Members of Generation Y and Generation Z have a fascination and addiction to all things technology. We love our cell phones, tablets, computers and small little bots that can talk to us and make phone calls. Besides the abhorrent fact that all these devices are enabling laziness and a lack of responsibility in most of our generation, all these things are also encouraging lame hobbies.
People who sit around and make memes are mildly pathetic. Captioning pictures of strangers, clips of old television shows or just pictures of random objects is pitiful and an immense waste of time. The validation from strangers on the internet is not something that anyone should need. They shouldn’t need the retweets or shared posts to validate themselves or their self worth.
It’s great they want to bring a smile to someone’s day or make people on the internet chuckle, but there’s so many more ways to do that. They can tell a funny joke, come up with a witty riddle or create a work of art that brings light into someone’s day.
Most people, myself included, have either received or sent a meme, and they are so fun and usually lighthearted. Sometimes they do help lift a spirit or maybe they’ve helped create an inside joke between unlikely pals, but that doesn’t negate the fact that people behind the memes aren’t getting much credit. What’s their motivation for creating them in the first place?
If they want to feel fulfilled by making others happy, then perhaps they should invest their time more productively through community service, comedy shows where they’ll get paid or any other form of in-person interaction. If they can make people laugh through original captions on unoriginal pictures, then they should broaden their comedic horizons and contribute to art in-person and less on the internet.
It just seems pitiful and sad to be the creator of these pictures. It shows a slight obsession with technology if you’re familiar enough with the technology to be able to photoshop the pictures and video clips, as well as make them go viral on the internet. We shouldn’t be enabling obsessions or addictions to screen time.
We need to get back to encouraging academia, athletics or art. All of those fields can involve technology because everything is healthy in moderation, and technology does have its benefits, but there absolutely has to be a balance.
Generation Y and Z love to joke that they sit around all day creating memes and tagging others in them, but it’s really not funny. Instead, it has created a bad stereotype of millennials sitting in their parents’ basement on the internet all night and sleeping, not contributing in any positive way to society. It’s an unhealthy habit that should be worked on and corrected, or at the very least, not encouraged or normalized.
Jordan Miller is a 21-year-old elementary education junior from New Orleans, Louisiana.
