Recently, I compared the difference between how I looked when I was a freshman in high school and how my sister, currently a freshman in high school, looks. I never looked like my younger sister when I was a freshman. I was still going through a major awkward stage. My hair was short, I had braces, and I had horrible and I mean horrible fashion sense. I didn't understand how to put makeup on the right way, and I thought that putting an absurd amount of eyeliner on made me look cool.

Now, my younger sister looks like she could be older than me. She completely skipped the whole awkward stage, and she has a pretty good sense of style and she can put makeup on. I think part of the reason that she knows how to dress is because she learned from my mistakes, but it isn't just my sister who looks and acts older than her age.

My sister seems so much older than I did when I was a freshman. I was still really nerdy my freshman year of high school and my sister is the total opposite of a nerd. She knows how to socialize in an acceptable way with people at school, and her face doesn't turn completely red when a cute boy speaks to her. That was a major problem of mine my freshman year of high school. I am pretty sure every boy I ever talked to my freshman year thought I had a crush on them just because when they talked to me my face turned fifty shades of red.

My sister just carries herself with so much more confidence than I ever did. I think that is one of the qualities that makes younger teens now so much different than how my friends and I were when we were their age. These girls walk around like they own the place, which is very annoying. However, they can easily grab the attention of the room more quickly than I ever could when I was younger.

Teenagers and even pre-teens just look and even act a little older than I did when I was their age. I have only seen a select few kids in my sister's grade that look like they are going through an awkward phase. All of my sister's friends seem like they have their lives together, and some look even older than I do and I am four years older than them. It's frustrating, in a way, to look at pictures of my sister now, and pictures of myself when I was her age. I would've loved to have been as attractive as she is now; instead, I got braces and an incredible awkwardness.

However, there is something a little freaky about the way that girls who are 14 and 15 look so much older than they should. I think there are way more social pressures on girls in their early teens to look and act a certain way. There weren't as many pressures when I was their age. I mean, sure, I wanted to look like some of the other girls in my grade, but I didn't really see their pictures broadcast all over social media because Instagram was just becoming a thing back then.

Now, I feel like girls see so many pictures of other girls posted everywhere and that just feeds their need to act and look so much older than they really are. I'm not against social media at all because I use it basically every day, however, I feel like my sister's generation is more affected by the negative aspects that social media poses.