Teenagers: Where Have the Innocent Smiles Gone?

One would think searching for pictures of teenagers on the Internet would be easy. There are so many teens out there, and they all seem to have digital cameras. The truth is that these pictures are available, but not "easy." Upon typing the phrase "teenagers" into Flickr, a photo site, I was first bombarded by teenage breasts. Girls ranging from early teens to early twenties were posing with their tops down, shirts covered in water, or skirts hiked to their waists. The next phase was the drug phase. A collection of photos showed several drug-addicted teens living on the street together. Their faces were gaunt, their clothes a little ragged, and smiles were extinct from their mouths. From this collection the pictures moved into more music oriented shots, then posed shots showing teenagers sullen, sleeping, or angry. What I didn't see on a regular basis was a teenager with a smile on his or her face. Sure, a few of the obscene shots had a girl with a seductive tilt to her lips, and there are the girls smiling at their cell phones, but a good shot of a teenager simply smiling at the camera was as rare as the Hope Diamond. I can only wonder, where have all the smiles gone? Are teenagers just that angry? Are they all depressed? Do they smile when there's no one around? I will have to continue the search for more happy teenagers. Wish me luck.

Below is a link to my collage of teenage images

http://criticaltechnicalities.pbwiki.com/Teenage-Collage