Dear tech age.

Dear digital natives.

Dear Twitter fanatics, Instagram artists, Tumblr preachers, Vine directors, Snapchat lovers.

I hate to break this news to you, but apparently, you’ve killed art. And not just art, like the abstract concept you hear about from Renaissance Europe or the bearded guy who cut off his ear, but the physical act of artistry. Your generation’s revolutionary concept of sharing has defeated what it means to take a pen and write a lengthy handwritten letter. Your obsession with this idea of constantly sharing what you love over and over and over again with people all over the world has simply endangered the nature of things.

See, those that have a couple of years on you are disgusted at your lack of “true communication” efforts. They firmly believe that you are losing what it means to be human; becoming a generation of mindless heathens who, a couple of years down the road, won’t be able to hold actual conversations face to face because you’re depriving yourself now. You will have become so attached to the intangible, the comfort of your internet cloud, that you will miss out on the beauty of the world, as you snap pictures of your food and friends and the sky and post them to the Twitter.

And the art. Oh God, save the art, they say. Your Instagrams are simply spitting in the faces of those like Van Gogh and Picasso, as you put up intricate little videos and pictures and call it art *scoff*. And your Twittering and texting and emailing, well let’s just say there is no hope for your generation’s value for the art of communicating.

It is with the utmost concern that they tell you this.

Dear mothers, fathers, teachers, dead-eyed hipsters, non-believers, old souls.

I hate to break this news to you, but art is not dead. It is so, so, so very alive.

See, art will always be alive. It is untouchable, immortal. It will simply last forever. Whether it faces tyrants who fear its true power, or generations of people like you, who blame it for changing, art and any form it takes, will survive.

My generation. The generation of socialites, and media, and sharing, and conversing in revolutionary ways, and change is not destroying, we are simply creating new forms of art. The social media platform we have been blessed with has given us all the more means to create the new and extraordinary.

Twitter has given us the mind to create and spread new ideas like wildfire, to let the world hear the cries of people on another continent, to communicate with vigor and excitement.

Instagram has become our canvas, our marble, our sky. The pictures we take reflect the individual; pictures of food we share, pictures of friends we cherish, and family we’ve lost, and places we’ve been tell the story we’ll share with our kids.

Tumblr has become our platform. The new thinkers, the preachers, the fanatics gather to create and discuss the art of changing what it means to be human.

Vine and Snapchat, our daily artistry. The six seconds we get on Vine are all we need to express and share and laugh and maybe cry. Snapchat, and all the ugly selfies that come with it, is the joyful outlet we need to face an ugly world. Both still art, shorter and more condensed, but little pieces of us we choose to share.

A generation of fighters and lovers is being born before your eyes, but all you talk about is how much you miss Shakespeare and Picasso; how much you weep over the books we get on our phones and tablets instead of the ones in the library; how much you fret over the generations you have raised.

But let me tell you just how much Shakespeare would have killed for an email account.

And how much Tumblr could have saved Van Gogh’s life.

And how it’s easier to sleep at night knowing that your best friend can call you on your cell phone at 2 in the morning when they don’t feel safe in their own skin.

This. Our art, our most defining trait, our Achilles heel, ourselves. The new and revolutionary has become a part of us; it is tied to who we are and what we do every day. This, our self-expression may be the only thing the Earth saves of us, the only thing that our great-great-great-great grandchildren see. What we choose to do now as a generation, the way we choose to define ourselves, will last forever. Though one day we may grow old and weary like you, here’s to hoping we choose to see art live on.