I was sitting in a crowded natatorium, surrounded by a few hundred other people, watching our kids compete. I got a news alert. At first I didn’t look. I’ve been trying to hard to be in the moment and less attached to my device. But as other people picked up their phones to check their alerts, it was clear something was going on.

I saw the headline, and although my first impulse was to open the story, I put the phone down and tried hard to focus on E and the other swimmers. But my mind was already racing. Someone else has been shot. Another family is now facing a tragedy. More chaos is coming.

In a short while, E’s race was over, and I was able to leave the pool. I walked out to my car, opened the news stories, and sat and cried. I pulled myself together, and went back in to watch E’s last event, and then waited for her to finish up in the locker room.

As we walked out to the car, ever the perceptive kid, E said, “What’s wrong?”

How do I explain to a 15-year-old that everything is wrong? E is no stranger to political drama. Since she was little, she’s been a part of family debates and arguments. One of my fondest memories of my kids playing together is when the three of them acted out a presidential debate, with A serving as the moderator and the other two as the candidates. But this is more than political disagreement, or Democrat versus Republican, or playing devil’s advocate. I try to tell myself this isn’t any different from what went on before the Civil War. Or what happened during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Or, even in 1776, when the Founding Fathers put their names to a paper that was the equivalent of signing their death warrants. Senseless death has always been a part of “revolution,” I suppose.

There are a few things that are different, however. First of all, we hear about these incidents almost immediately. Sometimes there are even live feeds, so we don’t have to wait for the 6 o’clock news to get a summarized version of what has transpired. Are there even “breaking news” reports anymore? Or does everyone just get the alert on their cellphones? It has been so long since I’ve watched television in real time that I don’t even know if “we interrupt this program” is still a catchphrase.

Secondly, thanks to everyone having the ability to record events and share them with a worldwide audience, events that might not have even made the local news a few years ago can instantly become a national or even international headline. Think globally, act locally? It’s more like acting locally goes globally. We no longer have to rely on Peter Jennings to give us the daily rundown; we can tune into any one of dozens of folks who are sharing real-time updates from schools, neighborhoods or anywhere activity is happening.

Additionally, it’s easier than ever to help fund causes in far away places. I probably wouldn’t have taken the time to put $5 to buy someone a meal in an envelope, but if I can Venmo them the money? They’ll have it yesterday.

What is most different for me, at least, is that I feel that by this time, we should know better than this. We should be better than this. How are people still applauding the abduction of children, mainly because their skin is a different color? Justifying an execution of a man in the street, who by all accounts, including multiple videos of the incident, was following the law, and also trying to protect a woman?

We all know bullying when we see it, and yet we are allowing it to happen, from our streets to the highest offices in our land. How are we continuing to accept behavior that would get most people fired from their jobs from our leaders? Aren’t we beyond this already?

I want to be better than this. I want to have my Saturday morning interrupted because we’ve discovered a new solar system, or we’ve made a breakthrough in cancer research, or because an athlete broke a boundary previously thought impossible. I want to stop flinching when my phone sends a new alert.

In closing, all I have to say are the immortal words of the Lorax. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News