Having – only just – left behind spotty, greasy, hormones-on-a-hair-trigger adolescence, I already look back with a wry smile on those years.
At no other time – except perhaps during toddlerhood and senility – is life quite so crazy and confusing.
However, when you take a step back – as Harry Enfield’s Kevin the Teenager and Catherine Tate’s Lauren (Am I bovvered) Cooper demonstrated so brilliantly – it’s very easy to see the funny side:
Dating woes
My mum and dad, like many of their generation, met on a night out while still in their teens. But, with fewer opportunities to socialise IRL (in real life, oldies), the trend towards online dating has filtered down to those aged 16+.
In fact, one of my mates met his girlfriend on an app. People say romance is dead, but I sincerely hope I’m still around when their grandkids ask if they fell in love at first sight, so I can tell how it all began when he “swiped right”… while sitting on the loo.
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Welcome to MirrorNextGen: a ground-breaking project by the Mirror to put the things British teenagers care about at the heart of the national conversation.
For one day only, we are handing over control of the Mirror to a team of teenage editors. They are taking charge of our coverage in both print and online - giving them the chance to tell us about the issues which matter to them.
We hope you enjoy what you discover… and discover a lot.
Illicit intoxication
Kids will always want to try forbidden fruits, so no wonder there’s an impressive black market in fake IDs for under-18s.
Thanks to being a runner-up on Britain’s Got Talent aged 14, and bloody Google , it wasn’t so easy for me to get away with using a souped-up driver’s licence – and the trademark walking frame can also be a bit of a giveaway.
One evening, hanging out in Halifax with mates, I was asked by a policeman: ‘Have you been drinking?’ I said: ‘No, officer, I can never walk in a straight line.’
Climate conundrum
While youths from yesteryear got fired up about banning the bomb and burning bras at Greenham Common, my generation is too busy worrying about whether we’ll even have a world, thanks to climate change. No wonder the “school strike” marches, led by Greta Thunberg, 16, attracted tens of thousands.
Not so many showed up for the march on a Saturday, I noticed, when there was no bunking-off required…
Most of them were probably too busy infuriating their parents by leaving on every light, monitor and TV screen in the house and ordering McDonald’s deliveries via Uber Eats while completely missing the irony.
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Social Meedja
Parents are for ever banging on about how much social media has their kids in its evil grip. All that body-shaming and comparing themselves to Z-list “celebs” (people like me, in fact… or maybe not).
I spend a fair bit of time online and choose Facebook and Instagram over Twitter . Who wouldn’t prefer a “happy birthday” from someone who doesn’t mean it to a death threat from someone who does?
School standards
I was never a big fan of school. I love learning, I just didn’t want to do it in a room full of other sweaty, hormonal youths.
I also found the double standards difficult to bear: successfully set fire to something in a science lab and you could be rewarded with an A-star, do the same in the staffroom and you’ll be expelled.
Party pains
As any teenager will testify, there are few things more socially crippling than not getting an invite to a hip house party. I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from the time it happened to me.
Mum wasn’t at all sympathetic. She said: “It’s up to grandma who she invites to her 80th, and she hasn’t forgiven you for teaching her parrot to say those rude words in front of the home help.”
- Jack Carroll appears with Johnny Vegas in the film Eaten by Lions, digital release July 29 or pre-order DVD for £10 at www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07Q38P9P8/
Daily Mirror's Next Generation Special Edition