Stereotyping teens is unhealthy

The New York Times recently posted an article online called “In Cancer Fight, Teens Don’t Fit In” by Roni Caryn Rabin. In the article, Rabin talks about how when it comes to cancer, teens are not given that much attention. Cancer treatments are routinely focused on young children and adults. And this makes me wonder, why? Cancer is just as serious for a three and 50 year old as it is for a 15 year old. I think it is because of the way teens are overlooked by adults. A lot of adults don’t notice the assumptions that they have about teens. I think that adults are too quick to stereotype teens before they even listen to what teens have to say. It is mentioned in Rabin’s article that the Mom of one teenage girl with cancer didn’t take her daughter’s symptoms seriously because she thought her daughter was acting like a “typical teenager.” Huh, a “typical teenager”? There is no such thing as a typical teenager, it is wrong to try and classify all teenagers as being one of the same. Because of their age, teens are unfairly accused of being lazy or moody, and because of these stereotypes, sometimes serious illnesses like depression and cancer can get over looked. And when teens are diagnosed with an illness, they don’t always have the same services available to them as children and adults. Rabin talks about how there are pediatric hospitals for kids and hospitals for adults, but no hospitals for teens. I think this is because teenagers don’t have anyone standing up for them. Young children have their parents speaking up for them, adults speak up for themselves, but teens don’t have anyone speaking up for them and aren’t old enough to speak up on their own. Teens are stuck in a limbo between being too old and not being old enough to get what they need. If we want to address the issue of why teens with cancer aren’t treated the same as children and adults with cancer, we need to address how our society treats teens as a whole. We need to start treating teens with the same amount of respect that we give adults and address how teenagers are stereotyped, because not all teenagers are lazy, moody and untrustworthy like some adults believe. Teens deserve a lot more credit than they get.