I, for one, am not a fan of teenagers, if you couldn’t tell, and not just because they know more about sex than I do. Teenagers are objectively terrifying. They gather in parking lots and behind gas stations and under bridges, plotting ways to destroy the world, and I don’t trust them even a little bit. You would think that their lanky, underdeveloped bodies would be vulnerable, like a snake after it molts its skin. But somehow the mixture of teenage angst and hormones festers to create an unpredictable beast unseen anywhere else in nature. It astounds me that we actively encourage teenagers to become babysitters. Babysitters. As in, the people we trust to sit on our nation’s babies. “Oh sure, you can barely control your own disgusting body, but go ahead and take care of my completely defenseless infant. Also, here’s some car keys, because you may only be sixteen and your brain isn’t fully developed yet, but I trust you implicitly to operate my four-thousand-pound vehicle.” Honestly, I miss the old days, when everybody died peacefully of cholera at the ripe old age of thirteen, surrounded by their grandchildren.

But let’s focus. Teenagers are disgusting. Their bodies produce fragrances and flavors that could unclog even the most congested of sinuses. Their skin is sticky, they smell, and they have absolutely no regard for basic garbage disposal. I’ll be honest, I don’t know how my mother managed to live with my father and two teenage boys for a full decade without burning down the house the second she found a questionable tissue stuck to the carpet. Ecologists could write volumes about the communities of organisms that lived in my teenage bedsheets alone. I went into my brother’s bedroom once and saw a pillowcase physically carry itself across the room to feed on the bottom of a nearly empty bowl of cereal. That’s real. That really happened. Some say he still sleeps on the same unwashed sheets today. (Me. I say that.)

Worst of all, the modern American teenager is merciless in attitude. Perhaps it’s because they don’t yet realize life will one day utterly destroy them, or perhaps it’s because they do, but teenagers have the unique ability to emotionally ravage you without lifting a single finger. And I’m not talking about the gangs of them that wait outside Dunkin’ Donuts every morning to taunt me for buying three boxes of assorted Munchkins in sweatpants. I’m talking about teenagers on the Internet.