I grew up in the era of the TV news, newspapers (yes, the old school printed copies), Cartoon Network and dial-up Internet…
Nicely nostalgic images I will relate to the next generation at some point while trying to convince them of the legacy of me and my peers.
But to be honest, I am not exactly proud of all “trends” we as millennials are setting.
You either love us or hate us (or are us). We are an overly confident, over-consuming generation, who assume we are entitled to everything (so we’re told.)
Personally, I’ve never seen my parents or grandparents getting aggressive with people for disagreeing with their views, but we, millennials, have no problem doing it.
You’ve got to understand us. We are the generation that grew up during the recession, entered a struggling job market and on top of everything have to pay off record amounts of student debt.
As a result some of us have become easily influenced by the style of life rather than the stuff of life.
For example– veganism. While I can still proudly call myself a carnivore, more and more young people nowadays blinedly follow the growing animal-free trend and become vegan.
Of course everyone has freedom of choice and I respect it, but unfortunately, some people ditch animal products for all the wrong reasons.
As you know, veganism is a young trend, which has seen an increase of over 350 percent in the last decade globally. The number speaks for itself…
Social media is undoubtedly a huge driver of veganism and this is why it’s so popular with younger generation.
Just think how many Instagram accounts are promoting vegan hashtags and healthy lifestyles asking you to go meat-free.
It’s not difficult to fall for it, even if you don’t really care.
Same with the issue of animal rights. Ask yourself how much do you really know about it? Are you even interested?
Saying this, animal welfare is not a novelty concept for Millennials. In comparison to other generations, they are very quick to call out animal cruelty or the inhumane treatment of animals as they see it.
While it might sound good, there are two sides to everything.
Given seemingly unlimited access to information via Internet but with no quality control on that info, young people have consumed a lot of the biased material put out by animal rights organisations.
Peta and other animal rights organisations use their humongous social media presence to capture the attention of thousands.
They throw lavish parties, hold media stunts and produce a lot of colourful content to drag attention of Internet lovers. It works. More and more people get tricked into thinking that animal rights activists do a good job.
But, in reality, it’s just a business that is promoting propaganda rather than animal welfare issues.
We blindly trust PETA and its ilk, mostly because of the content on social media.
We say we care about animal welfare, but yet have allow thousands of animals to be killed in the hands of animal rights activists.
I think it’s safe to say that most of us should educate ourselves more on something we so “deeply” care about before shouting out abuse to people working in animal-using sectors.
What trends are we currently setting, and will new generations follow our “sustainable” minds?
As things stand I hope not, because I think as a Millenial generation we are hugely mistaken on many issues. We allow ourselves being led by others instead of making our own minds up.
It’s our duty to better educate ourselves when making decisions about what’s important to us. Our legacy and the next generation deserve it.
