I was standing in a line at Starbucks one lovely morning and it could not help but blow my mind that all I saw was people looking at screens. Looking to my left, a man on his computer, my right, a woman on her tablet, and in front of me, a line of individuals on their Smart Phones. We are generation Z; the ones who have a great dependance on the Internet and are to be grateful enough to have high technology.

 Though our era is highly smart, the world is becoming more and more apathetic. We have access to technology and can do good with it, yet we are not using it for that. The Internet floods our minds with occurrences throughout the world and we are constantly tied into others lives. Twitter shows us a tremendous amount of headlines, tweets, videos, stories, etc. while they are informative, they do not necessarily promote activism.

Nowadays, students wake up and instead of reading a newspaper lying on our kitchen tables, pick up their Smart Phones or turn on the television. We wake up and read what our friends tweeted or texted us while we were sleeping.

Furthermore, us humans receive new news and updates constantly and our Twitter feeds are just one outlet, mindlessly scrolling through unimportant information. Reading a world news site is a much different scenario. You are learning about the world and what is happening outside of sterling, VA. We get a mix of truly important information from around the world in addition to the gossip in social media. For example, you might see news from the crisis involving Ukraine and then a funny cat picture on twitter, two very different severities of importance.

Today, when one sees something they like they carelessly press the “retweet” button or “favorite” button on the post. In some cases, seeing a post about a  tragic event that asks for a retweet, people feel good about actually retweeting it behind their phone screen rather than doing something about it in person. I would certainly call that apathy, wouldn’t you?

Overall, apathy is a social problem that will take years to overcome, if we ever start to do something about it. I encourage all of you to instead of retweeting that picture of starving children in Africa, to put down your devices and help the community around you. Be an activist, do something meaningful that helps you and someone else, and be aware of the news around the world.