Lenihan 1
Catherine Lenihan
Ms. Schumacher
English 9, Period 4
12 March 2015
Behind the Screen
I sit on my bed at half past midnight, the only light in the room emanating from my phone and
the digital clock in the corner. Over the music blasting through my earphones, I hear footsteps
outside my room. I dive under the covers and extinguish the light, but it’s too late. My mom
storms in, screaming about some new study she read that morning about how blue light from
phones disrupts sleep patterns. I roll over, cradling my iPhone near my heart as she pushes me
and rips it out of my hands. What my mother doesn’t know is that I wasn’t just drooling over
pictures of One Direction and taking selfies. I was simultaneously writing poetry, talking to my
depressed friend from Long Island, reading about the tragic case of Leelah Alcorn, and tweeting
about feminism.
My generation is the “selfish” generation. If you ask our parents to describe us, they
would tell you that all we do is take selfies, text each other about cute guys, complain about
doing our work, and talk back to our parents. As an actual member of the generation that
apparently is going to ruin society as we know it, I can tell you that we are so much more than
meets the eye. We’ve learned that social media and all of these tools we can access can be used
for good as well as bad. We use them to remove the boundaries between people and promote
appreciation and love for our fellow human beings. The greatest lesson that the older generation
can learn from my generation is how to accept people who are different than ourselves.
Lenihan 2
When I walk into my house, the first thing I see is a huge black sign that reads “Lenihan
Family Rules.” It contains a list of commands such as “Don’t take food from the fridge!”,
“Don’t use your phone at the table!”, and the biggest one, “Always obey the man of the
house!” You have no idea how tempted I am to take a knife and slash the sign down the
middle. If I did, though, I would probably be sent to manners school. Growing up, I was told
that I would never be as smart, strong, or as capable as a boy. My father even told me that I
didn’t have the right to free speech because I was a girl. I think that counts as proof that girls can
definitely be smarter than boys. It’s not just a anti-feminism thing, either. He’s prejudiced
against anyone who isn’t a straight, white, Catholic guy in good shape. As a little kid, I thought
it was normal to cross the street in New York when a black man walked past, and I thought it
was normal to call people with turbans and hijabs “terrorists.” He yelled at me for holding hands
with my friends, and he made my best friend cry when he told her she looked like a bowling
ball. None of these traits are things that you’re born with. They’re passed down the generations;
my father learned these stereotypes from my grandparents, and they learned them from my greatgrandparents, and so on. If it wasn’t for the Internet, that tradition probably would have been
passed on to me.
Over the past few decades, discrimination and hate for other people has substantially
decreased, but the creation of the Internet was the beginning of the end. At the very heart of
bigotry is a fear of the unknown, and when my parents and their peers were growing up, there
wasn’t any way to get to know people different from them. Places like China and Africa and the
Middle East seemed so far away when you couldn’t reach them with the click of a button. You
really could say whatever you wanted about another culture, and there wasn’t anyone there to
prove you wrong. The Internet changed everything. I have friends from Saudi Arabia,
Lenihan 3
Singapore, Austria, the UK, Australia, South Carolina, California, New York, and everywhere in
between. They serve as living, breathing proof that stereotypes are just plain lies. If my dad
ever saw a picture of Shay (one of my Saudi friends), he would spit out something about how her
dad hijacked the planes on 9/11, and walk away in a huff. Social media and the technology that
has come to represent my generation taught me that, underneath the dark skin and the hijab, lies
a girl just like me and you. She tends to her huge flower garden every morning, and she wants to
study plants and work at a botanical garden. Her dream is to move to Canada one day, and she
would do anything for the people she loves. We are all humans, and no matter how much we
weigh, how much pigment we have in our skin, what sort of chromosomes we have, or who we
love, we all have to share our planet. It just makes a lot more sense to get along.
It’s hard to change patterns that have been ingrained in our parents and grandparents for
years. How do I explain to my 88 year old grandmother that it’s not okay to make fun of two
guys holding hands? My generation is special because we’re the first people to grow up in a
truly connected society. We’ve reached the age where our minds are flexible. We can think for
ourselves, but we don’t have strong opinions about certain topics yet. My peers and I are blank
slates being drawn on by every member of society. We can be the first ones to get it right and
love everyone for who they are. Obviously, there are open-minded adults and bigoted kids, but
more often than not, it’s the other way around. The Internet has brought a shift in power. If our
open-minded teenagers grow into open-minded adults, suddenly the bigoted people will get a
taste of their own medicine. They’ll be the minority in a world run by people who get along. So
the next time you catch yourself judging someone based on a stereotype, look beyond the clothes
and the skin and everything else. Look at their hearts -- that’s where acceptance begins.