Change. What is change?  From Dictionary.com, change is defined as, “Something made different.” Yet, the concept of change remains a much more complicated topic, and one that has consistently remained an intrinsic quality of the human psyche.  Since Copernicus first suggested the earth was actually not the center of the universe and even countless times before that, humans have been able to fundamentally change the lens in which they view life.

However, in the past, young people never had a concrete opportunity to express themselves and advocate for what they believed in. But what we’ve seen as the years have gone by has been nothing less than a full-scale digital revolution, with young adults leading the way.  We all know the feeling, right?  Whether its having to explain to mom for the eleventh time what a hashtag is on Twitter, or helping grandma change the channel on T.V, we have all been in situations in which our seemingly inherent knowledge of technology has been called upon by an adult. But even with these automatic skills in technology, we are still unfortunately missing the larger picture.  We have the tools at our fingertips to facilitate change, but we rarely utilize them.  And that is where the question of this article comes back into play,  why is young change the best change?  Think about it for a moment or two.  Just as how change itself is a complicated ideal, this issue is far from straightforward.  So, lets look at it another way, and change the lens.

To many teenagers, social media is as large a part of their lives as going to school or even sitting down to eat lunch. The only problem is that this controlled, curated virtual lifestyle allows us to dictate almost every facet of what we would like to see, experience and learn. This is not necessarily detrimental, but it is within our nature to fill this lifestyle with things that make us happy.  When given the choice between following that hilarious parody account or Human Rights Watch, most teenagers would choose the former option.  And not to say that hilarious parody accounts are bad, because I think we all know just how funny they can be…

    But there lies one of the fundamental problems facing teenagers today and the reason I created this blog.  We create this bubble around our social media sites and in essence replicate that bubble around ourselves.  Protecting us and shielding us from the injustice we have a duty to fight against.  Many thoughts assuage our fears, telling ourselves, “”It is just too unpleasant to have to deal with what’s going on there, and besides I’m only a teenager so why worry about it now.”  With the same tools we could be using to combat such injustice, we instead choose to blind ourselves.

Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way. With my generation of hardworking, talented individuals that can just as easily configure computer settings as they can write a research paper the night before,  there is no better potential platform for socially conscious activism.  Even if it means following that hilarious parody account and Human Right’s Watch, it’s a start. Now, at this point I hope you’re asking yourself, “What can I do to start, well, changing things?”  I’d be happy to answer you too. Check out the next post and we can start working on it.

Let’s show that young change truly is the best change.

Written By:

Sam Gorman, Founder of Youngchange-Bestchange