"This generation is so lazy."
"I hate the Millennial Generation."
"They are always on their phones."
"They don’t know anything about current events or politics."
"I’m scared for our future."
These phrases are ever too common. As someone who used to take part in this type of banter, I can attest that most people saying these things are in fact Millennials. Self-loathing is a common trait amongst this “worthless” generation.
This immense distrust and fear of Generation Y comes from our attitudes towards the great abundance of technology at our hands. Most people my age and younger are seen as constantly on their cell-phones. We never look up. The amount of applications available on smart phones allows us to have virtually anything available to us in an instant… or, however, fast the nearest Wi-Fi is. We could either be: a) playing Candy Crush, b) texting bae, c) checking social media, or e) reading the news. Most people assume E is never an option. However, most people do not realize the amount of news available on social media websites.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. The social media trio. When either of these sites names are uttered, the initial image that comes to mind is that of vapid teenagers social climbing for likes, re-tweets, and favorites. Little do most people know, however, social media and news media go hand - in - hand. According to the Pew Research Center, this new form of media consumption is called mobile majority; at the beginning of this year, 39 of the top 50 news sites receive the majority of their traffic from mobile applications, rather than desktop computers. According to another Pew Research Center study in 2014, almost half of web-using adults get their daily news about politics and government from Facebook. A website that initially started out as a dating site for Harvard students (thank you, The Social Network) has evolved to provide political updates. The new update this year created a trending tab when you first log into Facebook that provides one links to articles about trending topics. This is similar to how Twitter and Buzzfeed work. Both are websites that President Obama currently partakes in using. When the leader of free world is using a social media site, is it really just social media anymore?
The evolution of hashtags illustrates this in the previous year. With the rising reports of police brutality, hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter have exploded on these social media websites providing its users information on current events and social injustice. These hashtags have also started important conversations about social injustice, racism, and feminism. The first time I heard about Sandra Bland was not in a newspaper or a television screen, but on my Twitter homepage. I used to be embarrassed to say that I heard about news stories from Twitter and Tumblr, but now, I realize these sites play a vital role in our consumption of news. I have read and learned so much new information from fellow Millennials by clicking hashtags and their posts are full of intelligent, well thought out opinions. People who are in high school have entire blogs and websites dedicated to educating the public about social justice and human rights, while doing homework assignments for 10th grade history. Moreover, most major news outlets are corporations that have biases built into them. Firsthand accounts are relayed over websites like Tumblr without the singe of corporate greed.
Maybe Millennials are not a bunch of lazy, uneducated phone obsessed zombies, but people just reacting to the immense technology based culture we live in. Every generation has negative and positive attributes and we are not exclusive to this trend.
Sources:
