Walking around the school, as my esteemed colleague, Paiton Swope suggested, I noticed that most of the students here are generally the same. They all dress similarly and act in a predetermined fashion.
Except for the occasional few, we all follow the rules and guidelines by the school. There are, of course, the familiar people you see in the hallway who are “rebelling” against the corporate machine, or their parents or whomever they’ve decided ruined their lives. These people dressed neatly in clothes bought from Hot Topic, who see themselves as outcasts but still buy their clothes from the same mall as the kids dressed in Hollister.
It seems that we all fit neatly into our categories, but how with all the turmoil and injustice currently occurring in the world do we all just sit back and let it be?
With two wars on our hands and numerous travesties occurring daily, you’d think that the youth would protest and try and change the system — or at least care. During the Vietnam War, the youth protested and fought in historical proportions redefining an entire age, but today our “millennial” generation of Facebook and text messaging often hardly seems to notice that people are fighting everyday in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now there is nothing wrong with Facebook and texting; they could be the biggest advancements in our modern history. But it seems as if were using the connection in all the wrong ways. In an age where you can instantly tell someone on the other side of the world what you did Saturday night, we don’t use this for the advancement of other people. The ’60s and ’70s were full with opinionated high school and college students who broke previous boundaries to express their opinions. Today, however, you see students who don’t seem to care.
Why doesn’t our generation fight?
Why are we not protesting genocides and pointless wars?
Is it because our generation is less liberal than our parents? Polls suggest just the opposite; for instance, our generation approves of gay marriage in larger percentages than any other yet. My theory is that we as a generation don’t feel we have anything to rebel against because it doesn’t have an effect on us. The Internet, cell phones and other new technologies have made us so connected that we’ve become disconnected from the problems around us. We are too caught up with our online lives to notice the problems outside of our close-knit communities of MySpace and Facebook. 
Because our lives haven’t been changed by the problems in the world, we don’t see any reason to do anything about it.
What will it take for us to stand up and take action?
A draft?
Another war?
Or can nothing grab our attention at this point?
Are we too far gone, too out of touch with exterior problems that absolutely nothing could get us involved?
I do not know.