We live in a world today where people can share their opinion at the click of a button, but it seems like people have been more inclined to share said opinions in recent times. But is the recent spike in political activeness good or bad?

Ever since the 2016 election, it seems that the levels of political activeness has increased by tenfold, a fact can be seen everywhere in our daily lives.

Whether people are protesting against the president, school shootings, or something else, people have been more inclined to share their voices and fight for what they think is right. Here at Bowie,there was a walkout on campus just last year, where students protested gun violence after the Parkland school shooting, where 17 people students were massacred and many more were wounded.

No matter our political beliefs after the 2016 election, people have become more opinionated, and its effects can be seen in almost every aspect of life. No matter who we support politically, it is quite obvious that the president has been a very divisive figure, and has driven an already divided political climate to the extremes.

There’s no doubt that people have become more opinionated since the election and are therefore more active politically. This is why it’s important to people of our age, and really of any age, to do our duty as American citizens and use our right to protest, even if it seems that almost everything in our lives is being politicized. This is evident in events such as sports, like the NFL, where players are kneeling in protest and all of the backlash the players and organizations have been getting for allowing it, even though they have every right to protest for what they believe.

Seemingly there appears to be no escape from the beast that is politics in this modernized world. It is everywhere, persistently making everyone aware of the fact. There’s even brands making political statements to the abundance of boycotts every time a person representing something says anything minutely controversial.

Peer pressure plays a significant role in the lives of all teenagers, but a new aspect of pressure may about to be nailed in. While it is great that people are now talking about issues that need to be discussed, people that have unpopular opinions can be left feeling alienated because of their beliefs.

Austin is generally a pretty liberal city, seeing as how they hold the majority in almost every part of the local government, but that doesn’t always mean they get along. If we know that Austin is mostly liberal, then one can assume Bowie follows suite. I know a number of people that say that they don’t like sharing their beliefs knowing that the majority of the people around them that don’t feel the same.

Bottom line we shouldn’t be judging people for stuff that is not entirely under their control. Imagine you’re a cow on a farm, your family are the farmers, and you have to eat your food from a trough. You have to eat this food because you have no other choice. Should we really judge other people because they eat a different amount of food, or a different type of food, or maybe even no food at all? The point is, most of us really have little control over our beliefs.

Our political beliefs are just one of the things that makes us who we are, but that doesn’t mean that we should let them control every other aspects of our lives.