Why Teenagers Should Make More Art and Less Sense

Are you also stuck in the aesthetic cycle? I know I am.

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As a teen, I know we don’t make sense. We say we want to change the world, but sometimes we can’t change our bedsheets. We seem to crave authenticity and then filter our lives to death. We fall in love with people we barely know and write poetry about them in our Notes app. We scream “I’m fine” through art. We use media as a facade. A performance. A distraction, as I write you will never know if its a facade or not.

Art, whatever that means anymore isn’t always about meaning. At least not at first glance. For me, sometimes it feels like pretending to be deep because being deep makes us feel seen. But is that real? Is that art?

What Even Is Art Anymore?

I keep asking myself this
What is art now?
In a world that scrolls faster than it breathes, can art even survive?

Once, art was storytelling, rebellion, and prayer. It was scratched onto cave walls or painted with trembling hands. It was urgent. Honest. Messy.

Now, it often feels polished and branded. And if it’s not aesthetic, is it even “valid”?

Do we create because we want to say something, or because we want someone to see us say it?

The World Is Too Fast to Care

Maybe that’s what scares me most:
That we’ve made everything so fast, so urgent, that there’s no space left for slow-burning beauty. No time to look at a painting and just feel.
We want reels, not retrospection.
Aesthetic, not ache.

When the internet speeds past pain and turns protests into trends, when love becomes a caption and grief becomes a 15-second soundbite — where does art go to breathe?

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

The Mirror in Our Hands

The “Looking Glass Self” theory says we see ourselves through how others perceive us.

I am not what I think I am; I am not what you think I am; I am what I think you think I am- Charles Horton Cooley

And it’s never been more real.
Our phones have become mirrors.
Likes are currency.
Your worth is calculated in views.

Sometimes I wonder if I make art or if I make content?

Because we don’t really care about the brushstroke — we care about how it looks on a feed.
We don’t crave the raw — just the relatable.
We’re terrified of being boring, so we overshare and call it expression.

But art was never meant to be liked. It was meant to be.

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If Art Dies, What’s Left?

So what happens if art dies?
Not art as decoration or design , but art as soul.
What happens if we stop writing to heal, stop painting to scream, stop dancing to cry?

If we let it die, what are we even left with?
People staring into mirrors, performing selves they don’t even recognize?

Or is this the next evolution of art — where our contradictions become the new canvas?

Maybe this is art too:
This confusion.
This constant questioning.

And maybe — just maybe — it lives again every time we make something for the algorithm in its own fast-paced new art way.

If We Made More Art, Maybe the World Would Make More Sense

If teens made more art even through the algorithm, raw, unfiltered, aching art, maybe the world would start making a little sense again.
In an algorithm-driven culture obsessed with perfection and performance, maybe our confusion deserves to exist without a filter. Maybe that is art.

Not everything needs to be understood. Not everything needs to be aesthetic.
But everything we create out of truth carves space for someone else to breathe.

So maybe the real rebellion isn’t in being deep or being different.
Maybe it’s just in daring to feel, and then turning that feeling into something only you could’ve made.

Not tryna be famous
just tryna feel less alone.
[@inkedinemotions] if u wanna read the mess that made me.