“I’m not the anxious generation. I’m just trying to live,” says a girl, age 15. When adults say, “Teenagers today are the anxious generation,” something in me bristles. I’ve spoken with middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, and even millennials who are now parents themselves. And what I keep hearing is this: “Stop labeling us. Stop shaming us. Stop blaming us.”

Because here’s the truth: young people are not a monolith. They are not a problem to be fixed. They are individuals wanting to be seen, heard, and respected. Yet we adults keep running studies, waving headlines, and applying labels as though one survey of a thousand kids in one region defines an entire generation.

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