Social media can be a useful place for everyone. It can be used for communication, learning new stuff, and for many more things that might seem helpful. Social media might sometimes be a place where people distract themselves from their everyday problems and this is a good thing. Although there are positive ways that social media can be used for, it can be problematic for adolescents to use. There are helpful websites that young adults can use on social media, for help with their homework, or to learn something new and for many more reasons. There is google and in google you could look for tutoring help or for cooking recipes and for many more websites that would help young people learn. However, young people don’t have enough maturity to use social media in positive ways all the time because there are websites that teenagers use that aren’t really something that they should be using. Parents aren’t always aware of what their kids are doing on these sites because they don’t know how to control social media with all the changes that happen in the sites throughout the years. One of these articles is,  Knowles M., et al. (2014). The Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting. Global Pediatric Health 1-4.In this article, they spoke about how researchers did a survey on adolescents and they asked them a series of questions about social media. The question that was asked that meant more in the article was that if these young people met with strangers in person whom they came across on social media. This is an interesting question because this is a big risk for adolescents, there are people on the other side of the screen that are not who they say they are and this is the problem of letting a young person have social media. Even though social media can be used to communicate with others, there are negative effects that it can have on adolescents. 

Many researchers have done analysis on how social media can affect adolescents in a negative way. Knowles M., et al. (2014). The Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting. Global Pediatric Health 1-4.  Is one of the articles that shows how social media has a negative effect on adolescents. These researchers did a survey on 114 adolescents from ages 13 to 21, and the survey was asking about their age, their sex, their grade, what type of things they searched on the internet, and what they posted in the internet, but the most important question of this survey was if these young people accepted friend requests from strangers and if they met with these strangers face to face. $7% of the participants were less than 16 years old, 93% of them were part of social media, and 55% of these young people met with strangers that they found online. This is a big problem because this survey was able to show us that most young people are using social media and that half of these students are risking their lives by meeting with strangers from these sites they use. In this article it was said that most of the teens surveyed used their phones to access the internet and that they had minor supervision and were involved in risky activities on these smart devices. This is telling us, readers, that adolescents get access to the internet with phones and they are using it in a negative way because parents are not really aware of what their kids are using their phones for. This is true because older people and parents don’t know how to handle the internet and they always ask their kids for help and this is why they don’t really know what kind of risky things their kids are getting into while using the internet. Another article where researchers speak about social media negatively affecting young adults is Franchina V., et al. (2018). Fear of Missing out as a Predictor of Problematic Social Media use and Phubbing Behavior among Flemish Adolescents. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15, 2319, 2 of 18.. In this article, Frenchina V. and colleagues are trying to find out if social media use on adolescents causes fear of missing out (FOMO)  and they were trying to figure out if this was a problematic use of social media. These researchers did a survey on 2663 adolescents to see if the teens that used social media more often had more FOMO and if to see if these kids that have more FOMO use social media in a more problematic way. In this article, the research found out that yes teenagers that use social media frequently do have more FOMO and that the more FOMO these adolescents have the more problematic use of social media they have. In this article, it is stated “…’I fear my friends have more rewarding experiences than me’.” This was something that most of the adolescents that were surveyed agreed with. This shows that most of the adolescents keep up with what people around them do with social media and they do this to not feel less and to keep up with new trends. Marchant A., et al. (2017). A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Internet use, Self-harm, and Suicidal Behavior in Young People: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown. Health and care research wales 14-11 is another article that shows some ways in how social media can affect adolescents. These researchers studied many articles to see the relationship between the internet and suicidal behavior and self-harm in young adults. In this article it was found that 11 of the studies for the research was positive, 18 of the studies were negative, and 17 of the studies were both positive and negative. This is saying that most of the articles that were reviewed by these researchers show that social media has a more negative effect on adolescent’s suicidal behaviors and thoughts of self-harm than positive. This is a horrible thing because this shows that social media is causing young people to start hiring themselves due to the different negative things they could do on these sites. 

There was a researcher that did a survey on 250 adolescents from ages 13 to 19 to see if adolescents envied people through social media. This article is Charoensukmongkol P. (2017). The Impact of Social Media on Social Comparison and Envy in Teenagers: The Moderating Role of the Parent Comparing Children and In-group Competition among Friends. J Child Fam Stud 27:69–79. In the article it was said that Young adults that used social media were constantly using it to compare themselves to their close friends and to envy their friends. This researcher is trying to tell us that after he did the survey he realized that adolescents that use social media more often use it to envy what their friends get. This is a really negative thing for young people because social media might cause them to start acting up with their parents because they would want something they can’t really get in the moment. Another article that shows that social media has a negative effect on adolescents is Arora S., Budree A., Paideya S. (2019). Investigating the Usage Patterns and the Implications of Young Adults’ Social Media Usage in South Africa. Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS, volume 1034). 103 young adults ages 18 to 25 were surveyed and were asked what was the impact of social media and face to face interactions. These researchers were trying to find out if social media is a priority in a young adult’s life, and the answer is yes. By the results of this reasearch Arora S., Budree A., and Paideya S found that most of the Young adults that were surveyed galanced at their social divide at least every half an hour and that they mostly used social media everyday. With this part of the article, it is shown that social media totally is a priority in people’s and adolescent’s life and that’s not a good thing because social media might cause adolescents to stop doing an important real-world activity to start using their devices. This article also shows that social media is a problem for adolescents and for everyone all around the world, not only in one place. 

There are two more articles that I would be using that support the idea that social media has a negative effect on social media. It might cause adolescents to become isolated and lonely because they spent more time on social media than in real life. Colditz J. B., et al. (2017). Social Media Use and Perceived Social Isolation Among Young Adults in the U.S.. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 1-8. is one of the articles. In this article these researchers are speaking about 1,787 young adults being surveyed. The main purpose of this essay was to see if there is a connection between social media use and perceived social isolation. Something said by the researchers after the survey was that The use of social media was increasing social isolation in young adults. This shows that the more that young adults use social media the more social isolation they get. This lets us readers know that social media is causing young people to get addicted to being on their phones or any smart device and making these young people isolate themselves from others. The last article that will be used that shows that social media has a negative effect on young people is Fox B. (2019).  Loneliness and Social Media: A Qualitative Investigation of Young People’s Motivations for Use, and Perceptions of Social Networking Sites. Loneliness and social media in a networked society 16. . In this article, Ms. Fox did a survey on 1,400 young people to see if social media had an effect on young adult’s loneliness. In this research, it was found that yes social media does make young adults feel lonely, but there are also many more reasons why young adults get lonely, and it’s because of their transition of living. They feel like people expect more from them when they are becoming an adult. In the article, it is stated “…Although social media has opened new avenues of communication, 92% of the participants in this study declared that they have not got enough people to talk to or ask for help when they need it. The lack of communication is very often associated with loneliness.” This shows that young adults feel lonely because they barely have conversations with others. This might be because social media isolate them from others and they have no way to realize this if nobody tells them and because of this, they say that what caused their loneliness is the work they have to do, but they always have time to use social media at the end of the day. This is why social media  has a very negative effect on young adults. 

As we all could see, there has been lots of research done to show that social media has a negative effect on adolescents. I conclude to say that many articles show that social media has different negative reasons on how it can affect adolescents. These researchers were able to show that it is true that social media should be something that adolescents should be supervised on because there are many negative outcomes that these young adults and people around them could face in the future. 

References:

Arora S., Budree A., Paideya S. (2019). Investigating the Usage Patterns and the Implications of Young Adults’ Social Media Usage in South Africa. Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS, volume 1034).

https://link-springer-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-23525-3_7

Charoensukmongkol P. (2017). The Impact of Social Media on Social Comparison and Envy in Teenagers: The Moderating Role of the Parent Comparing Children and In-group Competition among Friends. J Child Fam Stud 27:69–79

file:///home/chronos/u-a59f67e072d49974a92ef40e43a6a980311dfce7/MyFiles/Downloads/Charoensukmongkol2018_Article_TheImpactOfSocialMediaOnSocial%20(2).pdf 

Colditz J. B., Lin L.Y., Miller E., Primack B.A., Radovic A., Rosen D., Shensa A., Sidani J. E., Whaite E. O. (2017). Social Media Use and Perceived Social Isolation Among Young Adults in the U.S.. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 1-8.

https://www-sciencedirect-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/science/article/pii/S0749379717300168

Fox B. (2019).  Loneliness and Social Media: A Qualitative Investigation of Young People’s Motivations for Use, and Perceptions of Social Networking Sites. Loneliness and social media in a networked society 16. 

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-24882-6_16

Franchina V., Abeele M. V., Antonius J. van Rooij, Lo Coco G., and De Marez L. (2018). Fear of Missing out as a Predictor of Problematic Social Media use and Phubbing Behavior among Flemish Adolescents. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15, 2319, 2 of 18.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6211134/

Knowles M., Lee S. H., O’Riordan M., and Lazebnik R. (2014).  Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting. Global Pediatric Health 1-4. 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2333794X14561656

Marchant A., Hawton K., Ann Stewart A., Montgomery P., Singaravelu V., Lloyd L., Purdy N., Daine K., and John A.. (2017). A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Internet use, Self-harm, and Suicidal Behavior in Young People: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown. Health and care research wales 14-11https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5558917/

When I first started this class, I didn’t really know much about writing essays that gave people the option of having another perspective other than mines. I always spoke about my side of the argument and I never spoke about what other people might think. As I read these books I realized that the most important thing about writing is to give people different options of what they want to think and involving a counterclaim in your essay because this way readers would see that you do care about them and their opinion. Another thing that changed in my writing was using the word I, these books taught me that using the word I isn’t that strong in an essay and that using quotes from other people is a great thing to support your writing. My way of thinking as a writer has changed because before I write something now I think about adding my perspective and also adding another person’s perspective. With these books, I was able to realize that a writer has way more to talk about than they think in their work.

Knowles M., Lee S. H., O’Riordan M., and Lazebnik R. (2014).  Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting. Global Pediatric Health 1-4. 

Introduction:

Researchers view how social media has taken part in an adolescent’s life and how this might be a risky thing for young people depending on the way they are using the internet and what type of activities they use on their devices. 

Method:

Researchers surveyed adolescents from an urban clinic at an academic center from ages 13 – 21. The survey Asked for their age, sex, grade in school, about their use of social media, if they met people from social media sights in person, topics they viewed online. Only 114 adolescents agreed to participate. 

Results:

The results showed that 66% of the participants were female and 47% were less than 16 years old. 93% of the participants were part of Social media. The most used social media by these participants were Facebook and Twitter. Adolescents involved in more school activities were more likely to meet people they met from the internet in person. 55% of the participants met with unknown people that they met online. 

Discussion:

Teens access the internet and social media via smartphones, The lack of supervision of parents when their kids are using the smartphones is causing adolescents to be involved in risky social media like activities. Most of the kids that meet with people they don’t know from social media are involved in school and after-school clubs and during this time of no parents around they take the time to do this. Parents cant really keep up with adolescents’ social media use because there is always a change in social media and because parents might lack the use of social media.

Social Media is a place where people come together online and share content. The great thing about social media is that it can be used for networking, promoting yourself or products, finding information on various topics, and staying connected to loved ones. Although social media can be used for such positive and productive reasons, it can also affect adolescents in many negative ways. Young adults are not mature enough to handle the use of the internet. Sometimes there are websites used on social media sites (SMS) that parents are not aware of and can lead to a problem with their kids without them even knowing anything about it. In this essay, I will be explaining how SMS negatively impacts young adults. 

In the article, Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting by Knowles M., Lee S. H., O’Riordan M., and Lazebnik R, these researchers speak about how they conducted a survey asking adolescents between the ages of 13 to 21 years old, from an academic center, about what they used social media for. From this research, it was viewed that social media is a dangerous activity for young people because they used it in a way to communicate with strangers, parents never really know what their kids are doing on the internet, and most of the adolescents that took the survey had access to at least one SMS some way or the other. This is what was viewed in this research. In Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting, Knowles M., Lee S. H., O’Riordan M., and Lazebnik R explained that since parents don’t understand social media teens take advantage of that and they might sometimes use it in a negative way. In the article, they state “… While adolescents may be more experienced with technology than their parents, they lack the maturity and insight to anticipate consequences that have the potential to lead to negative outcomes.” In this quote, the authors are trying to say that adolescents don’t have enough maturity to use social media and that parents don’t really know how to handle social media because there is always something new coming out and they can’t really tell if their kids are using SMS positively or negatively. Another quote used in Knowles M., Lee S. H., O’Riordan M., and Lazebnik R article is that “…63% of participants greater than or equal to 16 years old versus 40% of those less than 16 years old have accepted a friend request from a stranger.” By saying this in the article the researchers show that most of the adolescents that were surveyed were getting involved in things that might be very risky, meeting a stranger might not result as you imagine because you never know if you are getting catfished. I agree with everything that was said in Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting by Knowles M., Lee S. H., O’Riordan M., and Lazebnik because throughout the whole article it is shown that social media is a place where teenagers take advantage and are able to do everything they want because parents don’t really know how to use the internet due to lack of time or information and that might cause young adults to get involved in a conflict. In the article Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting it was stated that “…Lack of supervision may increase the potential for risky behaviors.” With this, it is shown that it can be problematic for teens to use social media without a parent’s concern because they get involved in activities they don’t know anything about and it would be problematicfor them. In the article Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting the authors were able to explain their research very well and there are many more articles that show why social media is a negative thing for adolescents.  

An additional article that shows how social media affects teens in a bad way is A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Internet use, Self-harm, and Suicidal Behavior in Young People: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown by Marchant A., Hawton K., Ann Stewart A., Montgomery P., Singaravelu V., Lloyd L., Purdy N., Daine K., and John A. In this article, researchers were able to analyze that the internet, suicidal behaviors, and self-harm have a relation. Most of the studies they did has more negative connection between the internet, and these behaviors than positive, A line from  A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Internet use, Self-harm, and Suicidal Behavior in Young People: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown that shows this is “…Perceived influences were: positive, 15 articles, 11 independent studies, n = 38,191 participants; negative, 19 articles, 18 independent studies, n = 119,524 participants; mixed, 17 articles, 17 independent studies, n = 35,235 participants.” This shows that most of the articles that Marchant A., Hawton K., Ann Stewart A., Montgomery P., Singaravelu V., Lloyd L., Purdy N., Daine K., and John A researched shows that social media has a negative connection with suicidal behavior and self-harm on young adults. Even though teens don’t know the bad from the wrong this article shows that they know social media is negatively influencing them. Marchant A., Hawton K., Ann Stewart A., Montgomery P., Singaravelu V., Lloyd L., Purdy N., Daine K., and John A stated: “…15% of girls and 26% of boys reported that either the internet or social media had influenced their self-harm.” This shows that social media does make young adults do bad things to themself and that social media isn’t the best thing for them. I do agree with some parts of this article where they speak about social media causing problems for young adults but there is one bit I disagree with. The part that doesn’t make me fully agree with this article is when they speak about how on social media young adults can seek help with self-harm and with suicidal behavior yes this might be true but this is not always the case. A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Internet use, Self-harm, and Suicidal Behavior in Young People: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown states “…However, more positive influences including advice on how to seek help was given on over half of identified sites.” This shows that social media is actually helping young adults seek help when they need it throughout the internet but I do not agree with this because just as social media gives the help to teens, it also makes teens hurt themselves at the same time. These two articles that I spoke about capture why social media isn’t safe for adolescents. In Risk of Social Media for Teens in an Urban Setting the researchers spoke about how SMS is a place where people meet unknowns and where parents are not really aware of what their kids do on these sites, this shows that social media is not a good thing for adolescents to use. In  A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Internet use, Self-harm, and Suicidal Behavior in Young People: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown the researchers spoke about how socia media negatively and positively affects young adults in suicidal behaviors and self-harm.

Are there any positive activities that teens could do on social media? Many might be asking themselves. Of course, there are many things that young adults can positively use social media for. At times I need social media to research things I need for school, to look for food recipes (that’s where I learned how to cook certain foods.), to look for help in anything I need, To get a location I need to head to, in fact, I could also communicate with the people I love or with certain jobs through SMS. And right now during this pandemic, we are all doing work from home with the internet. I’m not saying that everything used on the internet is bad for adolescents, however, I do still think that even though there are all these positive things teens can do on social media they would most of the time use it for the bad things first because as I said before young adults, including myself, are very immature and we sometimes are not able to tell whether we’re going bad or good things. We just do things for fun and to impress others and social media is a great place where we could do all of this.

In conclusion, I still believe that although social media can have some positive usage for adolescents, it can also negatively affect them. I did this essay so that parents and everyone around the world could be aware that social media can sometimes be like a drug addiction for Young adults. Teens can get addicted to SMS and also social media doesn’t always give teens the best support they need during certain times in their life. Social media would someday be considered the worst thing that has existed in parents and their child’s life and around the whole world just because parents are not aware of what is done on these social sites and because young adults don’t really know the trouble they get into every time they join a different site on social media due to lack of maturity. I hope that by reading this you realize that social media is not the best place to let your kids spend most of their time in. 

Work Cited

Article 1: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2333794X14561656 Article 2: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0181722&type=printable

 There are some places that don’t seem what they are. For example where I’m from, New York, everything seems like a wonderland, a place where everything is given to you, the country where mostly everyone wants to be from just because in the movies it looks like a dream come true. In my reality, New York is just another normal country where people work for what they want. People that come to this country only once think that it’s so great just because they had so much fun, but when you are actually from New York, you know that everything is not what it seems. 

 I’m a Hispanic girl born and raised in Harlem, New York. When I was small I remember loving New York because “I lived in the best country ever” or that’s what I thought before. We had snow, we had stores everywhere, and I live in the country that everyone dreamed of. I remember my family gathering for the holidays and all the good things. We got the gifts we asked “Santa” for, and we played kids’ games with our close friends and family. The best part of being a kid in New York was the weekends, I was able to stay at my cousin’s house and sleep for as long as I wanted. 

But there was a problem. When I was younger I used to always say I wanted to be an adult already because I wanted to be able to do anything I wanted, I didn’t know how happy I was at that time and now I realize that the best moments in this country was when I really didn’t understand anything and all I had to worry about was playing. 

 As I got older many things started getting different. The family stopped getting together as before, and I realized that as time was passing by so quickly in a blink of an eye my expectations of the city changed. I no longer love New York as I did before. It is where I’m from but everything seems so distinct now that I’m older. I have to work hard for something I don’t even really want. Here, you live a life that is not yours but in fact others. That happiness you had when you were young gets crunched down because now you get judged for being happy and doing what you like. You are now a slave of work and of trying to make everything look perfect when it really isn’t. This is my reality in the city I’m from.

When you grow up living in a place like this one people from other countries think that you’re wealthy and living the best life, but what they don’t realize is that here there are more expenses than any other thing. Here we see people living in the streets with their kids because they can’t afford to pay rent and buy food at the same time. We see people not getting jobs because they look a certain way. This is not a lifestyle that many can support. Just because in the movies everything seems so wonderful doesn’t mean that every part of New York is like that. Where I’m from we see the reality of this city. “Although I never had the sense that we were poor, I now realize that we must have at certain times anyway, come pretty close to it.” This was something said by Megan Daum in her story My Misspent Youth. I think that everyone that has lived in New York has come to a point where they feel poor or they were really close to being poor. I don’t consider myself to be poor because I have a house and I’ve seen people living worse than me but I don’t consider myself wealthy either because at times we couldn’t get the things we needed. 

Sometimes living here makes me wonder, Do I really want to make a life in New York? Am I safe in these streets? Would I be capable of surviving here? These are all questions I wonder about daily because every time I watch the news the more I think about moving out because everything gets worse every day. The streets here are so unsafe they sometimes try to hide that in the News, but I see everything and I notice how women walk uncomfortable because they’re afraid of being unwantedly touched on the streets by a man. I have seen how men always tried to degrade a female without even knowing how hard they work. And I’ve also seen how people are mistreated just because they are from a certain place or because they have an accent when they speak. Nothing is done so that these things could be stopped in New York, the only cases that are solved are the ones that come to light, but what about the others that are hidden from the world? Would something be done to help those people? Or do we have to keep protesting to get nothing in exchange? These are the things that scare me the most about New York, being part of a city that just hurt us instead of helping us.

I’ve been to other places and I see how everyone is so happy and how everyone tries to help each other out and I just sometimes wished I had that in New York. I feel like here even though you are judged for what you do, nobody is really there for you. You are literally on your own. People could see you need help and they’ll just walk right past you and pretend like they didn’t see anything. This is a city that is divided into sections of race and ethnicity and the only people that unite are the ones that need help, the others just sit and judge. 

The people that are not from this country think this is the City that doesn’t sleep and that’s exactly what it is, just as the city doesn’t sleep people don’t sleep. What I mean by this is that in New York people have to work many hours to achieve their goals and to be economically stable. Many people that live here might not be able to sleep well because they have to work, go to school, and do chores when they get home. This means that in New York people barely have a personal life and time to enjoy themselves. This life is not what people enjoy. 

“I hurt the people I cared about and insulted those I did not. I cut myself off from the one person who was closer to me than any other. I cried until I was not even aware when I was crying and when I was not, cried in elevators and in taxis and in Chinese laundries, and when I went to the doctor he said only that I seemed to be depressed, and should see a “specialist”.” This was something said by Joan Didion in her story Goodbye to all that. I felt that what Didion said connected with me and with other New Yorkers because here you don’t realize when you’re doing something right or wrong. When something seems normal to you, other people feel a certain way about it. And as you do your own thing the fewer people come around you. I guess that the more independent you become the harder it gets. Here you don’t have time to realize how you really feel because you always have something to do and if you try to look for help they would really tell you that you’re depressed, when in reality what you have to do is take a break from everything and take some time for yourself. 

Some New Yorkers might say that what I’m saying here is not true, that this city is beautiful and that they actually open doors for many people. They might think that being part of New York is actually a benefit. But this is my perspective of the city. I feel that just as it opens doors for many it closes the doors for others. New York is a city that benefits the rich and harms the poor in my opinion. This is what I see and this is what I’ll say, I don’t speak on behalf of anyone but myself. Everyone has their own opinion about New York. 

There are some people here like me that are tired of constantly repeating the same things daily. Instead of seeing New York as a beautiful story, I see it as those movies that constantly repeat themself until you notice that you’re not doing the right thing, and right now I’m still at the part where I wake up and I’m still doing the same routine again and again and I’m getting tired of it. Here I have no social life because I’m constantly thinking about school and having my work done so I’ve put myself at a point where I decline my friend’s invitations to dinner or to go out and walk because I have class the next day or because I have some work due soon. My rule is that I have to focus on just one thing, so if I’m going to be in school I need to just focus on school and not other social events. I know this might be seen as a problem to others and that I need to look for help but the thing is that this is the way my brain works. I’m always thinking about the future when I’m really in the present. I’m always thinking about what if this doesn’t come out right, what if I fail in life, and about many other things that just drive me crazy. 

Okay, yes I know I’ve just been talking about all the negative things about New York, yes the city has some beauty just as it has some ugliness, but the thing is that all I’ve been able to see since I grew a bit older is the badness this place has. I don’t work at the moment because as I said before, I need to focus on school to become successful. But seeing my mother struggle since I was little to try and give me the best life, I started wondering about my future. When it’s time for me to move out and live on my own, am I going to struggle? How am I going to keep up with paying bills and going to school at the same time? What if I have kids, am I going to be able to take care of them living in a country as expensive as New York? Right now I don’t have an answer to all these questions but what I can do is try to fix these discomforts I have before I get older and try to find a way of realizing what the solution to the problem is. 

I’m not really sure if this is just part of me growing up. I’m not really sure if it’s always going to be this way. I’m not really sure if it’s even New York the problem, right now it seems like it is. I’m only eighteen trying to find myself in a country I feel like I don’t belong in, the trends, the hard work, you’re on your own here and I don’t think that works for me. I try my best to get involved in New York like activities sometimes, but when I do them it’s not something that really makes me happy. I’m just trying to be like others here and when I try to be like others I’m not really where I belong. I need to find a place where I fit in, where I can be myself but most of all where I can be happy. But right now I’m living in Harlem, New York and I don’t feel at home.

Hello, My name is Jasiel Pascual, I am 19 years old and I was born in New York but my family is from the Dominican Republic. I am a person that likes to work hard to reach my goals. My current major is Biology. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to study but I knew I wanted to be in the medical area because it’s something that calls my attention,  I realized that Biology might be an area where I can work with medicine and that why it’s my current major. In college, I hope to accomplish my goal of being successful and I hope to grow into a bigger and better person. I believe that college would be a great place to learn more about what I want for my future and it’s a place where I get to decide what is best for me to be happy. After college, I want to be able to say that I made it into a job that I love and enjoy doing every day. I want to have goals of getting things to keep growing. I don’t want to be the person that says I’m done after I graduate college, I want to keep working for the better because I know that there is way more out there for me after I finish this journey.