There’s a new trend among teens and young adults Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook almost every week, and when a new trend arises it’s the new biggest thing until the next comes along. A bad trait of the trend following teens and adults is that they become so focused on the trends that they don’t know about the more important things, which makes the more important events fade into the background. 

   An example of this bad habit is the hype of the Area 51 raid. The Area 51 discussion was a plan to raid Area 51 on Sept. 20 in hopes to find extraterrestrial life, but the whole scheme was essentially a joke. Many people were raving about this scenario months before the raid planned to be and recently it has died down.  Not many people knew about the Amazon rainforest being on fire at the same time Area 51 was trending, which could potentially ruin things for mankind. 

   Because of the large amount of hype, people have failed to think about and focus on the more important and life changing environmental aspects. According to Jessie Yeung, CNN reporter, recently the Amazon rainforest caught on fire and nobody really talked about it. The Amazon Rainforest is twice the size of India, provides shelter for 10 percent of Earth’s biodiversity, and produces 20 percent of the oxygen we breathe everyday. It seems crazy that it wasn’t talked about much when it was on fire and our Earth was at stake. 

   This scenario is an example of how our values are distorted because we seek acceptance through following trends and are unable to access the more important things. When teens follow trends and close everything off, they probably don’t even know that they’re doing it because if the government doesn’t care about it then nobody else will. Something that people haven’t thought about is that the South American government hasn’t talked about the rainforest much and seems to not care.

   Something to take out of this would be to make sure you focus on the important things on our earth and in our lives. If us as humans start to slip from reality and focus solely on what’s happening on social media our earth will be gone before we know it. Think of all the important things you’ve missed due to social media memes.