I did?

Wow! I actually did it!

I was talking to myself on the bus ride home, going "You are so going to start a frickin' blog" but man, even I don't listen to me.

I suppose that might change now.

You, as the reader, may wonder what the title of my blog "When You Were Young" might mean. That is a very excellent question. The assumption that I am making right off the bat is that you are old and I am not, but I suppose at this point I want to be keeping any readers I may get, and not offend you. A more conceise description of my blog is that I, as a sixteen-year-old living in the not-so-redneck city of Edmonton in the redneck province of Alberta in the fantastic country of Canada, am going to offer to YOU a clear and direct insight into what the average teenager's opinions may be, on a wide range of issues. Not TV or clothes or Twilight though; no I'm talking about issues that are relevant to the wondrous world of Adults, the rulers of society, the champions of law and order, the almighty Gods of governance.

And after that, I might have some personal fun.

So if you haven't left in utter disappointment or disgust by now, you may be wondering what delightful and fresh topic I am going to cover in my explosive debut of free expression.

Appropriately, censorship.

An interesting article in today's Edmonton Journal (God bless that newspaper) reports about the tight Internet crackdown on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter by the Chinese government, following the recent riots in Urumqi. Due to the central regulation of the interwebz in that country, it was fairly easy for Hu Jintao's Communist party to bring the Banhammer down on sites very much like the one that I am posting on this very second. The Chinese are sharp; after seeing what the Internet can show the West in Iran's little spats, they wisely removed that option in their own state. As a result, photos and videos of the beginning of the riot are rare indeed. Reporters flock to the site, but unable to get in until much later and immersed in an atmosphere of fear created by the not-so-discrete soldiers, they are not getting much out either. As a result of that, Western media coverage of the turmoil there have been relatively low.

Very nicely played Hu Jintao, and don't worry; you really didn't miss much from G8.

Now here I must ask you to shut your lips. I don't care what your opinions of the Chinese censorship are (well, at least not right now.) I'm here to talk about us, so take those deft fingers off the keyboard and keep reading.

What are teenagers' thoughts on censorship then? Quite frankly, nothing.

That's right. Nothing. You've been reading for nothing. Well, not quite.

There are reasons behind this disconnect and apathy that kids nowadays have, and to explain in Layman's terms, it's really because of modern Western media itself.

With such a monolithic prescence like TV and the Internet forever and always at our command, the word censorship is a concept that is more foreign than Antarctic cuisine (no it's not an unusual comparision, haven't you ever wondered what those scientists down there eat in sub-subzero temperatures?) Frankly, teens simply do not know what censorship is.

Free media in North American has completely ballooned into an entity that probably comprises more of the United States than anyone would ever suspect. Modern day teenagers are constantly bombarded with ideas, concepts and true-or-false realities, and with such a wide range of content we are essentially free to focus on whatever the hell we feel like.

That's good, right?

For the Libertarian Anarchists out there (like Harper, according to Globe and Mail earlier this week), then yes. For the rest of you folks, no.

Freedoms like speech is constantly overpraised and overlavished in today's society, but I always wonder why so few people are truly recognizing it's blatant drawbacks, especially to the next generation. It's the path of least resistance: when you shower us with endless content, then we are going to follow the ones that are naturally the most meaningful. To you, that might be politics, or business. To me, it's more politics. But to the masses of adolescents in this country (and I must blushingly admit, even to me to a degree), "the most meaningful" means TV shows, friends, gossip, movies, and members of the opposite sex. That in itself is not a bad thing; I mean, everyone was a kid once, right? It's the absolute devotion that today's teens have to these topics that concerns even me, a teen.

I'm not making an appeal for Communist totalitarianism. I'm making an appeal for a little restraint, a little regulation, a little control, and a little common sense.

Do we need a Stalin after Harper? No.

But do we need parents and educators to prepare our youth for society's demands? Do we need government regulation to stimulate more diverse topics for our adolescents to explore? Do we need our teens to somehow shut the f**k up about Josh's abs or Jessica's boobs so they can make sure this culture moves forwards, not backwards? Most definitely.

My rant's winding down, and if you stayed to read this far then you probably totally agree with me or want to punch me in the balls. Both's fine, although one's more preferable.

And of course, what do I know? You're the adult, I'm some dumb kid. I bet you never met a trashy mouthy kid like me when you were young.