Top four reasons not to date in high school

1. Finding your own identity

The teenage years are for discovering your identity. You start to figure out what career you plan to be in, if you will follow your parent’s rules and traditions, and who you are as a person. Plus, as a high school student you must deal with weird friends, homework, themes, and extracurriculars. Adding an extra person to your life makes your identity so much more complicated. First you have less time for everything from school, friends, and other opportunities. Then your own identity becomes tied up in your partner, which is not helpful for determine what makes up you. Then finally, 98% of high school relationships fail, which means a lot of heartbreak, also not helpful for discovering what makes you happy. By adding another person, you limit yourself and your ability to determine who you are.

2. Maturity

There are about 2,500 students at Central. Compared to the whole world at 7.6 billion, America at 326 million, and Nebraska at 1.9 million (census.gov); we do not have a lot of options. Out of the few at Central, how many are mature? Someone who can know you well, is prepared to stick with you through anything, and is willing to be married to you a couple years down the road? It’s not very likely, so, with the limited options here, it seems better to wait just to see more people.

3. Purpose of dating

Besides, dating was created to find who would be a good partner for marriage. How many high school students are ready and able to provide each other, ready to start a family, ready to be committed to that one person for the rest of their life? Not many, as our brains won’t even mature until age 25. So, it doesn’t make since for high school students to even consider dating and marriage.  Others may say that they don’t for marriage. They may date for fun, for someone to support them, or basically have a devoted friend. This way of thinking leads to the person giving parts of themselves to others. For instance, one guy may have the first kiss, another first make-out, and another for the first time they had sex. This leads to people giving away precious things, and then bringing baggage to the next relationship. So high school students shouldn’t date as they are unprepared for going into marriage and/or bringing emotion and physical problems to the relationship.

4. Saving Money

Dating cost money. As high school students, we don’t earn that much to begin with, and then most likely we are saving up for a car or college. The average teen couple spend about 148$ just on valentine’s day (fundivo.com). All in all dating costs money that we don’t have.