If you look on a social media platform on any day, you'll see someone—or a few people—posting about the next big thing that's got them riled up. Whether it's the Coldplay video that was under fire for cultural appropriation, the next radical statement that Donald Trump made or something someone found politically incorrect—there's always something to complain about.
Moreover, towards the end of 2015, memes like these started circulating around the web:
The irony is that people found these memes offensive.
So it's safe to say we live in sensitive times. Arguments about world peace, abortion, climate change, gun control and anything else you can think of seem to be at their peak. However, I can't help but ask the question, how "offended" do we really need to be? And is offended actually doing anything?
As Millennials, we usually make our voice heard through social media platforms on which we are barely policed in what we say. However, we are hardly changing the world with the "groundbreaking status" about how Beyonce shouldn't be wearing Bollywood attire, or saying that Donald Trump is a xenophobe or writing an essay about the politically correct way to refer to something or someone. That video is still going to be loved by many, Donald Trump is still someone with immense popularity and people are going to disagree with you about political correctness on the reg. What difference has that really made?
Sure, being offended can mean that we care about something and want to stand up for something. For some, being offended is just a way to gain some attention on social media, but those are a different brand of people entirely. However, if we care about a cause and want to stand up for it, tweets and statuses are hardly the way to go about it. Sometimes, being offended is just counterproductive, especially if we find offense in every single controversial thing around us.
The world is full of more controversy than ever. Social media happens to be the way that we gain exposure to it, especially within our cohort. So maybe now is a better time than ever to toughen up. This doesn't mean that we become desensitized to it. This means becoming smarter consumers of news. This means becoming critical of the things around us and not jumping out of our seats the minute that we hear or read something that doesn't sit well with us.
Assess situations and think of not only what you can say about it, but what you can do about it. We're the generation with more access to the world than any in our past, yet too many of us stay within the confines of our smartphones and call it a day even if we have the passion for something. Don't let one overly outraged tweet be the extent of your attempts to show that you care about something.
