I’m growing up in a different world. It’s different from my parents’ world, vastly different from my grandparents’ world. I get my news from Twitter. I keep up with old friends on Facebook. My phone, with a bunch of apps to make life easier, is always at my side. I am a member of the tech generation. I am a member of the iPod, Skype, Instagram, UrbanSpoon Generation.
We’re growing up in a generation that has more access to the world than any other group of people in history.
One moment a man in Tunisia has set himself on fire in front of the capitol building. His story goes viral. Photos captured on mobile phones, and reactions to the event, swarm the internet. The next minute, the Arab world explodes with protest, with revolution. Change is at our fingertips. The rapid-fire revolution of the Arab Spring is proof of that.
We are the most globally connected group of young people to ever walk this earth. Suddenly, everything is moving at lightspeed. Celebrities get famous faster, news spreads quicker. Now it’s seconds, not minutes. Hours not days.
Just last week, as the marriage rights of gay and lesbian couples were debated in the Supreme Court, social media lit up with support for the gay rights movement. The youth of our country have been overwhelmingly supportive of marriage equality for all, an idea that 15 years ago was thought to be outrageous and impossible.
It used to take decades for changes in society to fully catch on. Nowadays, progressive ideas like marriage equality explode in popularity overnight. Last year a war criminal in Uganda, Joseph Kony, was virtually unheard of, along with all the victims he had kidnapped and murdered, until a half-hour video made by the organization Invisible Children went viral overnight.
As a teenager growing up in a world bursting at the seams with technological innovation, I’m almost a little intimidated by the power I have. Suddenly we all have voices that can actually be heard.
A 140 character tweet can be retweeted an infinite number of times. Our two to three sentence ideas can be read by thousands of people.
Social media has become one of the most effective ways of reaching people. And guess who is so fluent in it it that we could probably Facebook someone blindfolded? That’s right, Generation Google. Us.
But we have to be careful not to abuse it. Too many kids don’t take it seriously. Immaturity, and the ability to be anonymous make our parents doubt the power of the internet. I frequently get the cliche speech about social media from adults. It’s a waste of time. What’s the point? It is our responsibility to show the importance of social media and technology by using it appropriately.
We’re slated as the helpless, needy generation. Our eyes are glued to our phones. We’re draining our brains on Bike Race and Temple Run. We don’t get outside as much. We text instead of calling people. We’re losing human interactions.
I beg to differ. Not only are we getting things faster, learning information at a rate unheard before computers. We’re developing our voices. We’re bouncing ideas off each other. We are plugged into a network of critics, cynics, optimists. We are plugged into the network of everyone, and we’re learning. We’re learning about the world, and we’re doing it quickly.
We aren’t so bad at this whole tech thing either. Just two weeks ago Yahoo! bought an app from a teenager for millions of dollars. This tech explosion is so woven into our basic framework of life, that crazy as it sounds, our phone addictions might be working for the better.
Although I will always advocate to set down the devices and take a nice stroll every once in awhile, I disagree that technology is doing us harm.
But for me to be right, we just have to use it right. The change we wish to see in the world can suddenly be illustrated to others. We have a voice. So keep on tweeting. We are learning the effectiveness of our words, what people respond to, what they don’t.
Since we now have the power, we need to go out of our ways to use it. Don’t be silent. Don’t be irrelevant. Voice your passions, and gain feedback. We are ourselves behind a screen, just as we should be at all times. Follow new and interesting people on Twitter to gain perspective. Take a few minutes and read something interesting. Read things you agree with, things you disagree with.
If we take advantage of this technological gift the universe has given us, we will be an unstoppable force.
Leave a Reply