Disclaimer: This article is not an April Fool’s piece

It’s official. The world is on fire, the oceans are turning into acid, 150 species go extinct per day, the nukes are ready to fly, everyone hates President Trump–we’re doomed. Plus, we’re too PC, too attached to our phones, and addicted with ourselves–according to the news.

Or . . . Not?

Obviously, global warming is a thing and its effects on the world are negative (and although the sharpness of temperature increases is due due to pollution, the earth also has a natural climate cycle), which stinks. However, awareness has grown (the “CLIMATE CHANGE AIN’T REAL DAG NABBIT” hysteria has finally begun to fade) and we’re making steps toward implementing cleaner, more efficient energy sources, like nuclear fusion and geothermal energy.

Equally important, President Trump is meeting with North Korea to decrease the likelihood of WWIII. Yay! Oh, and it turns out he didn’t collaborate with Russia to mess up the presidential election (shocker).

Considering many of the good things to come in recent months and years, socially (the gay, women’s, and race civil rights movements have all made remarkable progress), technologically (have you seen the cameras on these phones?), and more, it’s odd that people have such a pessimistic view on the new, rising generation (aka, the Cool Kids).

Millennial “social justice warrior” (SJW) movements, hammering that one should respect the preferred gender of a person, and their oh-so-very annoying insistence on equality for all people (ugh, who wants that?) seem to have had an influence on our parents’ views of us. Although many of us darn kids find the SJW rallies cringeworthy rather than cool nowadays (they go a little too far expecting us to read other peoples’ minds and sensing their preferred pronouns), we’ve also grown up in a society that, more often than not, doesn’t give a flying fettucini whether someone is black, white, Asian, Hispanic, or any fun and colorful mixture thereof. Is it too “politically incorrect” to be relaxed in our own identities? Is it bad that we’ve grown comfortable with each other (and that we can all universally agree that most of the jokes we make are hilarious)?

Of course, we don’t get those jokes just anywhere. The internet is a treasure trove of terrible, wonderful knowledge (one our parents accepted into society, even if they complain about it now), but that knowledge contributes to us being aware of each other. We don’t just “tolerate;” we appreciate. Phones connect all of us, even if all we know of each other is an article read online or a photo on Instagram. Our parents gave us these tools, and we learned how to use them like we were born to hold them; we’re addicted to our handheld devices because of what they are: a gateway into the minds, the cultures, and the lives of millions of other people, right at our fingertips. That, and selfies.

Selfies, for obvious reasons, make us look a little self-centered. In fact, our generation is pretty self-absorbed. We focus on ourselves; whether by deciding not to have kids early (or at all), waiting to get married, or by simply investing in our own achievements, we are the centers of our our universes. Is that a bad thing? Aside from the aesthetic of Snapchat filters, we can make ourselves great. We can lift ourselves up higher than any generation before, because our culture tells us we can put ourselves first.

So, are we doomed? The world certainly isn’t going to explode anytime soon (hopefully). We’re taking care of the environment. We accept each other more than ever before. We have a culture that welcomes change and innovation of all kinds; more than ever before, we are connected. Doomed is the last word to describe us.