Make way for the teenage activists because we aren’t going away. With everything that has happened in the world as of late, we have seen a rise in teenage activism, groups of kids all around the world are doing their part in changing the world. Much like anything, critics have attacked youth groups pulling out the teenager card, calling us uneducated, telling us we are fighting for something we are too young to have an opinion on, saying we are too caught up in our phones and social media.
Today I am saying enough is enough; youth activists are the future and we aren’t going away. We are inspiring other teens around the world to get up and fight for what they believe in and we are providing relatable role models within communities. To those who pull the teenager card by saying we are uninformed and uneducated, we are informed, we don’t march in the streets getting poured on, arrested, yelled at and threatened for nothing, we believe in what we’re fighting for.
As for social media, it helps us stay informed. Without social media, the rapid spread of information would be non-existent, the information would no longer be at our fingertips, our ability to form and gather for a protest would take days instead of the hours or minutes it takes now. Social media allows us to communicate with like-minded teens around the world, gathering new information and points of views that change the shape of ours.
We are taught in school that one day the world will be ours and we will need to run it, instead of waiting the twenty years after high school that has been socially implied in past decades, we are taking matters into our own hands now. Using the education we have accumulated from our history classes, where we learned about the civil rights movement and their applications of non-violent direct action, used our language classes to communicate with other groups of people, used our English and writing classes to publish our thoughts, and most importantly we are taking the “you can do it” attitude and putting it to good use.
To all of you who believe millennials and generation Z-ers aren’t doing anything or should not have a place in changing the world: this is our time and we are making a difference.
