Where Are All The Young People At?

Recently, my friend Hannah wrote an interesting post discussing the age gap between author's and reader's in the YA industry. She brings up a lot of good points I can't help but agree with.

What publishers and agents think teens want is very different from what teens actually want. What they think teens think about on a daily basis couldn't be farther from the truth. Hannah writes:

The books we see on shelves revolve around a romantic issue in general. My friends were more concerned about their grades and college than the quarter back on our football team--and he wasn't your stereotypical idiot either like Hollywood would like him to be. He was also just as concerned about his grades, though the underclassmen girls hanging on his arms were a plus.

In books we see dramatic conflicts, which I have nothing against, but we also see heightened emotions along with it--and even sometimes there's heightened emotion or too much drama over simple issues. The majority of teens will agree that we hate drama, and try to avoid it whenever possible. (Or at least the bookish teens.)

I know, I know. Everyone's different. There are teens who enjoy drama or focus on romance too much. But here's the thing, they aren't the majority, like most YA books would have you believe. Yeah, we crush hard on people, and sometimes we get sucked in stupid drama, but that isn't all there is to us. Sometimes we like to talk about politics, book, anime, tv shows, stupid stuff happening in the world. Sometimes we like this guy/girl, but we never work up the courage to talk to them, and we move on. Sometimes we don't, but we don't spend five+ books whining about it. We have first loves, but we also, have seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths.

A lot of the books on the shelves don't feature realistic teens, but what adults think teens do. I'm not saying that adults can't relate to teen issues. They were teens once too, but in a different time. The issues they were worried about when they were young are vastly different than what we're concerned about now.

There's a realization of control in the world for teens today, and it's a control they have no influence over. This makes them, in turn, confused and more importantly concerned. There's so much societal pressure about our futures that teens literally feel they have no time to enjoy living in the present. There's a race to get to something bigger, something better, and attain the control that they see in the hands of the people in power be that within the corporate CEOs or the government, or a celebrity they idolize. Teens crave that power and that influence that is so unattainable in reality that it hurts.

So when writers and publishers talk about the agonizing problems of boys/girls, high school drama, who's asking who to the dance, or implement the insta-love, they unintentionally insult teenagers by not addressing their societal concerns while also weaving in elements of the inevitable drama and some flavor of romance.

I could care less about finding a boyfriend and more about how I'm going to pay off my loans once I'm done with college, or what I'm going to do with an English degree because everyone's telling me I can only be a teacher. I'm more concerned about the environmental disaster that is China than if Becky is really going to go out with Taylor when Brett clearly loves her more.

And when I see a lack of books that address these concerns, it sucks. It makes me feel like, even though I'm an adult by society's standards, I can only be trusted to care about trivial matters instead of ones that concern my future.

This is why it pisses me off to read about teens getting rejected because they don't have an "authentic teenage voice".