“Living in Cupertino is everyone having a 1600 on their SAT.” “Mission San Jose High School kids don’t sleep.” Of the countless reels I scroll through on TikTok and Instagram, these are the ones that hit closest to home, and they hit hard.
Students who live in the Bay Area are consistently portrayed as high achievers surrounded by intense competition and a toxic environment, with their main goal in life being limited to getting into a top university.
However, these online memes have exaggerated what it is like to grow up in the Bay Area, in turn breeding a hostile atmosphere.
For example, Bay Area teenagers are often characterized as fiercely competitive through memes about every high schooler having their own startup or nonprofit. The harmful stereotype that all high schoolers are academically competitive, cutthroat individuals negatively impacts our locality as a whole…