I’ve been trying to be nice about it because you know, some of you are right. Some students sit in class and just play games on your phone. But don’t tell me I’m not allowed on my phone in class because “our generation doesn’t know how to physically connect and have real connections”. If you see me at home after school, don't tell me to “go outside and put your phone down. You kids have forgotten how to enjoy the world around you”.

Wrong

85% of the time most of us are on our phones, we’re handling our lives and trying to stay involved in current world events. Me personally, I find games on my phone a waste of space.

So here’s a reality check for you early generation folk who think we’re just mindless drones lost in our phones.

You don’t seem to realize that 90% of our generation has smartphones for good reason. All you had at our age was probably an agenda, a landline and a giant desktop computer that still operated with a floppy disk to help run your life and get you through school research and projects.

I can imagine how hard it must have been back then to stay in contact with your group for projects or stay in contact with a professor for questions on the assignment if no one was just sitting by their landline phone. Not to mention that you need a desktop computer, so you have to sit in one spot to type anything.

Being the very involved person I am around campus I would fail if I couldn’t write on the go.

Now we have these things called smart phones that fix those problems. Our phone is our agenda, our communication with professors, our group project members, our calculator, our search engine and our google doc all in one. All in the palm of our hand.

We can research our project, type it out and share it on a document so our project partners can read it in real time, while we’re still making edits. All while I’m waiting in line for lunch, or walking to practice after class. Hell, even while a teacher is showing a boring video for a lazy day in class.

And that my elderly gen, is just the academic uses.

In our fast paced, over tested existence as millennials, our phones are our news feeds to the world. They’re our connection to the political, social and environmental problems of the world in real time. You’ve drilled into our heads since our toddler-youth that this is our world and one day we’ll have to run it, but also need an education.

We finally figure out a way to do both and you berate us for it?!

In addition, for some people who go to school away from home, it’s their only connection to family. Sorry-not-sorry, sometimes during class is the only time family members are available to talk and not working. If texting is the only connection they have to their family at that time, who are you to tell them no?

So please don’t stand there and assume I’m sitting on my phone oblivious to the world around me, playing games on my phone or scrolling through Pinterest, and call me a millennial drone. When in reality I’m probably trying to stay updated on a project and stay informed in current events to make sure that my kids and your grandchildren will have an environmentally safe and green planet to live on. A future with afterschool programs and minimal corruption.

To think, I can impact the world with what I’m holding in the palm of my hand. But you know what, you’re probably right. I should just put my phone down and take a walk outside in our ever deteriorating climate instead of trying to help fix it.

Now debate that, America.