The typical American teenager is perceived to be naïve or an annoyance that is not worth dealing with because his/her behavior is just a phase or something he/she has to grow out of. Nobody stops to think that the real problem may be the pressures forced onto teenagers at an age when they are still growing, learning, and experiencing new things. A recent study has shown that “4.3 percent of ninth graders make suicide attempts serious enough to require medical treatment” (Begley 3). When do the expectations become so overwhelming that teenagers break down and revert to extreme measures, such as death? In order to understand teenagers, adults need to look at things from their point of view and know the pressures that society forces on them. Some of the major pressures that affect American teenagers today are the high expectations of education, social acceptance, and growing up. One major pressure among American teens is the high expectations of education. Parents and adults push kids to be the best of the best, but when have they reached their limit? Nobody’s perfect and “No one teen incorporates all the attitudes and characteristics that the teachers who teach them, the parents who raise them, the researchers who study them and the kids who are them name as the identifying marks of this generation” (Begley 2). Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and no one teen can do or have it all. Teenagers shouldn’t be defined by the things they aren’t, but by the things they are. Parents also often push their kids to do multiple activities to increase their chance of getting into a great college. They push their children to focus on AP and honor level courses that might have no correlation to what students actually want to take in highschool that will help them and be beneficial for college classes. For example, “the Wall Street Journal reported that some parents are funneling their children into extracurricular acti