Today, I noticed something very similar in everyone’s conversations but unfortunately, it’s not news.

Generic garbage is spewed from the mouths of teenagers everyday, but with such large advancement in technology, scientific research, and communication that benefit from uses of such science and technology: the real question is why is it not used to its full advantage?

This generation is subject to the endless brainwashing by the media and quite simply, it distracts us from the real problems. While memes continue to populate the Internet, reality is ignored because it doesn’t have catchy sound effects or a leading protagonist with a gorgeous love interest. We turn our cheek to the things that we don’t like or if they don’t sell sex, drugs, or the idea of fame.

I would like to understand further why we can hold an entire conversation with virtual type messaging but when it comes to being face-to-face with the same human-being it’s mostly awkward stares and/or looking at your phone to “check what time it is”. The only conversations that hold our interests are trivial, their only effect banal.

When did we become sheep? When did we decide that a viral picture of a dress is more important than the 220 Christians kidnapped by ISIS, Net Neutrality, terrorism in Nigeria, Russia’s war in the Ukraine, and yet another Wolf-cry of war from North Korea to the United States?

It may seem I’m blowing a meme out of proportion by being so angry at something so trivial, but I feel like talking negatively about things like this is the only way to get a point across to understand we’ve blatantly ignored national and worldwide situations by being a part of mouse-trap media.

Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Snapchat are all social networks that can be used to bring awareness of issues that are worldwide. Instead, we pass around images of cats, dogs and dresses.

There is nothing wrong with having something to laugh at online. It would be hypocritical of me to claim that I am not guilty of letting frivolous things get to me. There are sites dedicated to wasting time and trivial forms of entertainment.

But sadly, those sites are the norm. In the 1950’s, Edward R. Murrow warned that television was being manipulated by powerful interests to dumb down our society. It appears that the same powerful interests are doing the same thing with the Internet.

Or is it just us?

“It’s the choosing that’s important, isn’t it?”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver