Writing, social media and the millennial

I’M from a pace-setting generation, a generation that’s in with the new and out with the old. A generation that’s fast paced and has everything at their finger tips. I am from a generation that has the computer in all of its glory,  Google and everything it means. Yet, I’m also from a generation that has Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and basically social media. We’re a generation that shares everything on the go, we love to take pictures and filter it, to copy quotes, to Google everything and act like we know it. A generation that is more concerned about looking good than feeling good. I am a Millennial.

Writing is an art of painting pictures with words, of telling an old story in a captivating new way. Writing is an art form that requires deep personal growth and deep thinking. It is an art form understated but very much powerful. A force that is so powerful, it can change everything. I am a writer, yet I find it so sad that I am from a generation that has sadly lost the art of writing. For writing is an art that requires thinking, seeing, listening and most of all, reflecting. Unfortunately, we are none of those things.

We’re a generation of posers, selfie takers, a generation that is so narcissistic. It’s alarming. We have the whole world at our finger tips but we would rather play games, post pictures and count our likes. We do not get involved in reading to make you better. We are more concerned with the Twitter war of the day. We live in a world of instant gratification, everything given to us on a silver platter and fast too. We have become lazy, physically and intellectually. Even as parents, we do not care about the harder parts of life only the finer ones. We’re more concerned with how beautiful we appear to people than how we really are or how we should be. We have become so lazy, we do not think or even have the capacity to.

Recently, I had the opportunity to read Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country: A personal history of Biafra and as usual I was amazed at the quiet powerful words that never failed to hit their mark. I found myself learning at the feet of a great writer, one who quietly changed his generation. I found it interesting as I read further that he listed so many names of great people and great writers who were all Nigerians but mostly of all people who were great thinkers. They weren’t afraid to change the pace, start a new genre and write so powerfully the world had to take notice. That was the time of Christopher Okigbo, Zulu Sofola, Mabel Segun, Chinua Achebe, Flora Nwapa and Wole Soyinka. Whether we liked it or not, these were people who did not accept the status quo. Yet I found myself reflecting, how many of us of this generation could do that now?

We spend so much of our time tweeting, facebooking, whatsapping and snapping that we fail to open our eyes and be more aware. It’s a cycle of likes and votes and pictures and wars but never intellectual debates, great conversations, reflecting and reading books not comics, not romance but real books about real issues. We become so caught up that we become desensitised and dehumanised, thinking only of ourselves. We live our lives sharing so much without actually living that much. Even those who pay attention to it find themselves getting sucked in gradually, a cycle that never quite ends. We are forgetting that to truly grow, you need to be introspective and reflective, care about the other person, build real relationships not online ones. We’re a generation disconnected and disenfranchised.

As a part of this generation, I find myself getting sucked in too so to protect my sanity and humanity, I take social media breaks. I detox my life so I can be better and I find myself happier, calmer and more in touch with reality. I only wish we all knew this. What I find most alarming of all though is that we are a generation of know-it-all who know nothing at all. You cannot tell us anything. We think we know everything and anything just because we can. We do not learn or seek out knowledge. We are comfortable in ignorance. I fear that we will have nothing to pass on to the next generation but a bunch of illnesses, loneliness and a self-absorbed approach to life. I am a writer, a millennial afraid for the generation to come.

• Wale-Olaitan is of the Faculty of Education, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.