To the teenaged girls sitting immediately behind us at last Saturday's Counting Crows/Maroon 5/Sara Bareilles concert:

You don't know me. I don't think you even paid much attention to me, even though one of you stepped on my foot without apologizing and another hit me in the back of the head with a camera and didn't even seem to notice. If I entered into your consciousness at all, it was when we were getting ready to leave and I needed to recover our towel, which your group had first overflowed onto, and then more or less commandeered.

So why am I writing you?

Maybe it's because I'm not that much older than you. I know that at sixteen, your mid-twenties seem really far off, but eight years ain't a lot. Maybe it's because I see you on the cusp of making some pretty massive mistakes. Maybe because you're about the same age as my baby sister. Maybe it's just because you genuinely diminished my ability to enjoy the concert. But whatever the reason, I'm about to offer you some unsolicited advice. You'll thank me when you're my age.

For starters, I know this may be hard for you to believe, but you are not the center of the universe. There's a much greater plan at work, and billions of other people are out there who matter, too. But that doesn't mean that the things you say and do won't get noticed, and often for the wrong reasons. There were about twenty thousand people at the concert the other night. Most of them were there for the music. You were obviously there for the gossip—and yet you chose to plop down in the dead center of the lawn, drawing resentful gazes from all of the surrounding music fans who could hear your squeals even over the music. I know that half of being a teenager is making your peers like you—but half of being a human being is avoiding conflict. Yelling at Adam Duritz to stop talking while he was encouraging the audience to vote—a right that I both hope and fear you'll exercise once you turn eighteen—and then talking over "Sundays" loudly enough that you were attracting glares from those around you is not going to win you any popularity contests.

Second but related: getting attention isn't always a good thing. You'd obviously dressed to be noticed. And the sexy pseudo-cheerleading routine that you were trying to do, inexplicably, during "Daylight Fading," while partially done just for fun, was also a very obvious, self-conscious attempt to get people to look at you. Which, you know, is fine at a school event like a dance or a football game. But it can also get you into all kinds of trouble when you're at an event full of adults, some of whom may not have your best interests at heart. I'm not sure if you've heard of Chris Hansen, or if you have and you think it's all one big joke. And while it's certainly fun to watch the show, sexual predators are no joke. Your dance may have attracted the attentions of some budding Humbert Humbert. When I was your age, I'd wonder why my mom would sometimes make me change clothes before going to a concert. I thought she didn't want me to look good for boys. Turns out she didn't want me to look good for men. I should thank her for that.

And on the boys-versus-men front: those three boys who sat down on your blanket (and by your blanket, I mean our towel, but anyway): it seemed like you were really flattered by their presence. You were pretty ready to jump into their arms. All three of them ended up making out with at least one of you. Some of them made out with two of you. You ground against them inappropriately when Maroon 5 took the stage. You thought you were being sexy. They knew they were taking advantage of you. You smiled and pretended it was fine that the boy you made out with was now making out with one of your friends. You sacrificed your self-esteem so that the boys would think you were fun. And lest you say I'm overreacting, that these weren't guys you'd known for a while. You'd just met them. I saw you all exchanging numbers. These were strange men—close to your age, sure, but still older enough that they knew what they were doing—who spotted you as easy targets and proceeded to prove themselves right.

I truly hope you all made it home safely Saturday night. And more importantly, I hope you didn't wake up hating yourselves Sunday morning. And that maybe you'll realize that what you're doing isn't going to make you more popular or more mature, so that you don't wake up hating yourselves in ten years. You may resent me for saying this to you now, you may wonder what gives me the right. And I wish I could answer that for you. But all I can tell you is to trust me, and everything will work out fine.

Image Credit: Flickr user ClevelandSGS.