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Stereotypes Of Teenagers

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Within Northrop Frye’s essay, “Don’t you think it’s time to start thinking?”, high school students are represented as not being able to think and not having any sense of language as a structure because of the societal stereotype that teenagers are lazy and not driven to do their best. From schoolwork to our personal hobbies, society has been plagued by this blandly pretentious idea. To prove Frye has been influenced by the societal stereotype of lazy teenagers, one must first prove that there is such a stereotype. Generation Z (those born from the mid 90’s to the early 2000’s) is characterized by their avid internet use and dependence on technology such as cell phones, tablets, laptops, and advanced appliances. Apparently, we’ve become so …show more content…

With the prevalence of the lazy teenager stereotype in the media, there’s no doubt he was influenced by it. He was just looking for a scapegoat to blame for his idea that our society doesn’t value literacy and can’t think in the way he wants us to. The lazy teen stereotype was right there to use and he took advantage of it. In the text, it says: “ He may also have the idea that reading and writing are elementary skills that he mastered in childhood, never having grasped the fact that there are differ­ences in levels of reading and writing as there are in mathematics between short division and integral calculus” . He is not only saying that we are lazy, but that we are confident in our laziness. He believes that we think we’ve mastered language while being oblivious to the fact that we aren’t. This portrays teenagers as even more stupid than society makes us out to be. This is ultimately what Frye wanted to get his point across. In the text, it says: “Yet, in spite of his limited verbal skills, he firmly believes that he can think, that he has ideas, and that if he is just given the opportunity to express them he will be all right. Of course, when you look at what he 's written you find it doesn 't make any sense. When you tell him this he is devastated.” Frye is saying in our ignorance, we still believe in our proficiency in the English Language, and that if we are given the chance to

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