We are the monsters you created

Our generation grew up in the age of technology, video games, movies and phones. We have had access our whole lives to the ends of the internet.  

We grew up in a time when school shootings were blamed on violent video games and movies.  

In a class I had, we were watching a Call of Duty livestream when the professor asked us how we could handle watching the violence of the game.  

The question was shrugged off, why should we be bothered by the deaths of cartoon characters? We grew up in an age of violence and it is not our media consumption.  

The reason we are unbothered by violence isn’t because we play video games based on war and it not that we watch movies about death and murder, it’s that we grew up watching these things happen.  

School shootings, bomb threats, suicide and sexual crimes were things that we were raised on. When CSC went into to lockdown last semester, I listened to people joke and talk about what we could use as weapons in a classroom. And while this may be an appropriate for a bunch of 18-25 year olds, my 8-year-old little sister is learning the same thing.  

We were in second grade watching the video of the Twin Towers fall, watching people jump out of building to their deaths and listening to voicemails left to loved ones.  

We were shown videos of people getting blown up and shot in wars and it is normal, it’s how we learn about the world.  

No one thought twice about showing us videos about children that were kidnapped or killed by strangers. We were told to be scared of the cars that drove past us when we walked alone.  

Even in sex education we’re shown movies about how STDs can kill us and what it looked like and told us how dangerous teen birth was, how getting pregnant would kill us.  

We were taught to hide under desks and in closets in our classrooms, where to run if we could get out of the building if there was a school shooter. Taught how to throw cans and chairs and barricade doors.  

How can we be blamed for not caring about cartoon violence, when we were taught to fear a violent world?