Giada Alleva (286)

From hot new streaming shows like The Summer I Turned Pretty to cult classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the intricate lives of teenagers have been at the forefront of countless TV shows throughout the decades, with many emerging during the 1990s. Some shows may choose to cover the supernatural, à la Vampire Diaries, while others may focus on teen characters in our world managing more relatable topics such as identity, family, friendship, and love. These shows are about teens for teens, but are these high school dramas accurate to what being a teenager is really like?

In 1990, Beverly Hills, 90210 hit TV screens, and soon after, it exploded in popularity. The show was one of the first to primarily focus on the melodramatic lives of teenagers, and is often pointed to when discussing the birth of the teen drama genre. Three decades later, high school drama has kept its stake in pop culture, and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. 

The problem is that most, if not all, teen dramas are written by adults, which can become an issue when trying to portray teenagers in an accurate light, simply because these writers no longer know what it is like to be a teen, much less how teenagers act nowadays. This generation barrier can be seen in a myriad of ways, from trends to slang to attitude, making it difficult to depict characters that don’t feel out of touch or insincere to real teenagers. 

When asked about the topic, student Sienna van Rhyn (286) thinks that “a lot of teen dramas are overdramatized.” She continued to explain that “the people who are really creating these teen dramas are millennials, and I think that millennials see Gen Z in a very stereotypical view,” stating that these generational differences make teen dramas inaccurate to the real lives of high schoolers. 

“In a lot of teen dramas, there are inaccurate or disturbing things; it just adds a false narrative for kids… I think that also having a TV show that’s extremely relatable can help the consumer through something,” Sienna added while discussing the significance of portraying teens accurately.  

Of course, this is a topic of opinion with no definitive answer; not all teenagers have the same experience nor do they all perceive things in the same way. There are too many dependent factors such as genre or country of origin to make a simple yes or no statement. For example, foreign shows like Skam and Skins may follow a similar formula as American high school dramas, but American teenagers wouldn’t necessarily say these shows are accurate or relatable to their experiences because of cultural differences and vice versa. Even though there can’t be an answer because of the subjectivity of the matter, it can be said that teen dramas — even with their faults — are here to stay, for better or worse.