To date or not to date: are you lying to yourself about the devastating truth?
By Kiki Tsang
Are you a part of the 62% of teenagers that started “dating” as early as ten years old? (Pang, 2017) I know I am, along with numerous students in Renaissance College. But is it beneficial for our well-being and studies in any way?
I’d have to say no.
Many of my peers and I have been engaged in one romantic relationship, if not more. Yet these relationships are oftentimes short-term and cause more stress than satisfaction. This is because as hard as it is to admit, many of us are not mentally mature enough to handle the stress and communication it takes to bear a successful relationship. A study found that “the average length of a romantic relationship/ romance for 14-year-olds to 15-year-olds is eight months” (Espinoza, 2016). Evidently, break-ups are profoundly common, and teens could be left with low well-being and feel mentally exhausted. Most teens also commit to a romantic relationship due to peer pressure, feeling obligated to acquire a romantic partner.
Have you done that? I know I definitely have.
Being a teenager, we often convince ourselves that we like a person romantically just because we feel desolate at times. But commonly they are only phases that pass by as time goes on. We repeatedly underestimate the amount of effort and time it takes to build up a healthy relationship, when in time all this effort we put in goes down the drain.
With shame and guilt, I can admit that the last relationship I had primarily started because of peer pressure. I went into that relationship blindly. Initially, we were best friends for more than five years, hence, many people expected our relationship to develop, but I didn’t think much about myself at that time. It felt like my heart was being driven to a deserted island by a stranger and I had no control over anything I did, when, in reality, I did.
As we can all predict, the relationship ended disastrously. As a 14-year-old at that time, I did not know how to properly end a relationship and cause minimal damage to his well-being. When I started realising how tremendously childish, preposterous and ludicrous I was being, it felt like someone had removed the blindfold from my eyes, and I was able to see the damage I had done, but it was all too late. I had already ruined our relationship and lost my best friend.
As our society continues to change, the attention paid to teenagers’ mental health has increased immensely. Ana Chan, a social worker at Renaissance College, said that “I would worry about how things go. It also depends on if they have good communication between them, and if the children are mature enough; not everyone can take the stress.” Additionally, many studies have shown how dating could be more harmful than beneficial. One recent study conducted in 2019 by the University of Georgia found that teens who don’t date are generally less depressed, have healthier well-being, and acquire better social skills.
Controversially, however, according to Chan, she also believes that “Dating is an experience that helps you learn how to support each other and an opportunity to learn more about themselves and others.”
Yet the feeling of pleasure and satisfaction only lasts for a short duration of time. With only 2% of marriages arising from relationships starting in high school, this further proves how rare relationships we start in secondary school can last for a long time. (Pierce, N.D) When we go into a relationship blindly, we often end up hurting the other person and ruin a precious friendship we had.
So is it worth it in the end?
As much as we don’t want to admit it, dating during our school years causes more of a distraction than contentment. We need to stop escaping from reality and wait until we are more mentally mature to handle the stress and commitment of dating. In the end, we are going to be looking back at our prior years and realising how immature we were and incapable of handling romantic relationships. The truth is our parents and teachers only consistently remind us to not date in secondary school as it is undeniable that they have more experience than us teens.
So teenagers, let me get this one thing straight. Think twice before you decide to engage in a romantic relationship, think twice before you decide to sacrifice your academic studies, and think twice before you answer the question: to date or not to date?