I was calmly looking through Facebook yesterday (during class, obviously), when I stumbled upon something very very distressing.

Mary-Ann ****** is now Engaged to [some guy's name].

Uhm, what?

Mary-Ann was a perfectly likable, fun girl I went to high school with. She was two years behind me. Yes, that's right, the year younger than me. This makes her a raging 18-year-old. Now, while we all take a moment to mourn the fact that I'm not yet 21 (ew), let's then look at how inept I feel that girls YOUNGER than me are getting married already. It's like there's this quiet biological ticker inside now that, each time I see someone getting engaged it's like "OMG AM I DOING SOMETHING WRONG AM I SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING MARRIED DANGER DR. ROBINSON?!" Not because I can't get a boy--  It's just that, to be honest, I have absolutely no interest in getting married.

Lately, though, it seems that everyone around me has. Or I mean, is that jus tme? How many "engaged" or "married" stories popped up in YOUR newsfeed this week?

Not that I have any problem with young-marriage. I know a couple of couples (lol pun) that I think made a really great decision. I have no issue with getting married young.

My confusion is more that this doesn't seem to fit the stereotype of our generation. With the divorce rate being 50%, everyone seems to think that we're all afraid of commitment, and too scared to settle down. Our generation always seems to be pegged as the generation that you can't tie down-- that we want to spend as much time being free as we can. That all women want to be the sexual-and-relationship open Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City, and all the boys want to be from the film Swingers.

Yet here we are, a generation of young marriage, of facebook engagement announcements and Weddingbook Applications, and MTV's (short-lived) show "Engaged and Underage". So I'm happy that we're getting our hope in marriage back, that the optimism is returning. But when did this change occur? Are we another war generation, scared at the possibility of the future and thusly attempting to find something traditional, worthwhile, and forever to hold onto? Or are we so scared to end up along as so many of our parents have that we are clinging onto a "forever" partner ASAP?

And just how young is too young? If you're still in college, can you handle the pressures of getting married now? In high school? I don't have the answer-- like I said, I'm not getting hitched anytime soon. I just feel like, lately, the question is being posed more and more.