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.
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.
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.
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.
Obviously we don't watch television to see our mundane lives repeated for us on screen, but sometimes drama series can take so many liberties while trying to depict something relatable that you just have to laugh.
That's certainly the case with how high school is portrayed on TV, as supposed teenagers stir up drama that we can empathize with, meanwhile our own experiences of that hormonal, pubescent time differ greatly. It's part of TV magic, but at some point and across numerous series we can point out some ridiculous tropes that seem to have stuck for our fictitious friends.
Click through to see the most unrealistic things that happen in high school dramas.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Do they not own any other clothes? At least they're always identifiable.
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).
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.
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.
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)
See also: Actors who were way too young or too old for their rolesWhere 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.
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!
New boys are always trouble in TV dramas–it's an unwritten law.
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.
Science class on screen is always either dissecting frogs or mixing explosive chemicals, neither of which are everyday activities in real science class.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
The most unrealistic things that happen in high school dramas
Teenagedom looks slightly different on TV...
TV Television
Obviously we don't watch television to see our mundane lives repeated for us on screen, but sometimes drama series can take so many liberties while trying to depict something relatable that you just have to laugh.
That's certainly the case with how high school is portrayed on TV, as supposed teenagers stir up drama that we can empathize with, meanwhile our own experiences of that hormonal, pubescent time differ greatly. It's part of TV magic, but at some point and across numerous series we can point out some ridiculous tropes that seem to have stuck for our fictitious friends.
Click through to see the most unrealistic things that happen in high school dramas.