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Hallways as catwalks -

The fashion that TV teens wear in the halls of their high school is so laughably far from what real teens look like, but the perfectly accessorized outfits, high heels, and perfectly curled hair are a nice fantasy.

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School dances -

Where are the tacky gymnasiums and bad dresses and pimple-faced kids too nervous to dance? Instead these teens get gowns and fabulous decor and live bands.

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Cheerleaders always in their outfit -

Do they not own any other clothes? At least they're always identifiable.

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Clear skin -

In the age of puberty and raging hormones and terrible eating habits, clear skin was hardly in sight. But on TV, nary a stress pimple to be found!

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No parental involvement -

The total absence of parents while these kids go about their mischief totally unsupervised, no one texting them asking what time they’re going to be home, is a little bit of a stretch but makes for good drama.

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Way too much parental involvement - The only thing weirder than parents being totally absent are parents getting involved in teenage drama.

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Everyone getting in bed with everyone -

Entire friend groups switching partners amongst themselves, or one person dating their way through a group of best friends, all as if they’ve never even heard of the code.

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The new boy who’s trouble -

New boys are always trouble in TV dramas–it's an unwritten law.

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The new girl who’s immediately popular -

Being the new girl when you’re in high school is made out to seem like it guarantees falling into a love triangle and instantly becoming competition to other girls, but in reality it’s much less climactic.

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Sneaking through windows -

The actual amount of noise someone would make scaling the house and knocking on windows is probably more than sneaking out of a door, which, thankfully, is the more common choice in real life.

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Sneaking into school at night -

It often involves using the school’s pool so that it’s dark and lit up by the blue water. We can’t lie, it makes for great TV, but how many teens actually ever do this? And why aren’t schools ever properly locked and surveilled?

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Strange curriculums -

In TV high schools, students are always getting to do fun and questionable projects while paired up with their crush or their enemy, like taking care of a flour-bag baby or finding something to put in a time capsule.

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High stakes -

Then, of course, there’s the one paper or final that determines whether students pass or fail and whether or not they’ll go to college. In real life teachers actually want you to pass!

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Away game mischief -

Away games on TV are never just taking the players and cheerleaders to another school to play and then returning home. No, there’s always a night stay at a hotel and loads of debauchery with it.

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The attractive poor kid who always wears hoodies - Maybe in some elite private schools, someone who didn’t come from money would be easy to point out, but in teen dramas there’s always one poor kid who is always attractive and largely wears hoodies so that everyone knows they’re different.

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Massive outdoor parties -

There’s never a small party in the basement with 10 friends on TV. Instead, massive ragers are thrown in huge mansions, as if the cops wouldn’t be over in a minute with all the noise they’re making on the street.

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Underage drinking - We can’t forget the underage drinking! Fake IDs are apparently easy to come by, but TV teens are always getting into bars and clubs, stocking up on booze at actual stores instead of pilfering alcohol from their parents’ bottles and replacing them with water.

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Murders -

Why are high schools such a hot setting for murder mysteries? In real life, if there was a series of mysterious deaths, most people would at least transfer.

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Cool school lounges - Usually the hangout spots in high schools are regular places like stairwells or corners of the cafeteria, but on TV there are school lounges fit with couches and other things as if school wanted them to gather and just chit-chat about the drama between class.

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Community events -

Perhaps this is a thing small towns can get away with, but TV high schoolers are always going to the local fair or cotillion ball where they’ll see all their peers out of school hours.

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Hot teachers and illegal affairs -

Not that it doesn’t happen in real life, but the abundance of student-teacher relationships on teen shows is concerning, especially since most of the teachers get away with the statutory r a p e part because they’re young and hot (another thing that isn’t often true in real life).

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Free period(s) -

High schoolers on TV hardly spend any time in class. Even the amount of study hall periods allow for ample time to meet up with a secret friend, get frisky with a partner, or cause general mischief.

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No one does homework -

They hardly attend class, and then spend their evenings plotting and stirring up drama. Meanwhile, most high schoolers would go home, have a snack, then do their homework until dinner time. Even the studious on-screen teens rarely study.

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The father figure coach -

Here’s how it goes on screen: the coach is always a man, everyone calls him “coach,” he’s always full of fatherly advice for people who aren’t his children, and he’s weirdly aware of the drama going on.

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Mass group texts -

Everyone in the school gets an alert on their phone at the same time, because somehow they’re all part of the same big group chat?

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Having time to do things before school -

Most of us hardly had time to shower or eat breakfast before high school hours began, but teens of TV are solving crimes, setting up traps, and finding their biological parents before 8 am.

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Science class -

Science class on screen is always either dissecting frogs or mixing explosive chemicals, neither of which are everyday activities in real science class.

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Constant sex - TV makes it seem like everyone’s having sex in high school when, realistically, many teens are still virgins. And the ones who aren’t still aren’t typically wearing matching lingerie sets and doing it around every corner.

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Looking like they’re in their twenties and thirties -

Well, that’s because it’s usually actors who are way older than high school age playing high schoolers on screen, giving actual teenagers false expectations of what they should look like.

Sources: (Ranker) (BuzzFeed) (Society19)

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