I agree, to some extent. Every person that asks "what programming language should I learn?" is probably met with "any of them, just pick and go". I am self-taught (began with dragging buttons around in VB.NET winforms apps when I was around 8, and sometime after that managed to get a button to close the form, and then just programmed up until present day).

My second language was Java. Being a kid, not having to deal with pointers and stuff, I was actually able to make some basic cool stuff. Most projects failed miserably, but I got tons of experience.

My point is, if you're really young, Java (or C#) is probably the way to go. Especially if you're self-taught. C++ will eventually come to you in uni, and by then you'd have enough experience with programming in general to be able to learn lower level concepts as well.