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I believe that what our generation fails to realize is that the future is up to us. There is too much of a gap between those that are younger than us, and those that are older. Our parents were not exposed to today’s mainstream advanced technology until they were adults, while the generation below us has never known life without it. I didn’t own any kind of smartphone until my sophomore year of high school, while my 11-year-old campers from my summer camp job had iPhones.

Kids are like sponges, absorbing anything they see and hear. In such a hypersexualized and ignorantly stereotypical world, the infinite access to the Internet that children can possess at such a young age — kids begin using the Internet, on average, at the age of three — is corrupting our youth, and it is in our generation’s hands to act as mentors.

Around the end of October, two middle-school-age boys in the Bronx were hospitalized after being beaten up by classmates because they were from Senegal, a country in West Africa. Students associated the boys with Ebola, verbally harassing them and addressing them as “Ebola.”

What are these students reading on the Internet and social media? What are they being shown on television and on the news? Are they being taught to question everything they read, or to believe anything they hear? Ignorance is steadily being embedded socially at a younger and younger age. How can we possibly say racism and prejudice is depleted? It is coming back at an even fiercer level.

We have to act as role models to our youth. We are getting older and becoming the adults we once looked up to. If we don’t knock some sense into the generation below us, no one will. There is evidence about girls developing eating disorders at considerably younger ages, girls are learning to sexualize themselves at earlier ages and even domestic violence is increasing at a younger age. The exposure of kids to potentially dangerous images and messages in the media without properly informing or teaching them how to interpret such topics is leading to kids absorbing what they see, and then manifesting it in their actions.

Technology can absolutely be used as a source for good, but it is up to us to make sure it isn’t a tool of misinformation for our kids today. Schools and parents need to teach children that if you hear or read something that may seem skeptical or controversial, you should search for it on Google and read another article or two to cast more light on the subject. Google can be great if you know how to filter out reliable and unreliable resources, yet it can also be extremely detrimental. Parents need to place a greater filter on their children’s phones and computers so there is less access to all the infinite, explicit and age inappropriate content online. For anyone with younger siblings, your younger brother or sister will most likely listen to anything you say and copy most things you do. Help them differentiate between wrong and right and teach them the things that you wish you would’ve known – or that you wish someone would’ve told you – at their age.

They say monkey see, monkey do. Once our generation starts to truly care and take action when it comes to important and relevant issues, the generation after us will follow our footsteps. The dangerous part is not necessarily the topics the media covers, but what they imply and how people interpret it. There really are detrimental effects in believing or internalizing everything you hear, so let’s avoid taking one step forward and two steps back.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Domna Dali at domna.dali@colorado.edu.