My generation is weird. They’re obsessed with trends, social media, Twitter challenges, and of course, memes. It seems every week there’s a new meme that’s trending.

It lasts for a couple days and then a new “dank” meme takes it’s place. Although teenagers are all stereotyped the same by adults, we’re all “crazy, loud, we listen to inappropriate music, we’re disobedient, and we have no manners”, teens can agree on one thing, suicide is cool.

I can’t go a single day on social media without seeing kids making jokes about suicide. And that’s not an exaggeration. It’s kids of all ages, genders, races, and religions.

We have seem to come together through suicide memes. It has gotten to the point where it’s considered normal to joke about killing yourself. Tweets go from simple, “I want to die lol” to “I can’t wait to drink bleach after school.”

It’s something so common, but what if there’s someone out there who is actually considering suicide? What if they tweet wanting to die as an actual request rather than a joke. My generation is obsessed with being famous, because we all want attention.

We all post things that will get a lot of likes or retweets. For the most part, our suicide memes/tweets is what gets the most views on the timeline so why do we still joke about wanting to die but are shocked when a teen suicide is on the news?

Don Lugo student, Kaitlyn Valenzuela has participated in this trend. Her tweets range from, “I hope i die during the PSAT,” to “I think Lugo should have a mass suicide we all want to die,” right before finals. When asked about the suicide trend she stated, “It’s not like anyone will actually do it. It’s something everyone says.”

She is one of the hundreds of Lugo students who makes these jokes on a daily basis. This is actually very serious. It should not be a joke.

I shouldn’t see my peers talking about how they wanting to die, drink bleach, hang themselves, get ran over by a car, or spell out suicide in pretty emojis. I don’t understand how this became such a big thing. How did it become so popular? It’s something so huge but is thrown around like it’s nothing.

I’ll admit, I’ve made jokes in this area as well but never have I meant it in a serious way. Although our parents and teachers seem to believe we’re “too young to be stressed,” many Don Lugo students admitted that stress from school causes our fatal attempts at humor. A Twitter poll stated that 98% of students make jokes about death due to their stress caused by school, homework, projects, and getting accepted into college, and the other 2% voted that other reasons cause them to “want to die.”

This trend has blown up. I’m sure if our parents went on Twitter and saw our tweets they’d make psychiatrist appointments! I feel like, as a generation, we all need to come together and make a difference with our social media power rather than joke about killing ourselves. Despite what adults say, we have more power than we realize and I know we can use our power for good if we just steered our visions in a positive way.