Author: Jade (Page 2 of 4)

Does social media affect teenagers negatively?
I want to discuss the topic of social media’s negative effects because I personally have witnessed these effects of social media not only on myself but on many of the people I care about. I recognize that the effects that I’ve seen and experienced do not even come close to half of some of the more dangerous effects other teenagers are going through and that’s why I was to explore and research some of the more serious topics that aren’t really talked about. Topics such as anxiety and depression, body image issues, and self-harm that aren’t brought to light as much as cyberbullying and being addicted to social media.

The research topic I would like to discuss is homelessness and its contributing factors. Homelessness is so much more than just not having a place to live. There is so much that contributes to it and it can have very traumatic effects on the people it happens to, and I feel like it is something a lot of people tend to overlook. I want to research this topic because I come across multiple homeless people every day,  more than I can probably even count and my heart goes out to them because I cannot imagine how it feels to be in their position and how strong they must be to be living like this year-round. There is a stigma around homeless people that leads to them not being helped the way they should, because there is way more that could be done to help. social workers aren’t the only people who can help, there are things that can be done by regular people like you and me that aren’t being done enough. I expect to find that a lot of the contributing factors to homelessness are not in the person’s control. I expect to find this because there are things like mental illness, substance abuse, and alcohol abuse that don’t get treated and do not get taken seriously. Also, a good percentage of homeless people are kids, kids who identify as LGBTQ+, who were being treated unfairly because of ignorance, kids who were abused, and these kids simply did not have anywhere else to go. I think that we can be a lot more educated on homelessness and have more sympathy for those who it affects. I think sometimes we forget that homeless people are PEOPLE. People who have feelings and emotions. They don’t deserve to get treated the way they do just because of the fact that they do not have anywhere else to go.

As a kid, I used to be obsessed with dancing. I was a dancer, on a professional team. I used to love going to dance practice after school and learning new routines for upcoming competitions. I was on this team from ages five to thirteen and I whole heartedly believed that I was going to be a professional dancer when I got older. When I was younger, around age seven or eight and i would bring up to teachers in school that I wanted to be a dancer when I grew up they would always be supportive of my idea and tell me that I could do anything I put my mind to. But over time as I got older around the age of eleven or twelve, when I used to bring up the idea of becoming a professional dancer in school to teachers and my other peers, I would get shut down. I would get told by my teacher that being a dancer is not practical and I would never succeed if that was my goal. After hearing that for so long, I started to fall out of love with dance and all the negative comments I heard about it started to change my perception of even going to dance class not to mention being a dancer. I started to not enjoy going to dance and practicing for competitions, it was starting to feel like a chore because I was starting to perceive it as a negative thing instead of the positive way I viewed it before. The educational system had such a negative impact on something I viewed as exciting and fun, that it made it into something I thought would make me unsuccessful. I started to think more about “practical” jobs that I could have in the future, which I do think benefited me, I just wish it didn’t change my views on dance in such a negative way.