When I was about 13, I didn't have a Tumblr account yet, but I planned on making one. And the first post I was going to make, I had decided, was a little PSA for the LGBTQ+ community, something along the lines of: "Hey, I'm all for gay rights, but could you guys please stop calling straight people boring? It's just being mean." I never did make that post (or a Tumblr account), but 6 years later, I know why it's probably better that I didn't. For one thing, the well-being of straight people is not the top priority in that conversation. For another- it's internet humor, and it's funny. I laugh at jokes about straight people now, and I am one.

This is because for the last six years, I have grown tremendously as a person in terms of my understanding and empathy for other social groups. And that growth, which I am overwhelmingly thankful for, has been almost completely because of social media.

I spend much of my time on my phone, specifically on Instagram, much like every other teenager with an internet connection. But, contrary to popular belief, each second I spend on that app is spent learning. On my explore page, I am constantly reading posts from LGBTQ+ accounts, badass feminists, and accounts dedicated to racial awareness. I might read a long Twitter thread explaining how using fake service dogs is a real issue, a Tumblr post from a Native American girl whose family's reservation was directly affected by the U.S. government, or an infographic explaining the difference between different types of religious headwear. Every day I read stories and learn information from people of endlessly different backgrounds than my own.

I learn a lot about other people in person, of course, and I'm thankful for the real-life conversations I've had in which I've been able to become more educated. But the vast amount of growth I've done as a person, as an empath, as someone who understands that people are different and have different needs that need to be respected, not to mention basic human rights, has been because of social media. And I think that's one of the reasons why it seems that so many young people are open-minded, while so many older people's minds are closed.

Think about it- for many people in older generations, their daily interactions are limited to who they see at work and who they see at home. Staying up-to-date with family on Facebook is likely the extent of their use of social media. While there is never an excuse for hateful intolerance, many older people never have the chance to interact with people outside of their own social groups, which are opportunities for education that are necessary to cause a change of heart. For example, I have several older relatives who are homophobic. But their main source of commentary on the LGBTQ+ community is restricted to themselves. They've never read stories of gay teenagers who struggled to find acceptance from their parents, or transgender adults who battle discrimination in the workplace. They don't have any sort of understanding of the issue from the perspective of someone in the LGBTQ+ community, and without it, their minds are never going to change.

Again, I'm not saying there is any excuse for intolerance like this, because there's not. What I am saying is that it is harder to change the minds of older generations when it comes to social issues because they aren't constantly interacting with social groups different from their own, like teenagers who are on social media every day.

We can't exactly force someone onto social media if they don't want to, and we can't coerce them into conversations with people they don't want to talk to. But if we could bring the content into the mediums that they're using, maybe that could help. More posters on the street explaining why it's important to use people's correct pronouns. More radio shows discussing the lack of disabled representation in the media. More news station segments explaining the difference between appreciation and appropriation.

It is frustrating to see so much hate in the world, but thinking about the reasons why can help us figure out how to combat it. In the meantime, I'm going to go scroll through Instagram- and be thankful that I have such an incredible resource for learning about people different from myself.