My Year 12 Life: teens document their final school year in insightful new series

“Vlogumentary” (vlog + documentary) is a peculiarly repellant neologism for video blog, but don’t let the ABC’s descriptor put you off its new series. My Year 12 Life, which premieres on Monday night, is a candid, even touching insight into the secret, stressful lives of teenagers.

At the start of last year, filmmaker Laura Waters gave cameras to a group of 18-year-olds to document their final year of high school – a time when, they’re all at pains to stress, shit gets real.

Year 12 is when Australian high-school students sit their HSC exams, from which is derived their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank. Your Atar, relative to all other students, influences which courses you can apply for, and at which universities, thereby shaping “the rest of your life”: a unit of time that looms large for these teenagers, and presumably all others.

Despite their varying attitudes towards the importance of education, the program’s 14 subjects are under plenty of pressure, and episode one throws to how it might impact on their relationships, their self-esteem, their drinking and – of most concern to them – their futures.

The story – insofar as there is one beyond teenagers teetering on the verge of nervous breakdowns – unfolds in piece-to-cam confessionals, Big Brother diary room-style. But with no film crew or producers on the ground, the frankness and emotional honesty of these self-directed interviews is striking.

This no-holds-barred access to teenagers’ inner lives will appeal to parents, who will be sure to recognise elements of their own children among the 14 subjects – they’re that diverse a bunch.

There’s Tom, “the free-range kid” currently in Kununurra, WA, who is putting himself through school. There’s Angela in western Sydney, who is “as you can see ... 100% Asian”, and attempting to shed her “Chinese New Year weight”; and Kayla, the private school girl in inner-city Melbourne for whom “reputation is everything”. Alfie, in south-west Sydney, wants to be a “powerful figure” like his mum, but risks being jeopardised by his preoccupation with Schoolies.

There’s the other Tom, from Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, for whom sport is “sort of my everything, as cringeworthy as that sounds” – and who feels daunted by his older brother’s Atar of 98: “I don’t really want to be the family failure”. Then there’s Alex, studying towards a certificate of applied learning in Melbourne, who’s facing stigma for taking “the dumb path”: “I give them the old ‘by the time you finish university I’m going to have a full-time job ... and I’ll probably be earning double what you’re making anyway’.”

The documentary is ambitious in attempting to follow 14 individuals, and it’s possible interest will wear thin over 24 half-hour instalments – but though the ABC is pushing the innovation of the concept, My Year 12 Life’s real strength is the talent: the self-confident, in some cases astoundingly charismatic, teenagers, chosen from hundreds of auditions. A handful of the 14 could skip their exams and be handed a presenting job right away.

I particularly enjoyed Shianna, from regional NSW: an animated Anna Paquin lookalike passionate about wearing, buying, collecting and even selling clothes, who sees being named dux of her year 12 as her ticket to a career in fashion in London.

Rural life is not for her, she says, filming the chicken coop through her bedroom window. “Oh my gosh, get rid of that shit,” she mutters disparagingly. “I hate the chook pen.”

The drawcard of the series is its voyeurism, down to the occasional use of Peep Show-style perspective (unseen camera operator turns off iPhone alarm; pours milk onto cereal). The drama, too, is just as banal as Mark Corrigan agonising over the purchase of toilet paper at the corner shop.

“We have two assignments due on the same day – how is that legal?” fumes Chelsea, from NSW’s central coast.

But of course, that’s what stress is: domestic and mundane, boring to hear about with any specificity for anyone who’s not experiencing it and maybe even outwardly easy to address. It is tempting to dismiss these teenagers’ concerns with something about “real problems”, but it would also be wrong. Nothing could be more real to them than the pressure they feel put under.

To the documentary makers’ credit, the editing of at least the first episode establishes a sympathetic gaze – and teen watchers stand to benefit from the knowledge that they’re not alone. But with the series prefaced with a quote from a Harvard professor about the capacity of education to develop potential, and billed as “their final school year – told by them”, there’s no question who the imagined viewer is. Parents, take notes!

The series is marketed as an opportunity for parents to talk with their children about their own pressures at school. But that might be a bit too much like sitting down with their diary to read it together to be comfortable viewing.

• My Year 12 Life will premiere on ABC Me on Monday 20 February at 7.30pm