The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

Editorial: Over-Everything!

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By Katya Agatucci | The Broadside (Contact: [email protected])

Katya Agatucci

Over consumption, overpopulation, over-tweeting, over-the-top news: I’m overwhelmed.

Swamped, dazed, dumbfounded, flabbergasted or whatever you want to call it. Processing the current news lately has drained my battery completely.

All I see on my phone or computer screen is a constant surge of news about over-consuming social media, ads for items I probably do not need, or what our president just tweeted. These so-called problems or conflicts about not kneeling for the national anthem or a rapper insulting our president seems to blur our vision.

When I do find myself glancing at news apps or current events on my laptop, I feel this overwhelming amount of stress, sadness, and anger toward everything happening in the world that and the issues that we, as a society, seem to not have much interest.

As a 19-year-old who has no experience in dealing with anything other than deadlines and roundabouts in Bend, I solely cannot take over and fix everything that is horrible in the world, even though oversaturation makes me feel like I should have answers.

Even if every single person in the country can’t fix every crisis in the world at the touch of a hashtag, talking about it is a start. I don’t think that we are “hashtagging” or creating statuses about the right things.

The Scientific American reported that an average American uses the resources of 35 native people of India and 53 times the amount of resources than an individual from China uses.

The Venezuelan government has been constantly ignoring the fact that they are facing a humanitarian crisis, along with the United States and many other countries.

The Washington Post (loosh remember to italicize this when you put it on the page… and delete this) found that at least 50 percent Venezuelans are eating unusual foods to sustain nutrition. They have stopped eating foods they would deem as important, they are eating less, and are reducing their consumption to let others eat. Forty percent of its people can go an entire day without eating.

These critical points at the opposite end of the spectrums are humanitarian issues that are not brought to our attention enough.

I could keep going about other catastrophes and disasters in the world that aren’t, but should be, in the trending topics on social media venues. If I did that, I would just find myself at the beginning of this editorial again.

Why aren’t we talking about the damaging consumption rates in America? Why haven’t I seen more about what is happening in Venezuela? Most importantly, how is our current generation going to continue to live in a world like this?

I can’t be the only person who is in a state of constant stress whenever I read about the current events in the world. I want to know how you feel about the access of social media that our generation has and why we aren’t utilizing it to bring up these important topics to entities in power who can do something about these crises.

Let the media oversaturated unite. Perhaps small steps are needed, so let’s begin there. The COCC community is a socio-cultural microcosm, so let’s begin to balance our media consumption between things that entertain and immediately interest us with things that can make our world a better place. ■

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