I'm nineteen. Depending on who you ask, that either means I'm barely getting started or that I should already have my life figured out. The truth is somewhere in between, but leaning heavily toward the former.
Being young comes with a specific set of tradeoffs that I think about a lot. There are real downsides - ones I feel almost daily. But the more I live through them, the more convinced I become that the upsides far outweigh what I'm giving up.
The Part That Stings
Let's start with the obvious: people don't take you as seriously when you're young.
It doesn't matter how much you've done, how much you've learned, or how capable you actually are. There's a default assumption that comes with being nineteen - that you're still figuring things out, that your opinions are provisional, that your confidence is naivete dressed up as conviction.
I've been in rooms where I knew I had something valuable to contribute, and I could feel the subtle dismissal before I even opened my mouth. Not hostility - but rather a kind of patience, like they were waiting for me to finish so the "real" conversation could continue.
That part is frustrating. You can't fast-forward through it. You can't logic your way out of it. You just have to keep showing up, keep delivering, and other's preconceived notions will start to fade away.
But here's the thing: even with that friction, I wouldn't trade being young right now for anything.
The Freedom to Go All In
One of the biggest advantages of being young is what you don't have weighing you down.
I don't have a family depending on me. I don't have a mortgage. I don't have decades of career momentum that would be risky to disrupt. My downside is capped in a way that won't be true forever.
That means I can take on an absurd amount of work without it threatening anyone else's stability. I can pursue things that might not pay off for years. I can make bets that would be irresponsible if I had more at stake.
Of course do not grind for the sake of grinding as it's important to recognize that this window of low - responsibility, high - optionality doesn't last. The math changes when you have people counting on you. Right now, I can be aggressive in a way that simply won't be available later.
The Naivete Advantage
There's a word that gets thrown at young people a lot: naive.
Usually it's meant as a criticism. You don't know what you don't know. You haven't been burned enough times to be properly cautious. You think you can do things that more experienced people have already learned are impossible.
But here's the part that gets overlooked: sometimes that naivete is exactly what lets you succeed.
When you don't know something is supposed to be hard, you just try it. You don't carry the baggage of past failures. You don't have preconceived notions about what's possible and what isn't. You approach problems with fresh eyes, unburdened by the weight of "we tried that already" or "that's not how it works."
I've met a lot of older, more experienced people talk themselves out of ideas before they even start - not because the ideas were bad, but because they'd accumulated enough scar tissue to be cautious by default. That caution is rational. It comes from real experience. But it's also a kind of friction that young people simply don't have.
There's a reason so many breakthrough companies are started by people in their twenties. It's not that young founders are smarter. It's that they haven't yet learned all the reasons why something shouldn't work.
The AI Shift Changes Everything
Here's what I think makes this moment in time different: the value of accumulated knowledge is changing.
For decades, one of the biggest advantages older generations had was expertise. They'd spent years learning tricks, techniques, and patterns that took real time to acquire. A senior engineer knew things a junior didn't - not because they were smarter, but because they'd been doing it longer.
That gap is compressing fast.
With LLMs, knowledge is becoming more fungible than ever. The techniques and patterns that used to take years to accumulate are now accessible to anyone who knows how to ask the right questions. The competitive advantage is shifting from "what do you already know" to "how quickly can you learn and apply new things."
Young people are well-positioned for that shift. We grew up with these tools. We are not adapting to them but rather they are native to how we work. And because we don't have years of ingrained habits, we're often faster at adopting new approaches.
This doesn't mean experience is worthless. Far from it. But it does mean the calculus is different than it was ten years ago. A motivated teenager with access to modern tools can move faster than ever before. The gap between "young and inexperienced" and "senior and seasoned" is narrower than it's ever been.
We Need More Opportunities for Young People
If I could change one thing, it would be this: there should be more pathways for young people to do real work, earlier.
Right now, being young puts you in a box. Certain opportunities are gated by age, by credentials, by assumptions about what someone your age should be doing. The default expectation is that you're a student first, and everything else comes after.
But the most valuable learning I've done hasn't been in classrooms; it's been by working on real things, with real stakes. And I think a lot of young people are capable of way more than the system assumes.
The AI boom makes this even more apparent. The tools available now mean that a teenager with the right drive can build things that would have required entire teams a decade ago. The limiting factor is not longer capability but rather access. It's whether anyone will give you a shot.
I'm not saying every kid should skip school and start a company. But I do think we underestimate what young people can contribute when given the chance. And I think the world would be better off if there were more legitimate paths for ambitious young people to prove themselves outside the traditional track.
The Trade - Off I'd Make Every Time
So yes, being young means people underestimate you. It means having to prove yourself more than someone older would. It means dealing with assumptions that don't match your actual ability.
But it also means:
- Having the freedom to take risks that won't be available later.
- Approaching problems without the baggage of past failures.
- Being native to tools that are reshaping how work gets done.
- Having decades ahead to compound whatever you build now.
Being young right now - in this specific moment, with these specific tools - might be the best position to be in. The world is changing fast, and the people who will shape what comes next are the ones willing to move without waiting for permission.
I'd rather be underestimated and hungry than respected and comfortable.