Being young has its perks, but in a world of naysayers, the young population has many road blocks to endure when attempting to express knowledgeable and significant thoughts and ideas to the community. "Young" has a stigma which many times is represented as a naive nature that comes with a lack of life experience or a lack of true responsibility. Being young automatically implies that we are unable to represent society as valuable self-thinkers because we're simply not at an age to understand complex ideas. But what does that really mean?

The older population holds us down with such a truly naive concept without recognizing the harm they are doing. They want us to be able to mature from this "youngster" nature we possess, yet they strangle us with such a negative stigma that indirectly forces us to believe that our age is hindering us from having intelligent thoughts and conversations.

Being young, we've all heard at one point someone telling us that because we haven't lived enough life, we just won't be able to understand or grasp a concept. To an extent, such a statement may be valid— talking about time periods which I never lived through I wouldn't be able to personally identify with the emotions, ideas, actions of those times. But as a human being with a mind that is capable to reason, I can identify with various concepts through an outside perspective. My age isn't a factor, but my ability and desire to think maturely and with researched knowledge gives me validity to express thoughts to then hold an intellectual conversation.

So, people, listen up! Please stop making assumptions of the young minds. We live in a new generation where college is an expectation and many of us have ambitions to pursue great careers. We may not have age and vast amounts of experiences on our sides. But we have all the resources to be intelligent thinkers and make mature, responsible decisions. Not all young people are the same. Many are irresponsible and live life as if there's no tomorrow. But don't take every person at face value because even grown adults don't have life figured out. So before you assume young people can't be self-thinkers with valuable opinions, just talk to them and give them a chance to prove you wrong and reveal the level of their intelligence. Many of us may surprise you with how much we really know and understand!