Teenagers need more sleep

A recent study from University of Minnesota Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement has validated what teenagers have known since middle school: we can't get enough sleep because school starts too early. Teenagers who get under 8 hours of sleep tend to be more prone to depression and anxiety, high-risk behavior (e.g. drugs and alcohol), attention issues, and low academic performance. The researchers conclude that starting school just an hour or two later than the typical 7:30 start time would improve academic performance and reduce tardiness, among countless other things.

Every day I walk into advisory to find half the people half asleep, dark circles under their eyes, a cup of coffee glued to their hands. Had they been able to sleep just a little longer, they would be more alert and not half-dead.

So why is it so difficult to get schools to change? Maybe it's because parents with multiple children usually have established schedules to get everyone to school on time. Generally, elementary schools start later in the morning. The older you get, the earlier school starts, until college. A later start time could disrupt a household's entire routine and make it difficult for anyone to be on time. There are also after-school sports to consider. Unless we shortened the length of the school day (which is not going to happen), a later start would mean a later dismissal. Outdoor sports teams would be forced to play in the dark, especially in winter when the days are shorter.

Do you think there's a way for the school districts to compromise?

Facebook instead of Face-to-Face

I’m constantly hearing from adults that I need to get off “The Facebook” and go be social.  Ross Douthat, a writer for the New York Times, has now joined my parents in arguing against social interaction through the internet in his article The Age of Individualism.

Typically someone raised in a home without a ton of exposure to the internet or other groups of people would adopt their parents’ religion or political party. But with internet access, your brain becomes a mixing pot of ideas.

People around my age don’t generally go to church to hang out with friends on sundays. They’re more likely to be sitting at home and writing American Studies blogs or binge-watching Netflix. They’re not getting their sense of community from a religious institution or even a or an actual meetup. Instead, they’re making their social connections through internet mediums like Facebook.

The consequence of this departure from face-to-face social interaction is that it is considerably more difficult to trust other people. According to the Pew Research Survey Millennials in Adulthood: detached from Institutions, Networked with Friends, only 19% of millennials responded that generally speaking, most people can be trusted. It’s a lot easier to trust a tightly-knit group of people who you meet with regularly than it is to trust that girl you went to summer camp with in 6th grade who you occasionally chat with on Facebook.

This mistrust is bred by the lack of physical community. It’s a lot harder to lie face-to-face that it is to lie on on the internet because you don’t have to worry about body language or tone of voice. Knowing this, why would you immediately place your trust in every one of your 436 Facebook friends, 370 which are total strangers?

Would it be better for young people to shut their laptops and join a youth-group, or should things stay as they are? Is there a realistic happy medium?

"To [quote], or not to [quote]? That is the question."

Everybody loves quoting. As a high-school student, my first instinct when writing a paper is to find a quote and build my argument around it. It’s much easier to add on to someone else’s words than to write words of your own. The problem with this is the tendency to let the quote speak for itself rather than explaining it. In the words of Maria Konnikova, a writer for the New York Times, “Quotation becomes a way not to add depth to your thinking, but to avoid thinking in the first place.”

See what I did right there? I didn’t bother to flesh out my argument at all. I could’ve used any quote there that said the same thing because I just left a blank space. I just quoted because the line was readily available and I have a healthy appreciation for irony. But most people use quotation because it’s an easy way to avoid thinking and to save time.

Quotes are abundant online. I can go search ‘quotes’ into google and get about 215,000,000 results in .2 seconds. So when a teacher assigns a paper with “a minimum of FIVE quotes,” why shouldn’t I pull phrases from sources online in order to meet the quota? I can use a quote as a springboard to develop my entire argument. But in the words of Konnikova, “when we strip away context, we strip away everything that enables us to determine what something really means. Words themselves become decorative — evocative, perhaps, but denuded of their essence.” Americans have the tendency to focus on the decoration instead of the substance.

In the North Shore especially you can look out the window and see a cluster of mothers in full exercise gear -LuluLemon yoga pants, pink tennis shirts, visors- drinking Starbucks and not even exercising. What’s the point of dressing up like you’re going to the gym when you’re actually just going to chat with your child’s friend’s parents? It’s to give the appearance of fitness. And while they take clothes out of context to look good, their children grow up to go to New Trier and write papers that consist almost entirely of quotations to make them sound smarter.

Always remember these words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I HATE quotation. Tell me what you know.”

Do you think that excessive use of quotation should be encouraged? Have you ever found yourself relying on quotation when you don't know what to write?

Confirmation Bias and Video Games

I've always loved video games. My earliest memories are of sitting in my living room, playing Mario Party 2 with my sisters or watching my oldest sister play Zelda on our Nintendo 64. With this in mind, it's pretty understandable that I'm passionate about the topic of video games and violence.

There are hundreds of studies on this topic, majority of them claiming that playing violent video games leads to aggression. "Okay," you might say. "They're scientific studies, so you can't possibly argue that they're incorrect or biased."

But let's take a closer look at one of these studies. I'll use this article by researchers at University Pierre Mendès-France, Ohio Statue University, and VU University in the Netherlands.  

Let's start with the very first sentence of the article. 

"It is well known that violent video games increase aggression..." 

Obviously, this is very scientific and helps establish credibility because well known facts are always accurate. Everyone knows that the direction that toilets flush depends on the hemisphere, cracking your knuckles leads to arthritis, Twinkies have an indefinite shelf life, and the average person swallows 8 spiders per year. 

In all seriousness though, this immediately set off alarm bells. You can already tell that the study is only looking for data to prove what they think instead of looking at the results as a whole to determine if there actually is a link. It's confirmation bias, pure and simple. It seems like people are using video games as a scapegoat to distract us from the real causes of violence.

What do you think about the issue of violence in video games? 

50 Shades of... wait, they're making a movie?!?

A few months ago, someone told me that 50 Shades of Grey was being made into a movie. The whole idea seemed so utterly ridiculous that I thought that they were joking. Alas, I was mistaken.

Google Trends can be really interesting to look at sometimes (it's also helpful for when I want to peek out from the rock I live under and check out the latest political scandal). I looked at it a few days ago, and was somewhat confused as to why '50 shades of gray' was the most searched topic that day. Then I looked at the attached article. 

I did a bit of a double take.

How the hell are they going to made 50 Shades of Grey into a movie? It's book porn erotic literature. And it's poorly written book porn erotic literature at that. How did the actors even audition? Did they just walk into a room and take off their pants?

While I could make a list about 20 pages long about all the reasons this book is awful, there's one big thing about it that confuses me.

Why are so many women suddenly attracted to overly-controlling and somewhat creepy fictional men? Double points if they have serious anger issues and are all around jerks! First, there was Edward Cullen from Twilight. Just like what seems like every other girl on the planet, I went through the Twilight phase. Oh, how I swooned when Edward revealed that he had been climbing through Bella's window to watch her sleep for the past 3 months. How I sighed when he told her how desperately he wanted to slaughter her, how her blood smelled like sweet ambrosia to his cold, white, and godlike nose.  

And now there's Christian Grey. I'm not going to go into too much detail, partly because I only managed to skim about 5 pages of the book before I started laughing, and partly because majority of his character development happens during sex scenes. But just by reading the back of the book, you can tell he's going to be another Edward Cullen.

Tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control? Sounds like my kind of man!

Much Ado About Chess (which is apparently misogynistic by the way)

Disclaimer: This post isn't intended to offend anyone in any way.  It's a bit of a satire, really.

There's no denying that sexism is a very real issue. Even today, women make 77 cents for every dollar that men make. It's utterly ingrained in our society, and I don't exactly see it ceasing to become an issue anytime soon. That said, some people seriously need to stop making everything an issue of gender.

I was idly browsing tumblr when I found this charming little text post:

You can see the rest of her rant here

According to vag-of-honor (which is a lovely username, by the way), chess is oppressive to women. The objective of the game is clearly to reinforce the idea that women are considered less than men. Never mind that the queen is pretty much the most powerful piece on the board! Its innability to jump over other pieces proves that women aren't allowed to advance in society! WE ARE BEING REPRESSED BY THE PATRIARCHY!!!!!!

That's nice and all. Really, it is. But it doesn't make any sense. Women are weak? Misogony! Women are strong? Misogony! The National Chess Federation still supports chess? Misogony! Feminism isn't the issue. Feminism is awesome. The issue is people that take it way too far, making a mockery of the actual cause. It's eerily reminiscent of a Monty Python scene.

Let's say that vag-of-honor's interpretation of the misogynistic nature of chess is 100% accurate. So what now? Is the next step to ban the game? Should we ban Jenga next?