People often say that youth is the springtime of life.

If that’s so, why does it feel like our generation skipped straight to winter?

The generation born between 2009 and 2010 has become what many jokingly call the “experimental batch”. We laugh about it through memes and sarcastic captions: “Malayo pa, pero buang na,” “Hindi pa nagsisimula, pagod na agad.” But beneath every punchline is a quiet confession: we’re exhausted.

Not because we’re weak.

It’s because we are asked to have everything figured out while we’re still in the middle of figuring out how to be a human.

Childhood should have been a blank canvas. Instead, ours became a whiteboard constantly erased and rewritten.

Just as we were learning multiplication tables, the world learned the word “pandemic”. Classrooms became bedrooms, teachers became pixels, and graduation ceremonies became livestreams. The years that should have taught us friendships, confidence, and memories instead taught us isolation, uncertainty, and how to mute ourselves with a single click.

And while the masks came off, the burdens did not.

No sooner had we stepped back into classrooms than our news feeds filled with stories of wars, inflation, political tensions, and another round of uncertainty. Every headline felt like another wave crashing against a generation that has barely caught its breath. Before we could recover from one storm, another was already gathering on the horizon.

Even education seemed unable to stand still.

Curriculums shifted. Senior high school reforms sparked new questions. Students were expected to map out their futures while the roads leading there kept on changing. We became passengers on a moving train whose destination was revised before every stop.

And somehow, we were always expected to keep up.

Adjust.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Adults often describe today’s teenagers as impatient, distracted, or overly emotional. Yet they rarely stop to ask what happens to a tree forced to weather every season before its roots have fully grown. Strength is admirable, but even the strongest bridge weakens when every passing storm demands that it carry more weight than it was designed to hold.

The evidence is difficult to ignore. The pandemic disrupted years of learning and social development. Students continue to navigate the academic effects of those disruptions while adapting to educational reforms and living through economic uncertainty that affects nearly every household. Add the constant stream of alarming news delivered through social media, and it becomes easier to understand why so many young people describe themselves as burned out long before adulthood.

And maybe it is why I didn’t choose “ExhausTEENS” just for the sake of clever wordplay. I coined it because it describes what so many of us have struggled to put into words. It is a portrait.

A portrait of teenagers carrying backpacks filled not only with books but with expectations, uncertainty, and the invisible weight of growing up in extraordinary times. A generation is asked to sprint through life while the finishing line keeps on moving.

Still, exhaustion should not become our identity.

If this generation has been treated like an experiment, then let it also become proof that young people deserve more than resilience. Schools need stability as much as innovation. Educational reforms must value consistency alongside improvement. Mental health support should not be treated as an afterthought but as part of every student’s success. And leaders must remember that every policy change reaches real classrooms, real families, and real children.

A generation should not earn praise simply because it survived.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of this so-called “experimental batch” will not be enduring crisis after crisis. Perhaps it will be becoming the generation that finally says, ‘Enough—enough instability, enough endless adjustment, enough expecting children to carry burdens that belong to the adults shaping their future.

Because youth is not meant to be a stress test.

It is meant to be the season where hope learns how to bloom.

The Frontman