of pressure. Mainly it is pressure from their parents. They want them to have good grades in school and do chores. But these aren’t things they want to do. What interests them is music, TV, friends and hanging out. So they are often mad at their parents and have thoughts like: “Give me a break.” Secondly it is pressure from school itself. Some high schools are very hard and it is very stressful to get bad grades.

Teenagers have many quarrels with their parents. When you are kid you take your parents as perfect ones. But when you get older and older you suddenly see that their are not perfect, they even make mistakes. You start to thing differently and many times you have other opinions than your parents. This is the reason they have arguments with their parents. They just see things differently.

For all teenagers the most important thing is to have some friends which respect him. And mostly everyone wants to be at least little bit popular (mainly in the USA, you don’t hit on it here a lot). So it is very important how you look, what kind of clothes you have. Fashion is a big deal for teenagers. Sometimes young people don’t want to be consider as idiots and don’t want to look as losers in the eyes of their friends, so they try cigarettes, alcohol and the worst of all, drugs. Teenagers are influenced by their friends a lot. If you ask someone, they will probably say that they started to smoke because their friends smoked, so they didn’t want to be the ones who didn’t.

You can divide young people into groups according their clothes. But I don’t thing it is so easy here in the Czech Republic. Clothes can tell you something about a person. For instance when you see a boy in skate clothes it tells something about him. Very likely he would listen to hip-hop and these stuffs. You can also tell that that boy in sport clothes likes sports a lot. But I was told that in the USA it is more common. You can distinguish young people by their clothes more easily. Sportsmen wear that jackets with their team logo. You can also recognize straight edges, valley girls, people who listen to rock, etc. On the other hand, I thing we (Czechs) are more assimilated together.

Music is one of the most important things. It helps teenagers to get over bad things. Everybody listens to music. It can also tell you something about one’s personality.

USA X CZ

There are many differences between teenagers here and in the U.S. One of the reasons is educational system. I think we have to memorize more and don’t have so many opportunity to make choices. And I also think that our maturita exam is harder to pass than SAT and EST.

Another difference are sport clubs at high school. We don’t have this. You can do sport outside of school in some amateur clubs.

I learnt that you can get drivers license at a young age (16, 17). You have to be 18 to get this here. And also you can buy a car so easily here because they are dearer here.

I also learnt from movies that teenagers would more likely throw some party than go to a pub. You can so that big parties in most of movies about teenagers. We prefer to go to a pub with our friends.

My opinion is that teenagers in the U.S. live in a family house. It is more common there. On the other hand we mostly live in flats.

And the last but not the least, young people have to pay tuition on university. And we don’t because it is free here.

Me, me and me

I can say that I have never want to be popular a lot, I don’t like being the center of the universe. I can also say that I was shy then. But now I am more confident, I believe in myself and don’t care about what other people think about me. I am what I am and that is the way it is.

When I was 12, 13, I didn’t about my visage and clothes a lot. Now, when I look to old pictures I think: “What in hell did  I look like?” There was also a period when I wore skate clothes but lately I kinda grow of it. Now I prefer more elegant clothes, clothes in which I feel good. And I also care about my visage.

I like hanging out with friends, watching movies and listening to music (I like many genres but most of all it is rock – nu-metal).

That’s all.