Nowadays, there has been so much talk about the "millennial generation" and the future of our country. Now more than ever, our world needs reform and changes need to be made before anything in our society can improve. With the Silent Generation and the baby boomers getting older, the millennial generation is the next group of leaders. But following the millennials is a new generation of citizens. This generation is known as Generation Z. To put it in simple terms, Generation Z is today's "children." While there are many characteristics of this generation, the biggest trait that is associated with Generation Z is the use of technology. Many older people see this as a serious problem, and most millennials do too. But what's frustrating is that people continually group millennials (specifically the ones who are on the younger end of the spectrum) with generation Z.

When you look at kids today, you see toddlers playing on tablets, young kids playing video games with their headsets on and pre-teens texting, tweeting and posting on Instagram all day long. I was born at the tail end of the millennial generation (January of 1997) and believe it or not, my childhood was NOT filled with tons of electronic devices, contrary to popular belief. We always had a TV. Because, who doesn't? We always had a computer in our house, and our parents didn't have those growing up. But as kids, we didn't have unlimited access to the computer by any means. The internet was so new at the time that it was totally off limits for my younger brother and me. And even then, the computer was only used for schoolwork or the occasional low-quality computer game. But it wasn't until the later portion of my time in middle school that I even seriously started using the internet or the computer. Everyone is different, but in my opinion it wasn't that uncommon for kids my age to have very little experience with those sort of things. That alone makes us different than this generation. We didn't have unlimited access.

I got my first phone when I was 11 years old. At the time, that was a young age to have a phone. But now, it seems like all 11-year-olds have some sort of device that can communicate with other people. Whether it be an iPod, smartphone or just a low-end cell phone, they all have them. But there's a huge difference between kids' phones today and my phone at 11 years old: my phone literally couldn't do anything except call my parents. The texting was blocked, it had no internet and its sole purpose was to communicate with my mom and dad when I went somewhere without them. I'm not saying that some parents now don't put restrictions on their child's phone, but the majority of kids I've seen use their phone for more than just calling their parents. They have internet access, texting capabilities and more than likely, social media accounts. It seems like millennials are constantly being associated with this younger generation like it's "our fault" that technology is everywhere we turn. Yes, my generation does know how to use technology, we do use social media sites and we can be slightly obsessed with our phones. But we aren't a generation of young adults who grew up with all this technological madness.

I had no social media whatsoever until I was about to start high school (which even then I only had a Facebook account) and I went on YouTube on occasion. Comparing my time as a middle-school and early high school student to kids who are that age now, shows an absolutely incredible difference between my generation and theirs. Kids now are Instagramming from the age of 10. Half the kids I babysat in high school had some sort of smart device in their hand. But when I was their age, I didn't even know what an "app" was because, as far as I knew, they didn't exist. Social media, smartphones and the entire internet world we find ourselves in today did not exist. We just aren't the same as them.

Everyone seems to hate millennials. And I think part of the problem is that everyone seems to think that we are clones of kids today. But it's not our fault that technology has evolved how it has, and we are not completely to blame for technology being so embedded in our children's lives. We're called the millennial generation because we grew up in a time when technology was constantly changing. And technology is always changing, I get that. But those 20 years that we grew up in were critical in getting us where we are today. We aren't the same as kids now, and we didn't grow up like them. We shouldn't be grouped together and ridiculed because of how the next generation of citizens is living their lives. We're different. It's as simple as that.