What Do Older Generations Misunderstand About Teenagers Today?

What stereotypes about teenagers do the adults you know seem to hold? How does the media portray people your age — and what, in your opinion, do they get wrong?

What do you wish you could explain to adults in general to dispel some of these beliefs?

In “Taking Away the Phones Won’t Solve Our Teenagers’ Problems,” a psychology professor writes about rising levels of anxiety and stress:

Teenagers are struggling with anxiety more than any other problem, and perhaps more than ever before. There’s a good chance that it is anxiety that is driving teenagers (and the rest of us) to escape into screens as a way to flee fears. Across most types of anxiety runs a common thread — difficulty coping with feelings of uncertainty: something today’s teenagers have more than their fair share of.

They have uncertain economic lives: Unlike previous generations, they can anticipate a worse economic future than their parents.

They’ve also grown up with uncertain truths and unreliable sources of news and facts, yet they cannot easily escape the digital ecosystem that’s to blame.

Finally, teenagers have uncertain independence, many having been raised under the whirring of helicopter parents, overinvolved and trying to fix every problem for their children. This suffocates independence at a time when teenagers should be exploring autonomy, limits the development of self-reliance and grit and may even directly produce anxiety and depression.

When we’re anxious, we gravitate toward experiences that dull the present anxious moment. Enter mobile devices, the perfect escape into a two-dimensional half-life, one that teenagers can make sense of.

But in “Are Today’s Teenagers Smarter and Better Than We Think?” a Times health journalist looks at some of the positive aspects of how your generation may be different:

Today’s teenagers have been raised on cellphones and social media. Should we worry about them or just get out of their way?