Ever since Somali pirates started making headlines last year, Jack Sparrow has been the pop-culture reference of choice for the corny journalists, late-night comedians and others who attempt to make news from the Gulf of Aden more relatable for an American audience.

But as I followed the story this month of a standoff between US warships and four teenage pirates who took an American captain hostage, my thoughts turned to a very different fictional character: the schoolboy-turned-street soldier named Michael from the HBO hit series “The Wire.”

Just like their cohorts on the corners of West Baltimore, Somalia’s teenage pirates are almost forced into a premature adulthood by the poverty and violence that surround them. These young men are trying to survive any way they can, whether it’s selling drugs or hijacking container ships.

“I think it's good to make the comparison,” says Marc Sommers, a Tufts University sociologist who studies child soldiers in Africa. Teenagers are easier to manipulate than adults, he says, which is one reason why they’re used as foot soldiers in conflicts all over the world.

“Young people get involved very deeply and often don't know what they're getting involved in until it's too late,” says Sommers.

Which is basically, Michael’s storyline in The Wire. He’s a 14-year-old growing up in West Baltimore. His mother is addicted to drugs, he has no father around and he’s forced into the drug game so he can take care of his 5-year-old brother. Michael really didn’t see a choice. Living in the ‘hood you can always dream about college, but the idea of actually reaching a better life is just a dream. He is destined to become the murdering drug dealer he is by the end of the show.

“These are young people caught up in violent environments,” says Sommers. “In those situations, the logic and the morality of what is right and wrong and what you need to do... it changes, it adjusts to the context.”

All of which makes me wonder about the choices that Somali teenagers have, if we have such bleak options for youth in an American city.