“Today, people get offended over everything!” is a sentiment that I and most likely everyone else in my generation has heard grumbled by an older relative over a news story or social media post.

Over the past few years, younger people have started to become more politically and socially active, and overall more outspoken. I can imagine this may be startling to older individuals, considering they grew up in a time where children and teens were meant to be seen and not heard. Any offense that younger generations may take to their usual behaviors probably feels to them like we are being ridiculous, or that we’re just touchy. This is incorrect. We are simply more connected to and educated about the world around us.

It’s a known fact that the younger generations of today have more accessible knowledge than any before them, as well as the fairly new phenomenon of social media. With this, it is inevitable that we are more in touch with the world around us, and thus more freely opinionated. In the past, if something was breaking news, it still took days to print, publish, and be digested by the public. Today, the President of the United States has a Twitter account enabling him to update the public multiple times a day on what is presently happening. Within a few minutes of that tweet, young adults can do supplemental research on their phones, come to an opinion within the hour, and voice it.

A wonderful benefit of this speed and direct contact is the ability to incite change. A small example of this would be the production team of the new Sonic movie taking the character back to the drawing board after fans were outraged at seeing the animation of the furry blue hedgehog. Another more striking exhibit is the nation of Brunei backtracking on its decision to enforce the death penalty for homosexuality after a global outcry, largely created by the law going viral on social media.

Young millennials and Gen Z may have problems with ideals appropriate in Boomer and Gen X times, but that is normal and expected from a younger group of individuals. As humans grow and evolve throughout the years, so do ideologies and stances on different issues. After all, it was once seen as perfectly normal to own slaves, or to keep women out of the workplace. Then a younger generation came along, decided they weren’t going to accept it, and they changed it. Someday, the issues we get offended over today will be in the history books, and an even younger generation will scoff and look around, wondering how that could have even been argued about.

Every generation sees the one after it as a bunch of crazy youngsters and the one before it as stubborn and outdated. The truth is, we all try to do the best we can while we’re here, but no one can change the past, and no one can keep up with the future.