Thanks to the media, whenever I hear the term 'Millennials', an involuntary feeling of distaste wells up in me. It's such a loaded term that conjures up images of an apathetic, lazy, entitled, narcissistic iPhone-using brat. I recently read an article about the decaying morality of this generation, and for the life of me I couldn't imagine who they had met to give them this impression. From what I read and hear, angsty young teens are probably giving them this impression. They're not exactly representative of a generation of people born from 1982 onward. The term itself is relatively new. In fact, I had never even head it before I moved to the US in 2012, and at age 21, I wasn't exactly keen on being lumped together with people who hadn't ever listened to the Spice Girls or Alanis Morissette. When the powers that be decided to take all of us Generation Y'ers and make us Millennials, well thanks to all the media hate. we weren't exactly happy.

With all the negatives associated with young people today, when I was invited to a conference entitled the South Asian Millennials Conference 2016, my first instinct was to ignore it. I didn't take it seriously. After all, having the word "Millennials" in the title made me wonder what would we be talking about. Cell phones and the latest Vines? Luckily for me, about ten minutes later I got over it and read the email. I went to the conference and quite honestly I spent a good amount of the two days it lasted wanting to cry. Looking around, all I could see were amazing, smart, driven, socially conscious people trying to make sense of their identities and places in the world. 2014 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ramya Ramana read a poem that could have stopped traffic in Delhi, Ayqa Khan presented beautiful body-positive artwork that spoke to so many people, and Samra Habib challenged stereotypes and limitations with her photography of LGBT Muslims. At no point did any of these amazing women or audience members pause the conference for a selfie, or sit there bored and apathetic. Why don't Millennials have a reputation for being outspoken, bold, empathetic, and passionate if this is what is happening?

Issues of slacktivism aside, what I see around me for the most part are people who care. Yes, those of us who are privileged have smartphones and laptops and tablets, and we use them a lot. I for one am incredibly guilty of this. I feel like I might be surgically attached to my devices. That doesn't mean that young people don't care. Is the issue with the technology or the user? When the elections roll around, a large portion of the vote will come from Millennials. Unlike the people of my parents generation, every single Millennial I know is planning on voting (well, as far as I know). Perhaps I am simply lucky in the people I know, and for being in a liberal arts college environment in the Northeast of the US, but so many people are involved in social change. When I was a young teen the people around me seemed to care less. MySpace was never about raising awareness or sharing articles, it was about posting the right song and having the best top friends. Today even the most self-absorbed teen will be faced with some intelligent content through social media whether they like it or not.

I think these critics need to take a break from the Millennial bashing and ask better questions. For example, what policies were implemented during our time that have caused this generation of young people to be so results driven? What has happened in college admissions that straight A's, a thousand extra curriculars, and mastery of three instruments isn't enough to gain entry to many universities? What is it about educational testing methods that is creating a generation of students who struggle with test-taking? Yes, there are truly terrible Millennial trends like duck lips, funeral selfies, not knowing about Daria, never having listened to The Smiths, The Cure, or Jurassic 5. This is frightening (to a 24 year old dinosaur who just learned 'the instagram' last year), but its not the end of the world. These things don't mean all young people should be relegated to the proverbial rubbish heap. Young people everywhere are standing up for their beliefs, inventing life-saving jackets for refugees and fighting the patriarchy. I just hope that we don't check our idealism at the graduation stage, so we can go on and show the world we're about more than just our phones.