With the amount of technology and information at millennial's fingertips it is still strange to see how uninformed we still are. Although I hate the word "millennial" it seems to be the only accurate descriptor of the generation of people who will soon take charge of the world. That statement might seem exaggerated but before you know it college-age kids will be moving into the working world. There are many things about millennials that should be praised, but there are still some things that need to be addressed before we take over anything.
Millennial ability to be influenced by the media, specifically fake media, has been a concerning trend in the past few months. With the rise of fake news coming along with the election, there was a vast and rapid growth of false information that affected how many people viewed the election. This fake news phenomena did not just affect millennials, but it had a much more significant impact on this younger generation of people who, in many cases, were getting their first taste of American politics. This misinformation caused many young people to be swayed based on political agenda, rather than fact. This also caused deep-seeded disagreement, which is a normal aspect to politics, but in this case it was based on abstract here-say.
This exposes another flaw of this generation which is it's struggle to accept views other than their own. This applies to both sides of the political spectrum as supporters of both parties routinely degraded the other in an attempt to prove their party's correctness. This is by no means a new strategy, in fact it has been around as long as organized politics has, but this modern age has called for a more passive-aggressive approach. Instead of hearing the other side's views and using it as a means to form their own thought, it has become common to see disagreement as an act of aggression rather than education.
Millennials have a huge responsibility as we begin to take steps to become the leaders of our society. This election has proven that we still have a long way to go before we can safely say the world is in good hands. Learning to listen and understand instead of ignore and argue is a lesson that is essential to learn if we want to change the current condition of human society. Disagreement is not always an attack on the person, but the ideology of the person. Once the value of understanding is seen then we can finally make steps to fix the many problems that affect our world.
