During middle school and much of freshman year, I let my social anxiety dictate my everyday actions. Tired of stressing over trivial matters, I made a change that fundamentally bettered my life.
My motto for this school year is “Embarrassment Isn’t Real.” It means to acknowledge my fear of peer judgment but ignore it anyway. Everybody feels embarrassment, but it’s important to ignore these feelings when they stop me from living my life.
It’s common knowledge that high schoolers feel immense pressure to “fit in,” and be like everyone else. If you look in any pod in Elkhorn North, there are girls in the same leggings and crewnecks, in the same white On Cloudrunners, with the same iced Starbucks drinks. This time last year, I couldn’t count the number of Stanley cups on my fingers and toes.
These social pressures aren’t just materialistic.
“The way other people talk, I feel like I should talk the same way,” sophomore Ady Tuttle said. “I pick up things that other people do.”
Cases of intense judgment can have severe effects.
“In middle school, when I really was bullied, my mental state was down low. I was very self-conscious, [and] very mindful of how I did stuff,” sophomore Ashtar King said.
But these pressures aren’t unique to high school. They take different forms in middle schools, elementary schools, and beyond schools entirely.
“At every stage of life, there’s peer pressure based on what your societal circle is,” math teacher Chris Peters said. “The pressure goes way down once you leave your teenage years. I’m not worried about what other people think of me, but am I going to go out and mow the lawn shirtless? No.”
In recent years, this plague of FOMO (fear of missing out) and the rise of self-diagnosed social anxiety has seemed to peak. Many point to social media.
“Things are crazy for your generation. I was lucky; I graduated high school in 2009. By the time I graduated, everyone had a cell phone, but it was ten cents a text. Social media: if you could get Facebook to load on your phone, it took close to five minutes for just a webpage to load, so there wasn’t this constant connectivity,” Peters said. “You could call somebody. You could see somebody if it was easy, but it wasn’t this instant feedback loop where everything you put out there everybody sees. . . There was none of that, or it was just about to start.”
With younger generations being raised with more and more complex technology and earlier access to social media, one can assume that this phenomenon will grow indefinitely.
Though it may seem like fantasy, a world without judgment looks different for everybody, yet many have the same idea of “being yourself,” despite how corny.
“I would look very different. I would look very much more myself, which I kind of do now, but more full-time. I would wear dark makeup, [and] dark clothes at school,” King said.
Others note the freedom of being less restrained by societal norms.
“I’d be more myself. I think I’d be less ‘held back.’ I feel like I’d say my opinion more. I feel like I’d be more open to people about how I feel,” Tuttle said.
It’s time to normalize self-expression and individuality. Let furries be furries. Let Gen-Alpha succumb to their brainrot. Let people do whatever they want as long as nobody is seriously harmed. On the other hand, if you disagree with someone or something, instead of insulting them, have a civil discussion. The cross-contamination of different perspectives and cultures are fundamental for progress, just as they were for early civilizations.
So, don’t laugh when you see someone wearing something a little out there. When people are talking about something different that you’re not a part of, don’t snicker and give your friends a look. At the same time, if someone makes fun of you, acknowledge your embarrassment, but work to not let your negative feelings affect your actions.
Despite how much happier we’d be without social judgment, we live in a world where many can’t act or speak without a little voice in their head telling them that they’re weird.
“Your pressure to be socially compliant at all times is so high. You have to meet society’s expectations for a kid at all times. At no point can you do something that’s too kiddy, or too grown-up. You can’t be too slutty, but you can’t be too buttoned up. It’s like that Kacey Musgrave song. . . ‘Follow Your Arrow’,” Peters said.
Musgrave’s song shares the same sentiment as my motto “Embarrassment isn’t real.” However, it was written in 2013. If this issue remains relevant over a decade later, serious change is necessary to fix it for our own future.
