Let's face it, every teenager has heard the phrase "well when I was a kid.....". Well, this is a public service announcement that is letting any mom, aunt, uncle, dad or any elder that times are very different and therefore, so is life for a teenager.

When our parents were teenagers, cell phones were around but, cellular data and social media did not exist. There was no Facebook or Instagram. They could not log onto tinder to find a match with a mere swipe left or right. Girls have always been mean and boys well they will always be boys, but handling them is now a whole different ball game.

As an 18-year-old, I have experienced heartbreak in my life. I fell in love with a boy who at sixteen I assumed would be my forever, very ironic I know. Most girls my age have experienced something close if not the same thing at least once in their life at this point. Yet, the hardest part of the breakup was not necessarily losing the sandy brown hair, green-eyed boy. It was trying to ignore the constant urge to text him at all hours of the day. I had to unfollow him on Instagram and Facebook and remove him as my friend on Snapchat because the sting of seeing him move on while I was suffering was too much to bare. My mom experienced her own teenage heartache too, but it was not near the same as mine. Yes, she did fall in love with a boy and yes he did break her heart. However, once the dead was done his face was not plastered all over her phone as a constant painful reminder of the person she had lost. She was allowed to move on in peace. The only reminder of the incident was having to hear the boys name called out during football games. It is harder to ignore a person when the smartphone you cannot go without is the one thing keeping the heartache fresh in your mind every time you open an app.

Now onto the dark hole that is, teenage girl drama. Every girl has experienced it, whether it was the best friend who turned out to be not so great or the very stereotypical popular cheerleader, or even from a jealous stranger over the internet. I will be the first to admit that I have been on both ends of the dramatic girl stick. I have been the girl crying in a dark room because of mean things said and sadly, I have been the girl saying mean things. It is a terrible thing to say, but I am not gonna act like I am a perfect child. I know I have said a million times to my own mother "mom things are different, we have social media now." Which in all fairness, we do have social media and although it is a blessing, it is also a curse. As time goes on I have found that the worst of snakes are the ones hiding in your own garden. We post things on Instagram for likes and if we don't get enough then the picture is deleted. Yet, with every post, there are those who comment loving things and there are the people who sit around and degrade everything about it. Face it, anyone who reads this knows they have done it at least once, and you're lying to yourself if you say you haven't. My mom always talks about the girls she experienced and how she handled them and her coin phrase is "just ignore them, it'll go away.'" No mom, they won't go away, They hide behind phone screens or sneak whispers in conversations until the whole school is talking about it. Ignoring them tends to make it worse because they just keep coming back for more. Our mothers did not have to worry about Instagram or Facebook drama, the only thing they had to worry about were peoples actual mouths and it is much easier to deal with a real person than someone's profile.

So yes, teenage girls experience the same thing as our mothers did when they were young, but the way that it is handled is so much different now, but the gentle hug and promises of a bright future are just as helpful now as they were many years ago.