No, not because it exists. I’m fine that it exists. There is great writing for the 12-18 audience, which is what my research specifies as the “Young Adult” genre.

The problem is that they are not. The 18-year-olds–those are adults. Since they are the youngest possible adults, they are definitely young adults. Good with that. Those aged 12-17, however, are not adults. Why did we end up with this misnomer?

I do not know, but I do know that it smells to me like euphemism. My experience with euphemism is that it is what we use when we don’t have the guts to tell the truth, or when those described are unreceptive to (or would feel harmed by) the truth. Not all of it is misguided. I definitely don’t want an anti-tact crusade. But I do want an anti-bullshit crusade, and the tendency to euphemism has more or less taken us to a place where we call many things what they, in fact, are not.

They are not adults, except those who are eighteen. They are teenage children. Calling them adults is foolish and reeks of an unwillingness to remind them that for all the information overload in their worlds, they aren’t yet adults. It’s like we’re afraid to offend them. Calling a child a child or a teenager a teenager is not “disrespecting.” It’s speaking the truth. When we older folks were seventeen, we were teenage children, and that wasn’t shameful; it was reality. Don’t worry; the kids will get over it. Soon enough they will be young adults, and will merit that descriptor.

I will live by the same principles when I am the one described. One euphemism that begins to touch my own life is “senior citizen” or ‘honored citizen’ (that’s how some restaurants put it on the menu’s discount section). I’ve decided to be a good-hearted elder as my time arrives, should it actually arrive, so I won’t go around snapping at young people who euphemize this elder, old man, or elderly person as a “senior citizen.” Neither, though, will I adopt or embrace it. If others are unwilling to stare age in the terminological face in spite of the arthritic evidence they feel each morning, I’m not going to be the enabler by propagating this term. What if they aren’t citizens? Not every elderly person in the US is a US national, but every elderly person in the US is an elderly person, elder, or even old person.

Why can’t we think these terms through before we adopt them?

Yeah. I will be an old person. Given my family history and some of the remarkably poor care I have taken of myself, as the time approaches and if I am spared, I will consider myself very fortunate to become an old person. If I live long enough to touch many more lives and make many more differences, I will consider my elderly years a success. Even if I do end up pissing off a bunch of my fellow old people by refusing to join in the collective self-euphemizing. They’ll just have to get over it.

If there are any euphemism you despise with a special despication, please mention them in the comments. Extra points awarded for a colorful vent well justified by reason and dictionary fidelity.