Dear Adults:
(Important)
Don’t you dare talk down to or about Generation Z. Don’t you dare.
We were forced to grow up so quickly.
Sure, we had childhood experiences like climbing a tree or having a sleepover. But we had our innocence ripped away from us like a band-aid protecting an open wound.
We tried to get that band-aid back, but by the time we did, it was too late.
Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes.
Sorry doesn’t give us back the hope we lost.
We use humor to cope with the trauma that is shoved down our throats when we were little. And it’s only growing. Our jokes, our memes, our vines, our Tik Toks? Those are coping mechanisms.
Have you noticed that anxiety, depression, and suicide stats have spiked in the past decade? Because I have. Now try and think, why might that be? Come on. You should be able to figure it out. I thought you were supposed to be the smart ones? Or was all that talk about you knowing best just that? Talk?
“This has all made you stronger.” With all due respect, I was a child. I didn’t need to be strong. I needed to be safe.
You have no right to talk about us as if we are weak, fragile, stupid little children. You have no right to act as if you are above us. You lost that right when you dumped all of your problems onto our developing shoulders. You lost that right when you were so incompetent that you couldn’t even try to shape a world where people can be safe.
You have dumped your mess on us. You have made it our problem. But the difference between you and us? The difference is that we care enough to do something about it.
If you are going to force us to pick up your slack, we’re going to take it and we’re going to make it our own. We’re going to use it to create the world we should’ve had.
We are fighting to survive. And we’re going to fucking do it. Either you change and join us, or you get left behind in the dust.
So don’t say “kids these days.” No. You don’t get to call us weak little children when your corrupt system stole our childhoods. We hardly got to be children.
And when you see us fighting oppression?
We’re trying to fix a broken world that we’ve lived with our whole lives. We’re trying to fix it so that generations after us won’t have to worry if they’ll survive to eighteen. So that they won’t have to be scared for a friend going home to an abusive household. So that they won’t have to worry about being kicked out when they tell their parents they’re LGBTQIA+. So that they won’t have to worry about being shot during school. So that they won’t have to worry about being killed for their skin color. So that they won’t have to wonder if climate change will be what kills them.
We were forced to grow up so quickly.
Did you honestly think that we would stay quiet?
