Obviously it's not always true, but usually a 15-18 year old is during their first job requiring training, probably extra supervision, and even just reliability might not be there (not even for 'poor' employees, but exams and stuff like that require time off). There's also high turnover for teens because they do go to college, or school starts back up in the fall, or they just decide they don't like it. There's also requirements that need to be met for students in terms of how many hours they can work etc.
Work may be work, but people are people and all else equal it's far more likely that an older person would get the same job as a teenager. So equal pay with a high enough minimum wage is setting a higher barrier for teenagers to enter into the workforce. It's a fact, it's just what it is. So it's a question of whether that 'negative' is big enough of a concern for the overall benefit of equal minimum wage.
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