Human Potential

Teenagers are famous for being acne ridden, rebellious, shallow, and angsty. These traits aren't particularly useful, but they do have a good reason to be angsty. Not only are their bodies going through weird changes, but their understanding of a non kid friendly world expands, and with that understanding comes some cold hard facts of reality.

However, possibly even bigger than that, their life potential is draining away faster than it ever did before. If you think about humans in terms of potential, the ones that have the most are undeveloped babies. Of course, they haven't realized any of it, but the possibilities are still open. Maybe they'll become a young Mozart, cranking out masterpieces before they reach puberty. Who knows? After all, they're still just a baby.

While the child grows up, the maximum realm of possibility contracts. Instead of being an endless sea of possibilities, the child trades some of those for a much smaller but a totally realized existence.  They no longer might be good at soccer, badminton, lacrosse, or tennis, but are simply good at a few or one or none of them.  There is nothing wrong with this process. It's all just part of growing up. The kids themselves don't have much agency over how things turn out, anyway. There is a tinge of guilt that better things could have been, but it's not really a big deal in the child's well being.

As children become teenagers, though, things change. The teen has much more agency in how they spend their time, and how they develop themselves. This creates opportunities but also responsibilities. If the teen has had high expectations on them in the past, then this increases the pressure to aim for the most optimal outcome, causing pain whenever it isn't achieved. And when things aren't going perfectly, it's easy for a teen to blame themselves.

Not only do the teens now have responsibility for their own fate, but adolescence is the period of one's life where possibilities slip away the fastest. Not doing well in science for a couple semesters means that they might never get into CalTech, which means they'll never become a renowned scholar in the field of robotic underwater basket weaving. If they neglect to try a sport that they later like, it turns out they will never have the chance to give it their all and join a college or professional team. For sports this pain can be especially sharp because there are pretty much no second chances to make it professionally.

To top it all off, teens lack any perspective on how much this shrunken possibility space really matters. While their possibilities are shrinking fast, they're not shrinking all the way down to bum-on-a-street-corner. Sure, a few select avenues will be closed off, but life is pretty long these days, and there is time for a few next chances.

In other words, in addition to all the other things teens have to be angsty about, such as parents, siblings, social issues, etc, they also have existential crises to deal with that are more or less legitimate concerns.

Yeah, I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore.