According to WXII 12, a Bureau of Labor report recently revealed a rather startling, though perhaps not entirely surprising, statistic: North Carolina is the 4th laziest state in the US. With higher leisure times and lower exercise and work times, NC also happens to be tied with Michigan as the 10th most obese state in the US, with 29.4% of our citizens being classified as obese. Naturally, these are frightening numbers.

However, there is something just as important, and possibly much less discussed, to worry about. In my opinion, NC has another issue with laziness — political laziness. It seems somewhat trite to say so, but North Carolinians seemingly have a hard time truly grasping politics or what makes the nation they live in tick. Indeed, many of them can identify the President — they may even have a campaign sticker — but in reality, most of them are too lazy to truly educate themselves about the political system.

Few of my NC friends have any idea who their Congressman or Senator is, who their local representative is, or even who the Vice President is. Most of them don’t vote and simply don’t care to, though they make sure to diligently vote on the latest American Idol-esque TV craze. These friends are not stupid — they are simply lazy and passive. Even the ones who claim to be “politically savvy” only do so from a distance, by reading heavily partisan websites or news tickers and making grandiose assumptions based on what their television tells them. True, critical, active thinking about politics is largely dead in NC.

It’s time we fix that. My generation (“Generation Y” or the “Millennials”) needs to step up and do something — and by doing something, I don’t mean protesting or going to a politically charged concert. We need to think. We need to read, study, and process. We need to stop trying to be told our news in little simplistic blurbs or contextualized via late night talk show jokes. It’s time we got off our couches and did something, before it becomes too late.