*Note: This article was written at the end of the 2022/23 school year.
Social media has been consuming the lives and minds of teenagers and young adults. All of our friends have some type of social media platform and account. We use this as a way to see what each other is up to, keep in touch with distant friends, but mostly we get bored and we just scroll. Many times people we know, including us, have felt really down and our solution to these problems is to start scrolling on social media apps. This creates unhealthy habits and there are many problems with doing this.
In order to prevent social media from consuming teenagers the creators of social media platforms should restrict the amount of time teenagers can spend on social media.
The rise in mental illness within teenagers has skyrocketed since the rise in popularity of social media. COVID and the pandemic affected how often people used social media and the amount of time people went on these platforms and apps per day.
We were inside all day and we couldn’t go out and hang out with friends or go out to eat. We relied heavily on social media to keep us occupied and we resorted back to that when we were bored. Because we had access to this at the tap of a finger, we became lazy and we stopped doing creative things like crafts and projects, or even simple things like reading a book or journaling.
According to Statistica.com, a survey conducted between July and October 2020 revealed that 61 percent of Generation Z and Millennials were watching more videos on social media apps during the COVID-19 pandemic.
People spend too much time on social media per week which can lead to many negative things. There are many studies that show that being chronically online can affect your mental health and you can develop mental illnesses like depression and anxiety. Social media can also affect teenagers self esteem. When you see your friends posting together you might end up feeling very left out wondering why you weren’t invited.
Social media also sets very unrealistic beauty standards for teenagers, and when you see them and feel like you don’t look as pretty as the people that post edited photos, you start to feel terrible about how you feel.
“Those who find themselves in this category often make toxic comparisons between themselves and those they follow online, and they come face-to-face with society’s perceptions of perfectionism, which is never truly obtainable.” – Selecthealth.org
Social media can be dangerous. On social media when you post things for the public you can become a target for bullies, stalkers, or unsolicited pictures. There are many instances where people have felt uncomfortable online whether that be from creepy messages or pictures of yourself getting exposed, or even receiving inappropriate photos that were not wanted. This can make it very scary for teenagers, especially young girls online.
Onlinedegrees.unr.edu reported, “The Pew Research Center’s 2018 survey of U.S. teens determined that one in six teenagers have experienced at least one of six different forms of abusive behavior online:
Name-calling (42%)
Spreading false rumors (32%)
Receiving unsolicited explicit images (25%)
Having their activities and whereabouts tracked by someone other than a parent (21%)
Someone making physical threats (16%)
Having explicit images of them shared without their consent (7%)”
The creators of social media apps need to restrict and limit the amount of time that teenagers are allowed to spend on social media. The consequences of social media outweigh the rewards greatly and in the end, is not worth it for anyone. It is unsafe, it is mentally draining, and it is how we spend too much of our time.
Official ‘Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse’ movie poster
‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ is a sequel to ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’, a film based on Miles Morales as Spider-Man. This film stars Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Jake Johnson, and more. It’s directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson. The plot revolves around Miles Morales as he journeys through alternate dimensions and teams up with other Spider-People to stop a new villain and to save his family!
Miles Morales is a 15-year-old sophomore in high school who was bitten by a radioactive spider and was Brooklyn’s one and only spider man for a year.
‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ was probably one of the best animation movies I have watched before, the way they animated Hobie or Spider-Punk was incredible. Animators typically change poses and details every second frame but for Hobie his pose changed every third frame making it different from the characters around him.
I also love how they added characters from ‘Spider Man: Into the Spider- Verse’ to this new movie, like Peter Porker, Penni Parker, Peter B. Parker, Noir, Gwen, Spider Man 2099 etc.
We also saw some new characters/Spidermen in this movie as well, we’ve seen Ben Reilly or Scarlet Spider, Pavitr Prabhakar, Hobie or Spider-Punk etc. There’s a lot more we’ve seen when Miles visited the Spider-Society and having to fight the Spider Society in order to go home.
One thing I’ve wanted to talk about was the soundtrack for this movie, which was released by Metro Boomin and had features from Swae Lee, Lil Wayne, Offset, ASAP Rocky, Roisee, Future, Lil Uzi Vert, JID, James Blake Nav, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Ei8ht, Don Toliver, Wizkid, Beam, Toian, Coi Leray, 21 Savage, 2 Chainz, and Nas. The professional Rating for this Album 6.4/10 but for me I’ll give it a 7.5/10. My favorite song from this movie wasn’t in the album, which is “Mona Lisa” by Dominic Fike. It was played while Gwen was visiting Miles and they were swinging through the city of NYC.
If you haven’t watched the movie yet I highly recommend you to watch it! It’s still playing in theaters so make sure you watch it!
Note: This is a student generated work of short fictionbased upon an online game
In-game screen shot
Hello my friends, if you are reading this, then this is a message to the outside world from within The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Why am I writing this? Well I wanted to show to the world what life is like in the Zone as a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
My name is Uni, I am a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and if you do not even know what a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is, then I will tell you. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Stalker, is an acronym containing the words, Scavenger, Traveller, Adventurer, Loner, Killer, Explorer, and Robber, all of which describes the basic Stalker who of course, stalks The Zone.
I originally came to Ukraine to enter the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, or most widely known by all Stalkers as “The Zone”. The reasoning for my entrance into The Zone was of course, for the wonders of adventure and the money that I can get from it, but of course, all of that baloney was just to lure unprepared Stalkers into entering The Zone so they can feed it’s inhabitants.
Originally, I entered The Zone as a Mercenary Stalker, a faction that has its headquarters in the Dead City, just south of Limansk and north of Yantar. In the first few days in The Zone, I was inexperienced with the surreal wildlife and the anomalous creatures that made their home in such a terrible spot on the planet. My first few missions as a trainee Mercenary, was to help deliver packages from Mercs in Dead City, to members of either the Freedom faction or the Bandits, the latter I am not so fond of.
But as I gained more experience in The Zone, the better reputation I had with fellow Mercs and other Stalkers, and the better I was at fighting both The Zone’s wildlife alongside the countless brainwashed Monolith soldiers that scatter The Zone. If you don’t know already, the soldiers within the Monolith faction are essentially brainwashed into worshiping a shiny rock in the heart of the Chernobyl Power Plant, and I personally like to refer to them as the “Shiny Rock Lickers” because of that.
After a few weeks of surviving in, and doing tasks within, The Zone, I decided to head to Yantar to help pay for an ecologist that I already forgot the name of, for an exquisite piece of headwear known by many Stalkers as the Psi-Helmet. After paying the guy 20,000 roubles or something like that, he told me to wait two full days for the damn thing, but being a goodie two shoes of a Mercenary, I decided to sleep in his little research laboratory for a couple of days before receiving the headgear.
After receiving the Psi-Helmet, I was then told by the ecologist to turn off the Miracle Machine that could be found inside a laboratory known as Lab X-16 which couldn’t be turned off because of the Psi emissions that would fry the minds of any Stalker trying to enter that place. Knowing that I had the Psi-Helmet on me, I decided to enter the Lab as a favor for that Scientist. I’m not going to explain what happened in that lab as it was quite easy to get through besides the many Blood Suckers that somehow found their way into the lab.
After turning off the Miracle Machine, I was then ordered by the same ecologist, to turn off another machine known as the Brain Scorcher in order to stop the strong Psi Emission it blasted. Apparently, from what many Stalkers I came across told me, is that the Brain Scorcher was actually turned off at some point by Ukraine’s Chief Scientist Consultant, Strelok, but after a few years the Stalkers of the Monolith faction decided that they should turn it back on again.
In preparation for the mission, I decided to buy and upgrade a Mercenary Exosuit to prepare for the retaliation Monolith would already have for me when I finish the mission. Armed with a Rifle and Shotgun, and armored with one of the best equipment The Zone has to offer, and as I descended down to the labyrinth that held the Brain Scorcher, I could already feel the Psi-Emissions that the Brain Scorcher was blasting out.
With a limited amount of time before the Psi-Emissions would kill me, I bolted through the many Bloodsuckers that lived in that labyrinth and turned off the Brain Scorcher before the thing could kill me. After turning off the machine, I quickly exited the labyrinth as Monolith Stalkers began to rush my position, and as I exited the area, I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that it was finally over.
After some time, I decided to rest near a campsite as the moon began to shine down upon me, and there I was able to eat a can of Tuna before looking at my PDA for any new messages, and there was one that caught my attention: “Loners have declared a ceasefire with the Mercenaries” it said on my messages.
I made my way down to Rookie Village, the supposed headquarters of the Loner faction, a faction that was originally hostile to us Mercs but when I turned off the Brain Scorcher, they became more friendly to us. There in the Rookie Village, I met a trader named “Sidorovich” who scammed me of a few Artifacts and a female Stalker named “Hip”.
I was able to talk to Hip, who then asked me to find a TOZ-34 Bizon for her client, I accepted thinking that it would be easy but in reality I found myself running across The Zone, aimlessly looking for this weapon when I then asked other Mercenaries on the PDA where I can find a TOZ-34 Bizon.
Apparently, I had to go to the flea market to buy it, but when I went there, I had to pay around 90,000 roubles for the thing, and after paying for the damn thing and returning back to Hip, I later learned that her client died a few days ago, and knowing that, she decided to pay me back before asking me to help her with finding a couple artifacts for our good ol’ friend Sidorovich.
Hip needed help finding a Moonlight artifact, a Fireball artifact, and a Wrenched artifact, all of which I had to find as she watched me get sick from both radiation and a lethal dose of bullets. During our hunt for these artifacts, I decided to help a faction known as Clear Sky to help defend their pump station from an enemy faction, but as I entered the pump station and readied their defenses, I aimed my rifle scope at the enemy, and realized who we were fighting. We were fighting bandits, a friendly faction to us Mercs.
I can not describe what happened later but all I could say was that my reputation was ruined and the trust I had with fellow Mercs and Bandits was now faltering. I was left distraught and my morals seemed to be fleeting, but I knew that I had to move forward and rebuild my reputation from the ground up.
After that mission, me and Hip found the last remaining artifacts and we gave them to Sidorovich who gladly accepted and told me that the Freedom faction asked that Hip do another mission for them. After finishing Hip’s mission, she then told me to meet her at Rookie Village tomorrow night to which I told her about the mission from Freedom and she then told me her story of being a former Freedom member and how she doesn’t trust them as much as before.
After talking for a few bits, we decided to do a simple task of transporting medical supplies for Freedom before returning back to Rookie Village where we then parted ways. I returned back to Dead City, and looked at myself in the mirror and only saw a blood stained person across from me. I knew I couldn’t stand being a part of the Mercenaries any longer, so I returned to the Great Swamps to join the Clear Skies faction, to help their mission of healing The Zone.
Well, that is the story of my life as a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and if you are thinking about entering The Zone, then I highly recommend entering it via this link:
Last weekend I spent countless hours on the lake and did so many fun activities. Some of these include: tubing, scuba diving, fishing and more.
The first activity that I love to do on a lake is tubing. Tubing is one of the most thrilling and exciting activities and makes for a great adrenaline rush. Up at the lake I went to, I went on two different kinds of tubes.
We have a hot dog tube that looks like a hot dog on a bun and you sit three people in a row one in front of the other. This tube is significantly harder to stay on than the other one I rode because when the boat turns, everyone has to lean the opposite direction. I rate this tubing experience a 8/10.
The next tube was a seated one that holds up to 5 people. I only rode it with 3 people at one time. This one felt slightly safer and was more like a couch on water. I rate this tube a 10/10 because it can go very fast and is less painful if you fall off.
Another fun and exciting activity to do on a lake is fishing. The fishing that I did was not very successful because no fish were biting, but it is still a cool skill to learn and do when you are on a lake.
The last activity is scuba diving. I enjoy scuba diving because you never know what you will find at the bottom of a lake. Sometimes the water can get a little murky and gross, but that can just add to the challenge of finding anything.
These activities are just a few of the things that I like to do on the water during the spring and the summer, but they make that time on the beach so much more enjoyable.
Wildfires occur when fires either by a natural cause, or human sparked, spread rapidly across forests. They are more likely to happen and last for a longer period of time when the air and ground are hot and dry which is why wildfires thrive in the summer.
In Canada, wildfires are a common occurrence every summer with an average of 8000 wildfires per year. This year’s wildfires have become a hot topic these past few days. 437 current wildfires were active early in June and 248 of them are considered uncontrollable according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC).
Alberta, Nova Scotia and Quebec are the 3 provinces in Canada with the most active wildfires. As of the morning of Friday, June 9, an estimated 10.6 million acres of forest have been burned. The rapid increase in wildfires has affected the air quality and resulted in the abundance of smoke everywhere. This caused the air quality to dramatically decrease and spread across Canada, which then led to it seeping into the US as well.
The smoke that spread into the US affected about 16 states and an estimated 128 million people. The poor air quality was most prominent in New York and was ranked the worst air quality in the world on Wednesday, June 7th.
The areas, including the states in the US, that are affected by the smoke are supposed to clear out and improve the air quality in the next few days with rainfall. The areas that aren’t expecting rainfall will still be depending on firefighters to put out the fires.
With the vast amount of fires that have had to be extinguished, firefighters are running out of supplies and equipment. According to The New York Times, in attempts to fight off the wildfires, around 1,100 firefighters traveled to Canada from other countries from France to South Africa and Australia.
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