Opinion Writing Ceccarini (JOU-3363)

What started as a way of connecting people to one another has become a source of entertainment for many young people. As social media has evolved, the more it has been incorporated in everyday life, including the classroom.  Now, social media is not all bad. It has given us everything from recipes to makeup tutorials all at the tips of our fingers. With the rise of AI it is even capable of writing research papers. However, to a developing and impressionable mind this can be detrimental for a student and is no place for the classroom. Almost every teen has a smartphone, according to the International Journal of Advanced Information Technology, 78% of students will spend an average of 4-5 hours on their smartphones daily. It's hard to deny that checking Instagram or Snapchat during class cuts into these hours making it a tempting distraction.  According to a recent survey published in the Journal of Media Education, 71% of students admit to checking their socials during school h...

Courtney Ceccarini Q News When you’re five you don’t really think about it. You walk right into your vibrant kindergarten classroom with your hot pink Barbie backpack, turn to the person next to you and complement the scribbles they made with their freshly sharpened macaroni and cheese crayola crayon.  If you don’t know how to count to 100, odds are, you don’t know the pressures of social anxiety and the internal fears that come with striking up a conversation. At five, all it takes is for your swing to line up with someone else's at recess for you to become instant best friends.   On September 11, 2017, I wished I was five again. From kindergarten up until the middle of summer going into my sophomore year I was a student in the Sachem School District. It was the district my brother graduated from and the schools that filled its halls with students I knew almost every name of.  Unfortunately, sometime in middle school, I became tired of the typical middle school figh...

“Find Your Forever Home,” a common cliché posted online for all the bleached blonde, party seeking, college girls.  Now, this type of phrase is used very strategically and it's not over used, it's tactical.  It’s used as a way to draw enough attention to persuade freshmen girls, who are miles away from their real home, to feel like this is something they need to be a part of, but subtle enough that once they become seniors, they’re kicking themselves trying to remember what it was they found so appealing about this in the first place. At this point, if you didn’t attend college, or if you did but never cared about expanding your network by discussing different self tanning brands, you’re probably asking yourself what does this promising message pertain to?  However, if you did use your philanthropy as a way to flirt with all the Chads and Brads on your campus, you already know what this advertisement is referring to. But for those who graduated without the honor of knowin...