Turning 18 in America comes with plenty of independence, such as getting a tattoo without your parent's permission, buying cigarettes, traveling alone, drinking in other countries, and (drum roll please) VOTING! With most of America's voters coming of age and casting their vote for the first time, people must come to realize how much information they need in order to pick a proper leader.
But the 2016 election is ridiculous. Your first election should be a memorable one... but not like this. I can't wait for this election to end.
For me personally, I will not be posting my own political views or
The two nominees can be a cause to all of the circus-like actions during the election. With Trump parading around with locker-room talk and Hillary using major celebrities to get the millennial vote... but they are not to blame. The blame should fall on and only fall on the use of social media.
Social media has been a huge problem during this election. With Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram and everyone who has an account sharing their opinions, the popularity of the election has grown. But social media has also been the go to for political information because major new outlets have their own apps and newspapers on phones. So with news at your fingertips, who do you trust if anyone can post anything about anyone? One news sources calls Hillary "a liar" and another calls Trump "a racist". Should you trust the one with more statistics or do you trust the one with more real life opinions?
With the use of social media in this election, compare it to the elections 2008 and 2012. There was social media in 2008 and 2012, but the connection between social media and politics were not quite there. Newspapers posted on their websites, people tweeted about when they were eating bagels, and others being flooded with Farmville notifications. But no one posted on independent blogs, retweeted with Trump said on Cinco de Mayo, or shared wrong information from websites like HillaryIsALiar.com.
While most people choose to follow a certain newspaper and believe what they state about the nominees, there are a special few who believe everything to no end but it's not their fault. With 2016 being a more technologically involved election and everyone posting what they think, there is too much information and opinions out there for some to handle.
The moral of my article is that even though this election is crazy with people's own judgment on the matter, everyone should be careful on social media. There is such a reliance on the technology and the information that is giving through our 5.5 inch screens that people aren't seeing the truth behind all of the lies. So while Trump and Hillary are going at each other's throats, we are sharing incorrect information, believing it, and then casting our vote because of it.
So as a new, first-time voter, I made sure that I have the correct information and didn't have to believe independent blogs and their opinions on how Trump is the antichrist or Hillary is a murderer. I didn't want my first-time casting my vote to be around two very different candidates and surrounded by crazy social media but this was my luck of the draw. I would rather vote for one of the two of these candidates than to not vote just because of how ridiculous this election is.
I, personally, can not wait until Tuesday comes around and this election comes to an end. Sure, people will continue to complain about their candidate not winning or how the new president will ruin America but sooner or later, it will come to an end. People are more apt to write for four months about the canidates than they are to write for four years about the president.
