I have grown up in an age that condemns me for my birth year and that tells me I am inherently lazy, a spoiled brat and a couch potato who tweets through life instead of living it. Our wise elders explain to us simple-minded millennials that all we have to contribute to the world is a thriving meme culture and a commitment to a variety of brain-numbing technologies. To the M*A*S*H*-worshiping skeptics worried that we are burning their beloved red, white and blue to the ground, everything is going to be fine. Our world just doesn’t look like yours anymore.

As our nation’s poet laureate notes… ‘the times they are a changin’, possibly faster than they ever have before." Information spreads at a pace that would make Edward R. Murrow’s head spin. Yet, millennials stay glued to their phones; sometimes for beneficial reasons and other times for pleasure. I’m not going to pretend that our generation’s interaction with our technology is based largely around political or social participation; we use plenty of mental absorption on videos of cats dressed as pirates and relatable gifs about finals week. But in a time where a carrot in a wig can run our country, I believe some escapes are allowable. Even with these distractions, we are connected—we are involved. You cannot scroll through your social media feeds without seeing a news article about the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy or a video on Pence’s Planned Parenthood policies. Even if you just read a headline, you are more informed.

Of course, this brings up the controversy of fake news and ill-researched media platforms, but it is progress. We are all active participants. Just because our ‘clicktivist’ participation is a strong divergence from the trashcan protests of the Miss America Pageant or the great marches for racial equality, it doesn't make it invalid — we are evolving with the times. Millennials are cognizant of the world around them and adapt to it quickly. We realize the power of the dispersal of information and pair our online activism with the tested methods for change used in the past.

You call us sensitive, obsessed-with-political-correctness babies who are constantly getting our feelings hurt. You may think that we are weak, but we are not. We care. It is fair to say that we may not always know how to care in the right ways. White activists are still trying to find their place in movements such as Black Lives Matter and need to achieve a balance between being a supporter and taking ownership of something that is not theirs to take. But there is conscious effort and purposeful compassion present that is undoubtable. We are the faces of intersectionality. We are battling sexism, racism, ageism, classism and homophobia. We are fighting for those who do not have voices, and simultaneously advocating for ourselves. Just as we do not assume that all Baby Boomers are a photocopy of the Brady Bunch, it cannot be assumed that stereotyped millennials mocked on popular media are representative of our attitudes or goals. I am not the new Rory Gilmore--a job won’t land in my lap because I have a college degree, nor do I feel entitled to this scenerio. Most millennials must work for everything that they have, and in a market where a Bachelor’s Degree means little, we are constantly competing and working to separate ourselves from the masses.

So to the older generations who feel as if millennials are throwing their carefully crafted nation to the wolves (or more likely to the infamous Harambe), stop worrying. We cannot fit into any stereotype you could create for us because we are unable to be captured. We are finished being your scapegoat. We are committed, we struggle, we protest, we fight… and we are here to change your world.