As a member of Generation Z, I often feel misunderstood and mislabeled as a young adult obsessed with technology and no mind of my own. Many older generations write us off, as though we’ll never amount to anything. They label us as lazy and without motivation. However, I believe that they’re wrong. We’re the last hope for this world. We’re the last ones with the capabilities to change the inner workings of our society. We aren’t lazy, just misunderstood.
Our generation is the last to have experienced a childhood where the world wasn’t completely immersed in the handheld devices titled the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. We played. We used our imagination to create the most elaborate games we could dream of. We rode our bikes to our neighbors’ houses. We played outside with our siblings. Our recesses in elementary school consisted of “4-square,” “tag,” and “wall-ball.” We lived. It wasn’t until many of us were eight-to-ten-years old that these devices were introduced to us. As we got older, these devices became increasingly more intrinsic to our day-to-day lives. Yet, we’ve never forgotten our childhood. Our childhood — a time when we still truly explored and lived in this world.
Many of my peers and I actually wish technology had never been introduced into our lives. We don’t want to be consumed by our phones, but are inherently pushed to be. Since its introduction, technology has always been thrust upon us. In elementary school, we were given time in the computer lab to make us technologically literate. Then in middle school, we were given iPads to do our work, making us rely on technology for everything we did, including that of our school work. Even in high school, we were given Chromebooks or laptops. Every assignment we did, every college application, every book we read was put on a device. We were told in every fashion that technology was the most useful tool for us in our lives. This carried into how we felt about our own devices. We were trained that technology was inherent to life. Naturally, that followed us into how we viewed our iPhones, iPads, Androids, and even social media. We never chose technology. It chose us.
Despite our generation being inherently chosen to be the guinea pigs of technology, I feel there is hope. There have been countless times when I’ve heard my peers say “they would never give their kids iPads.” We’ve not only seen the effects of technology on kids, we’ve lived it. We have firsthand experience with the way it addicts you, making you get sucked into it without realizing an hour has passed. We don’t want our children to have the same experience. Even if you look at the popular trends of our generation, none of them are our own. Each trend of our generation came from those prior. The wave of mom jeans and scrunchies was from the ’80s, low-rise jeans were from the ’90s and early 2000s, and even the trend towards thrifting touches on various eras. We even brought back things like film cameras and record players. The entirety of our culture has been recycled from the generations before us. All of our trends and significant pieces of our culture are from prior generations reflecting our want to return to the past. It’s this inherent and implicit want that makes us the hope for this world.
“The entirety of our culture has been recycled from the generations before us.”
Ellie Buss
We’re not the generation of laziness. We’re consumed by technology because it was forced upon us. We were trained to rely on it. However, we resisted in our own way, making each and every one of our trends recycle and reuse things of the past. We implicitly acknowledged and put forth our want to return to the way things used to be. We’re not a generation to be discarded, but rather one to be believed in. Generation Z has the power to reinvigorate the world. It’s time for the world to start understanding us. For we’re not the lazy generation, but the clever one. We’re the hope for the world, and people need to start believing in us.