When you're a little kid, you take the world at face value. Your world extends to your parents, your preschool, the playroom littered with half of Toys R Us's inventory. Everything you know you have seen with your own two eyes, which is why Santa is real (because you saw him at the mall!) and the tooth fairy a very tangible visitor (because how else could the money under my pillow have gotten there?)

But as you grow up and become more immersed in this digital age of the 21st-century, you learn to stop taking things at face value. You learn to realize that "no, that model does not have piercing purple eyes and literally glowing skin" and that Photoshop is a more powerful weapon to your self-esteem than a (figurative) nuclear bomb. You learn to filter the true and the wish-it-were-true in self-defense, because how else can you grow up without feeling invalid and unvalued?

But then the photos you see extend past the catalogues in the mail and the advertisement campaigns for your favorite stores - you grow up and now you get news updates, you get photos and stories that break your heart from the Humans of New York, you get crushing photos of Syrian refugees and the destruction in Aleppo, you get photos of our world being trashed, of animals choked by Coke can binders and the seas ravaged by trash. Soon the "every photo speaks a thousand words" reaches capacity and each photo has no words because you're just... lost.

I told myself the models were figments of an imagination and a computer mouse to protect myself - have I started doing the same for other photos as well? Have others?

I can see the videos and photos and news segments on the outrage and hate and intolerance Trump has caused in America; the disunity is disheartening, the fact that so many people are hurt hurts, the fact that will get hurt hurts, but then you just keep scrolling. The next photo is one of your best friend's puppy or tropical vacation. Snaps disappear in the seconds, and we scroll past so many other photos so quickly, we are left skipping through meaningful information for both personal protection and convenience. Wanting to change everything that's wrong in the world, to fix all the problems, to want to "make a difference," I've been told it's the millennial generation's hallmark - but then again, it's been most generation's purpose, when they were young. But maybe being young is seeing these issues, and being an adult is having enough self-preservation to scroll past them.

Being an adult is the acceptance that our world is somewhat broken, and that it will most likely stay that way; if we haven't been able to fix it yet, what's to prove that we are even capable? Your job becomes quelling the fears of the new younger generation, convincing them and yourselves that it gets better with time, with age.

For many, in my experience, being an adult is knowing that you can't fix everything, or at least not nearly on the scale you used to hope for. It's not letting every issue in the world break your heart and soul, like us younglings. Growing up, it's becoming immune.