When it comes to social media, teenagers are completely bombarded with examples of the reckless lifestyle they think they should be living. My newsfeed is full of girls in short skirts balancing two colorful bottles of Svedka and boys shotgunning beers at country music festivals. I see constant tweets about tickets for Lollapalooza and Electric Forrest. I see snapchats of people on boats watching the sunrise with bottles of Smirnoff ice after spending all night out. I see Instagram pictures of girls who are barely 18 using fake ID’s to get into bars.
Personally, I find this ‘up all night’ lifestyle hard to keep up with. First, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not against this lifestyle, and sometimes I participate in it to an extent. I consider myself to be a social, outgoing sorority girl with my fair share of party stories, so why I am having such a difficult time rationalizing why am I spending my whole summer working as a lifeguard (which is not nearly as fun as it is in the movies) and watching four episodes of Bones every night on Netflix with my boyfriend when I could be ‘making memories’? Why do I feel like the only memories I can make (while not in Ann Arbor, of course) includes going to music festivals I don’t want to be at and partying with people I don’t want to be with? Why do I even feel like I should be doing these things? Why do I, and so many other college women, feel so pressured to be reckless?
Unfortunately, I have no idea. All I can do is try to make it through the next two months until I’m back in Ann Arbor with all of my friends getting ready for Welcome Week and another great year at the University of Michigan.
But in the meantime, while I’m lacking my abundance of college friends and frat parties, I will be trying to combat the side of myself that insists on being the reckless person that I am not. Sure, these late night parties and music festivals would’ve given me 200 likes on Instagram, but I probably wouldn’t even remember them once I woke up the next morning. I have no answer for myself as to why I feel the need to be constantly dartying or festivaling. I like to think of myself as ‘slightly reckless’, I’m not quite on that ‘up all night’ level. So for now, I think I’ll stick with an occasional drink with dinner and coming home just a bit too late for my parents liking, and leave the drunk 3 a.m. Leo’s runs for the reckless.
Photo courtesy of: http://www.ticketchest.com/concerts/Lollapalooza/