This is a video about Understanding the National Debt and Budget Deficit.

It relates to an experience I had as a junior in high school. In my Advanced Placement American History class my teacher made a remark about how none of us could remember before the iPhone.

I looked down at my desk, then back up at my teacher. I raised my hand. He called on me. I told him one simple fact.

"The iPhone was invented in 2007. Are you suggesting I don't have an accurate memory of when I was twelve?"

Because it was high school, all the boys made that annoying "ooo" sound. And the teacher made a rebuttal that consisted of how he meant that we couldn't remember what it was like to live without a computer.

I didn't fight him on that, because truth be told, he's right. Many of my fellow students could not remember what it was like to not have a computer, or the internet, for that matter.

Well, the computer was invented in the 19th century. So, unless my teacher was hiding a certain magical age machine, he couldn't remember either.

The internet, however, was invented in the 1960s. Cellphones in 1973.

But, here's the thing: who cares?

Why must we, the so called "millenials" be looked down upon because we had it "easy". We are told by the older generations that we don't know what it was like to suffer. We don't know what it was like to walk through the snow to go to school because we have the luxury of cars.

We are a spoiled generation. We know nothing of the real world.

I've been told that many times, that I know nothing of the real world.


The first time someone in my generation ever addressed that was at my third job on one of my first trainings. The head of where I work told us that college is preparing us for the real world, then she said, "Whoever tells you that, what are they thinking? Is this not the real world?"

We all laughed because it was true. What is it about being an adolescent that makes our opinions unjustified?

Weren't there things that the generation before us never had to live without?

Like electricity?

Or modern medication?

Further, why are the older generations telling us to be grateful for what we have, when we are the ones who are constantly teaching them how to use it. They want to use it to, because the matter of the fact is, all of these things, computers, apple products, the internet, it makes life easier.

But, it also makes life harder.

It's easier to be found online, easier to be judged harsher. Cyber bullying was the cause of 41 suicides in the United States alone in 2003. And that's just one country.

We are frowned upon for being a generation of technology, when the ones before us were frowned upon for being a generation of rebellion, of peace and love, the very ones who gave us the technology to begin with.

Were we not meant to use it?

Then there's the assumption that a screen brings a lack of intelligence, that having a phone in front of you instead of a book means we are not a worthy generation, that we don't care about worldly things like politics, social justice and education.

That's where John Green's video comes in.

In an article he wrote about millenials, John Green said, "When I made a video about understanding sovereign budget deficits and debt to GDP ratio, more than 700,000 people watched it—almost all of them millennials."

We do care.

This is the world we live in now. It's the world we will live in tomorrow, and its the world our children will live in.

All of the problems our generation faces, well, most of them are the fault of the generations before us.

Stop blaming us for your mistakes.

Stop blaming us for being different.

Just stop.

We care about the world. We care more than you may think. We're in it for the long haul. We are intelligent people with a whole future ahead of us, and we are trying to make that future a bright one, regardless of what you may think of us.