"Z" by Shravan B Nair

Adults know everything about "us", don’t they? They think that we are a group of tech-addicted rogues, with absolutely no potential at all. We spend the best of our days smashing away at our phones to someone living somewhere. Don’t even get them started about the worst days, those days when they call us gazillion times for dinner because we don’t have time for that anymore.

What I would like to clear up first is this: what wrong did technology do to make you hate it so much, adults? Is it because it saved millions of lives with advances in the pharmaceutical industry? Or is it because it made your lives so much easier with online shopping and banking?

Moreover, on top of all this criticism, we have to bear the name that they gave us. No, please, not that name. GENERATION Z. The last and probably the most boring letter in the world was what they gifted us. Just great! Well, well, well. You adults are in for a shock when you see what we have got! It’s finally time for the revelation of the century…

But before that, let me tell you a short story. When I was smaller, my favourite show was Teen Titans, and my most favourite character was Cyborg. Come on, what’s cooler than shooting lasers out of your hands and being able to self-destruct? My small mind wished to become a cyborg too. The only problem: it would take a long time before I do so.

Or would it?

As the years went on by, a feeling of shock enveloped me, and it grew inside me. I slowly started to realise that…we are all CYBORGS.

The human soul has become one which cannot exist without its technological counterpart. We have bonded so irrevocably with technology that we cannot survive once we are separated from it. Even young babies are exposed to technology in a way that fuses its flesh with the smart phone permanently. This bond continues with them until they reach their deathbed. Technology is a boon for us, an escape route into a paradise that frees us from the clutches of being ill-informed and ignorant. Let us admit whole-heartedly that we are half-robots. There is nothing shameful about this; a computerised but warm heart is always better than a real but cold one, is it not?

Furthermore, in a world filled with so many people, we are increasingly being ignored. Every family wants their sons or daughters to succeed, without the least bother of what the other children are doing. “Why care about them?” is a common question that is asked in this era. Only our dear parents remain, to support us and lift us, and without them we would have no one to appreciate us for what we truly are. The high population means that the world is now filled with the highest number of smart and intelligent people, yet this also means that our discoveries are not as important as those made by people of olden times. I am sure that even if we made a time machine, nobody would care to even glance at us. And to think that Einstein became so celebrated because of simple theories.

 “Live and let live” is the common motto of this time period. We, as Generation Z, have a tweak to this. It is not “to live and to let live” but “let’s live to let live”. This is our ideology: living for a greater cause that can benefit everyone and help them to live. We really want to do something great for the world. We want to turn the world around. However, we can only do so in our own little way, with technology by our side. Technology is not the only thing we need either. We need the support of older generations, no matter how reluctantly. You are our guardians, my dear adults. It is through you that we see the future. It is through technology that we see the future. May the synergy between our human and computer guardians be there for us through our hard times.

Additionally, we want adults to know that we are not so different from them. Every generation has a different addiction: for some generations, it was music and for others, it was war. Just like these addictions, ours is technology. Adults must start to see us as themselves. Like how a medieval boy might have ached for war, we ache for our devices.

Some adults might point out that for us, technology is an obsession; they might tell us we are taking it too far. I refute by saying that not every Gen Z member is over-using their access to technology. Only a select few can commit such a crime, and these people are present in all generations. Let me ask you, adults: weren’t there any misusers during your young age? There would have been, for certain. Take children who turned to war for gold and glory. Is this not a mis-usage as well? The truth, simply put, is that we are just like you, from infancy to adolescence and on.

Finally, I would like to pass on a message to the adults that govern over us. WE are an open book that no one seems to be interested in reading, and therefore we are misunderstood. Prejudice fills the thoughts of those who read our stories.

We are simple but elegant. Just like the letter Z, we are unique. You won’t find the letter Z in every word. That’s why we are the most special of the bunch, the rarest in the crowd, and the most special in the room.

Be as mighty as Z can be, my fellow adolescents. We are the future, we are the hope, we are the light. We are…

…Z

(Article belongs to MIT. It was sent for MIT Young Writers Essay Contest)