After a solid seven hour day at school, the first thing we want to do when we go home is sit down with a crisp newspaper and dive deep into a story about the stock market something or other falling because of a decrease in blablabla, right? Well, maybe not, but lucky for us modern teenagers, informing ourselves is now arguably easier than ever. With so many resources, both online and in the real world, there’s almost no excuse to stay ignorant to what is going on in the world around us.

All too often, I hear comments in classes that leave me worrying that my peers and I are lacking awareness that we need in order to actually understand how the world works. Just the other day, I heard girls talking about how they weren’t going to watch any of the presidential debates because they could “read all about them on Twitter” instead. A couple weeks ago, I heard a girl ask what “nukes” really are and if they’re really an issue in the world today.

When I get home, the first thing I sit down to do definitely isn’t to read a 20 page article or watch an hour of the news. But, I do take some of my free time to switch off the part of my brain focused on friends, school or social media, for example, to instead focus on informing myself, which, in the long run, is much more rewarding and meaningful than spending that same amount of time catching up on a show I already spend hours watching or tapping “like” on a series of posts that do nothing to increase my awareness.

Instead of watching a Snapchat story that features a 10-second recap of an important issue, why not go to a credible news site and read the full article, that will only take around 10 minutes anyways? Instead of listening to your parents tell you about why Donald Trump is the best presidential candidate because he was on T.V., why not go online and do something as simple as take a quiz to get a preliminary idea of which candidate you might side with most? Instead of sitting on your phone for hours just texting or laughing at series of short videos, why not watch a video that recaps a few controversial topics relevant right now. Don’t forget about newspapers either — even your favorite publication (The Dart) features a roundup of important events across the whole planet.

As students at STA, we are fortunate enough to take classes that expose us to current events and discuss particular issues in the news. But our efforts shouldn’t stop there. Not every person we’re going to meet in our lives is from Brookside or Overland Park, and we must equip ourselves to have a real understanding of people who come from different backgrounds than we do. If we simply take time out of our days to stay informed, not only will we become more confident in our own understandings of various economic, social and political structures that affect us daily, but we will become educated women who are able to affect change in and beyond our communities.