Facebook keeps distracting you from your math homework. You can’t find your remote control. Your smartphone doesn’t run Flash. The IB doesn’t let you have a social life. These may be issues you face every day, and they probably bother you. But you probably agree that the fact that you have Facebook, a remote control, a smartphone, and get to take the IB is pretty good. These problems are certainly less significant than famine, malaria, violence, and poverty. So why do they bother us so much?

That’s because they are first world problems.

First world problems are an internet meme that started last year. Essentially, the meme intends to diminish and mock the everyday annoyances that we complain about, either by putting the message over a picture of a crying woman, or by tweeting it with the hashtag #firstworldproblems.

The biggest flaw in this idea is that the first world hasn’t actually existed since the end of the Cold War. This is because that classification was originally based on countries’ economic ideology. That is, the first world was the United States and its allies, the second was the Soviet Union, China, and their allies, and the third was composed of neutral countries, and not their wealth. This explains, for example, why Namibia is a part of the first world, and the UAE is part of the third.

Today, the more politically correct distinction is that between developed, developing, and underdeveloped nations. This is, however, irrelevant.

First-world problems are not about the economic state of the country you live in; they say much more about human nature.

They show, for example, how ungrateful people are. We don’t think of or appreciate the valuable things we’re fortunate to have in our lives. For example, we always complain about airplane food, airplane seats, and airplane delays. We completely forget the mind-blowing fact that we are witnessing the miracle of human flight, sitting in a giant metal bird, miles above ground level, traveling across the world in just a few hours.

And when Google takes more than five seconds to load, we get mad at it, forgetting that 15 years ago, we would have spent hours in a library trying to find the same piece of information.

This shows how quickly we take things for granted. Soon after something new and amazing is invented, it becomes common and necessary, making us forget just how incredible it is. But it also shows how selfish we are. Instead of stopping or at least worrying about the AIDS epidemic, world hunger, or genocide, we prefer to focus on less distant problems. Our own needs supersede the real needs of others, and we are trapped in the first level of a new twisted version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory that states we cannot reach more abstract human needs without first fulfilling the fundamental ones.

But this is understandable. Our immediate problems are much easier to solve than the big problems that others face. Still, it sounds wrong to complain about minor concerns when others have to worry about food and sanitation every day.

Yet, there is one intrinsically positive aspect of first-world problems. Since we are programmed to re-evaluate our problems as new improvements appear, we are also programmed for the constant betterment of our society. Our small dissatisfactions lead us to search for solutions.

Imagine if the situation were reversed, if we, instead of becoming dissatisfied with the good things that we have, became accustomed to the bad things. Our lives would continually get worse. We’d start by accepting slow internet connections, then traffic, and finally disease and hunger. And all society would simply deteriorate until there was little left. Perhaps this is a little dramatic, but it’s a logical conclusion.

First-world problems may be first-world problems in themselves. We see them as futile, useless, and complain about insignificant things, but really, they are a huge blessing. They are our way of encouraging and continually developing society.

They may distract us from bigger problems plaguing the world, but maybe the solution to those lies in our solving the smaller ones. We’ll be better at solving complex issues if small ones do not bother us.

So, stop worrying about your freezer making your ice cream hard to scoop, MegaVideo being shut down, and how annoying the new Justin Bieber song is.

Go find first-world solutions.