By Rosie Hoile

Youth lends itself to idealism, passion, and energy. It also lends itself to ignorance, neutralism, and a basic desire to have fun. These two sets of characteristics often clash in my own mind as I try and combat a desire to put forth all my effort into my homework or grades while at the same time desiring much more to catch up on How to Get Away with Murder. Every young person experiences this duality, but something I’ve noticed among our generation, and especially in our own Cary Academy community, is that these two types of youth are not experienced together anymore—as some people force themselves to be constantly active and passionate about different things, others find this mode of living much less appealing and make an effort not to care about those same issues. In simpler words, there are groups of teenagers who dedicate their entire selves to activism culture, and others who decidedly ignore that side of being young. And though this is a phenomenon existing within the whole of our generation, it is extremely noticeable, divisive, and damaging within our school.

I’m neither trying to play devil’s advocate nor recruit fellow students for a political revolution, but I am trying to at least begin to bridge the tension-filled gap between these two groups of people. Instead of fence-sitting, I’m going to let you know right now that I’m one of those unnecessarily activist types. But in the past year I’ve grown and moved away from the often toxic nature of youth activism culture, by necessity more than anything else.

“Youth activism culture” seems to be a broad and vaguely positive set of nouns, but its effect on susceptible teenagers is quite pronounced and specific. Growing on sites like Tumblr, Reddit, or even Twitter, constant, aggressive discourse is thrown in the faces of kids who often don’t expect it or know what to make of it. They are presented with such a radically liberal, passionate and usually rather eloquent group of people just like them—whether they are part of a minority and are seeking support or there to look at cute pictures, they get pummeled with constant posts containing messages not altogether negative, but so indoctrinating that trying to remove yourself from that environment makes you feel guilty, like you’re ignoring your duty as a young liberal. It makes you tired, angry, sad and confused, not sure who to believe or how much of your intuition to trust.

Again—as one of the most liberal people I know, I’m not trying to demonize the political left, nor minors in general. While Tumblr and sites like it can provide a harsh environment to learn and form opinions about the world around us, it also fosters incredible character growth, support groups, and in-depth, responsible and important activism outlets for young people with a lot of energy. Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and other sites started the Black Lives Matter movements in response to a real threat against the black community, which would have been rendered impossible without youth access to those sites and people.

Conversely, the other members of our generation don’t really care about online or real life activism, especially at such a stressful and formative time in their lives. This is also fine, and it only becomes a problem when this ambivalence is coming from a similarly toxic source—in this case, not discourse-central Tumblr, but the antithesis of that: South Park, Family Guy—media shows that carried a lot of us through middle school and indoctrinated us with the message that caring about something is uncool. According to South Park and similar shows, being an early activist about extremely liberal ideals makes you a sort of untouchable, like you’re suddenly so unstable that trying to hold a normal conversation with you could make you explode. Not only that, but a lot of the negative, offensive messages presented as jokes (though the intention is obviously to shock and offend) get ingrained as a sort of semi-truth in many minds. And lo, the misappropriation of the concept “triggering” is born, the ridicule at the idea of gender fluidity, the complete disrespect for young activists.

Herein lies the inevitable conflict between these two groups—one indoctrinated with furious discourse and the other with unrelenting, determined ambivalence.

The solution I propose: mutual respect and responsibility.

Infamous “social justice warriors”—your hearts are in the right place, and I’m totally with you—but just take a step back for a hot second. Are you taking offense to the fact that other people just don’t care as much as you? Are you overreacting? Or do you need to allow yourself the ability to pick your battles? I’m here to tell you that the world of political activism does not rest on your shoulders—though I know it can, in all seriousness, seem like it sometimes. Respect those that hold different passions than you, since you will never be surrounded with people who spent middle school ranting about feminism on Tumblr.

To the rest of you—I know being surrounded with political liberalism can be exhausting, but this is the world we live in. You’re a part of society whether it’s cool to be or not, and while you’ll keep laughing at whatever you think is funny, try—really, actually try—to recognize why others might be very, very offended. Respect those that choose to spend their time trying to make the world a better place. Keep your opinions strong, but your mind open. Respect where they’re coming from—and if there’s something you can do to make their life a little easier, why wouldn’t you do it? Keep your mouth shut when you hear the phrase “non-binary” or “black lives matter”, and realize that it comes from a bigger place than the joke South Park made in its SJW episode.

And most importantly: we all have a responsibility to make our CA community as supportive a place as we can, and we also all have a responsibility to ourselves. For some of us, that means allowing our minds to step away from the intoxication of activism culture—for others, it means opening their mind to new ideas and new empathies.

I hope you’ll agree that this tension between our classmates is something that has to at least lessen, as it’s now impacting classroom discussion, assemblies and interpersonal relationships. But to begin to solve the problems, it takes an equal amount of effort.

From everyone.