MaxwellSmaart

in·flu·ence

noun\ˈin-ˌflü-ən(t)s

: a person or thing that affects someone or something in an important way

    Last week, when I first caught wind of Time magazine’s list of The Top 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014, I was taken aback to learn that youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai and Joshua Wong, the face of protests in Taiwan, among other history making and entrepreneuring teens,  were grouped with peers like Keeping Up with the Kardashians costars Kylie and Kendall Jenner and the “King of Vine” himself Nash Grier, whose influences, on occasion, have been less than stellar. Dan Macasi, senior editor for Time magazine, defined influence by saying that it “isn’t always world changing,” yet it’s literal denotation, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, is “a person or thing that affects someone or something in an important way.”

    While the proverbial wisdom of Jaden Smith’s tweets and the six seconds of hilarity that ensue when Nash Grier gets in front of his camera are massive parts of our generation’s pop culture identity and therefore are important, it is necessary to take these contenders for Most Influential Teen of 2014 into context with their fellow candidates, many of whom in fact, are taking strides to change the world. The movers and shakers of this list include Jazz Jennings, a fourteen year old transgender girl who advocates for trans visibility; Salma Kakar, the seventeen year old lead rider for the Afghan National Cycling Team whose goal is to represent Afghanistan in the Olympics someday to display how much Afghan women have progressed; and three girls from County Cork, Ireland, Ciara Judge, Emer Hickey, and Sophie Healy-Thow, who discovered a bacteria that could aid in ending the global food crisis. When these teens are taken into consideration, it is easy to see that, while importance and changing the world are not necessarily the same, importance is indeed relative.