Speaking your mind is great, but how many are doing it — by being overly sensitive and making others feel guilty for no reason — isn’t that effective. Speaking your mind may be something Generation Z needs — it is how things change, after all. But recently it’s become apparent to me that we’re all a little too soft. What has been considered “offensive” has become so broad that people can’t talk about anything anymore.

Why is everything being made such a big deal?

If you were to go back ten or 20 years in the past and say the same thing that society freaks out about now, most people would just laugh or take that comment lightly, like it was supposed to be taken. You can’t say make a joke or tease someone by lightheartedly saying, “You’re dumb” or something similar without someone getting offended.

You can’t say something lightly, especially if it has serious undertones, such as if you’re giving a friend advice on how to better themselves. Even if you say something factual now, people get offended. And most of the time it’s not even the person you’re talking to — it’s someone judgmental who you didn’t direct the comment towards.

We are all trying so hard to be “cool” and “popular”, which means by default you’ll have different groups of people with different views on what is “cool” and “popular”. To some extent, we should care about our high school social status, even though it’s fleeting. But that shouldn’t mean we should have to be silent in order to protect that status. We should be allowed to have normal opinions without inoffensive things being seen as “offensive”, “rude”, or “cancel worthy”.

With little years left until we graduate, social status won’t even matter. But people still want to tie cancel culture in with being a “sensitive snowflake” and judging anyone that ever makes a comment about anything remotely controversial.

“The world is just so sensitive because of how everyone was raised,” said a Mead High student who asked to remain anonymous. “They weren’t raised with [any] toughness in their lives.”

Another anonymous student said that because some students “are spoiled[,] they can’t take criticism and they’re too scared” to make any commentary. They said that learning to “handle the stress” of everyday life without putting the opinions of others down is something that needs to happen.