I blame Hollywood. High school movies and TV shows give kids a fucked-up sense of what it is to be a teenager. In fact, the whole concept of "teenage" life is pretty screwed-up. I also blame suburbia. It's a place where parents move to raise young children. By the time they're 14, they're bored and a bit stir-crazy.
Conformist, suburban culture infantilizes teenagers. It's car-dependent, so people who can't drive are third-class citizens, under their parents' thumbs at all times. (It also encourages middle-aged parents to pretend that their own lives and needs aren't important and that they have focus entirely on their kids, which produces fucked-up kids.) Then, Hollywood shows them these high school movies, set in that failed cultural experiment called suburban California, cast by mid-20s actors (who are at the height of their sex appeal, unlike most awkward teenagers who haven't peaked yet) and tells them that they should be experimenting with drugs and sex. And while I can't say there's something abstractly or universally wrong with people beginning these experiments in their teens, American teenagers (raised in the suburbs) are emotionally way too immature to take that stuff on.
American teen culture is inconsistent, bizarre, mentally unhealthy, and (I would argue) has outlived its purpose. It raises people into a life (suburban, institutional, conformist, metastable) that no longer makes any damn sense.
What movies do you think the western world watches? I live in an European country - Portugal - and all the films the in Top 20 of this year are from the US. Films from other countries are a rarity outside of the few more art-driven movie theaters.
