#aija mayrock

[tharaa25]

The Truth about Being a Girl

People always say that the girls of this generation are so vain:

"Why can't they put their brains toward books instead of good looks?"

I used to blame girls too: "Be more than a perfect body and a pretty hairdo."

But then I stepped into the world

and opened my eyes to the truth about being a girl.

I heard guys say things like, "Dude, she was tighter than that girl you hit and quit."

or

"I wanna pipe your sister someday."

or

"Her ass looks like a racetrack with those stretch marks, but at least it's big like Kim K's."

I never grew up thinking of those things.

Don't blame me, but when I thought about boys.

I thought about dinner dates and soul mates, not fuckbois that look at you like shark bait.

It breaks my heart for every girl growing up in this world.

Instead of "How was your day?" messages. we get. "You up? Wanna come fuck?"

I am not an object.

I have a voice and something to say.

Do not assume that I belong in your bedroom.

I belong in a conference room.

And for anyone who thinks that this generation is so vain.

It's because we girls are held under a microscope day after day.

[emilysworldoffandoms]

Books I Read in 2022

1. Beast Boy Loves Raven By Kami Garcia & Gabriel Picolo 2. Dear Girl By Aija Mayrock 3. A Fire Like You By Upile Chisala 4. Nectar By Upile Chisala 5. Soft Magic By Upile Chisala 6. As If On Cue By Marisa Kanter 7. Heartstopper Volume 4 By Alice Oseman 8. Address Unknown By Katherine Kressmann Taylor 9. Ariel By Sylvia Plath 10. Heart Talk By Cleo Wade 11. At Somerton: Cinders & Sapphires By Leila Rasheed 12. At Somerton: Diamonds & Deceit By Leila Rasheed 13. Unlock Your Storybook Heart By Amanda Lovelace 14. Instructions for Dancing By Nicola Yoon 15. Martita, I Remember You By Sandra Cisneros 16. Brown Girls By Daphne Palasi Andreades 17. Here's to Us By Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera 18. Counting by 7s By Holly Goldberg Sloan 19. The Summer I Turned Pretty By Jenny Han 20. It's Not Summer Without You By Jenny Han 21. We'll Always Have Summer By Jenny Han 22. Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood By Melissa Wagner & Fred Rogers 23. Gained a Daughter But Nearly Lost My Mind: How I Planned a Backyard Wedding During a Pandemic By Marlene Kern Fischer 24. At Somerton: Emeralds & Ashes By Leila Rasheed 25. Café Con Lychee By Emery Lee 26. The Book Tour By Andi Watson 27. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian By Kurt Vonnegut 28. Yoga Pant Nation By Laurie Gelman 29. Mr. Malcolm's List By Suzanne Allain 30. Miss Lattimore's Letter By Suzanne Allain 31. The Road Between By Courtney Peppernell 32. Enough Rope By Dorothy Parker 33. My Favorite Half-Night Stand By Christina Lauren 34. Smells Like Tween Spirit By Laurie Gelman 35. How to Be a Wallflower By Eloisa James 36. Be Like the Moon By Levi Welton 37. Morality for Muggles: Ethics in the Bible and the World of Harry Potter By Moshe Rosenberg 38. 84, Charing Cross Road By Helene Hanff 39. Josh & Hazel's Guide to Not Dating By Christina Lauren 40. The Matchmaker By Thornton Wilder 41. The Cheat Sheet By Sarah Adams 42. All-of-a-Kind Family By Sydney Taylor (Re-read) 43. Shadow Angel Book One By Leia Stone & Julie Hall 44. Spooky America: The Ghostly Tales of Sleepy Hollow By Jessa Dean 45. Needle & Thread By David Pinckney, Ennun Ana Iurov, Micah Myers 46. Good Game, Well Played By Rachael Smith, Katherine Lobo, Justin Birch 47. Home Sick Pilots By Dan Walters & Caspar Wijngaard 48. Beyond the Wand: The Magic & Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard By Tom Felton 49. Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley By Jonathan Kruk 50. Heartless Prince By Leigh Dragoon 51. A Contract with God By Will Eisner 52. Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American By Laura Gao 53. Blackwater By Jeannette Arroyo and Ren Graham 54. Woman World By Aminder Dhaliwal 55. In Real Life By Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang 56. Lore Olympus Volume 1 By Rachel Smythe 57. Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword By Barry Deutsch 58. Persuasion By Jane Austen 59. Devil in Disguise By Lisa Kleypas 60. Shadow Angel Book Two By Leia Stone & Julie Hall 61. Lore Olympus Volume 2 By Rachel Smythe 62. Talk to My Back By Yamada Murasaki 63. How I Saved Hanukkah By Amy Goldman Koss 64. Haven Jacobs Saves the Planet By Barbara Dee 65. Shadow Angel Book Three By Leia Stone & Julie Hall 66. The Matzah Ball By Jean Meltzer 67. Canción By Eduardo Halfon 68. Leopoldstadt By Tom Stoppard 69. Say Yes to the Duke By Eloisa James 70. Winter Roses after Fall By Robert M. Drake & r.h. Sin 71. Roomies By Christina Lauren 72. Falling Toward the Moon By Robert M. Darake & r.h. Sin 73. Empty Bottles Full of Stories By Robert M. Drake & r.h. Sin

[editspacks]

aija mayrock

× like or reblog if you save, please ↓

[1991diamondaries]

🙏🏽👏🏽

[thatangstyfeminist-blog]

Every Woman On Earth Will Know These Feelings

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1066459697199243264

[study-with-me-now]

This just came in the mail!!

Feminist poems to empower women and girls around the world

[ziyi123]

Blog1

Social media is now an indispensable way for people to socialize in their lives. People can share their lives on the Internet, share the pictures they take, and discuss them. It is like inviting strangers on the Internet into their own lives, where they have never met but can discuss different views on the same thing. And with modern technology and human development, social media has become more powerful. From the original YouTube, where you had to edit videos before posting them online, to TikTok, where you can post what you see fresh at any time. This has also led to more messages and ways to receive new things.

In the report, "Common Sense Media," YouTube and Facebook still dominate the online space, with 81% and 69% of people have used these two sites, respectively. The users are different for the latter platforms, such as Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, TikTok, Nextdoor. The primary users of this software are teenagers, especially Instagram and Snapchat. Seventy percent of the people have used this two software. On the other hand, older people mostly use Facebook, the most senior social media site. So, according to Common Sense Media's data survey, we can conclude that young people are more enthusiastic about using new social apps, while older people are using older apps.

Social apps have a substantial impact on teens. In the report, Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences (Links to an external site.) (Common Sense Media, 2018), it is written that teens can be affected by messages on social apps. One example in the article is Aija Mayrock, who was subjected to online violence on Halloween because a girl she never knew dressed up as her. What appeared to be two completely unrelated people were subjected to online violence over a photo, causing the girl to suffer severe psychological trauma. As a 15-year-old minor, it must have been torturous to be subjected to hundreds of messages telling her to kill herself and go to hell every day. This is a negative influence and is not promoted. According to the survey, only a tiny number of teenagers say that using social media has a negative impact on their sense of self, while more say it has a positive effect. The reading says 21 percent of people feel welcome, 20 percent feel confident, and 18 percent feel better about themselves. In addition, because of the dramatic increase in social media use among teens from 2012 to 2018, more people say social media has positively impacted their lives. In particular, 29% of people with depression have become less depressed. After all, there are two sides to the coin, and all we can do is try to spread positive energy and reduce the incidence of online violence and other incidents.

So the relationship between teenagers and social media is now more like a double-edged sword relationship. Social media can give you optimistic energy or make you suffer from the pain of the cyber wraith. Whether these effects are positive or negative, social media still can't be removed. It is like a weapon that can be used to protect yourself or attack others, but it is also always there. The real controllers of social media are still the people who use them, and it is the users' choice to share their lives to bring joy to others and turn into demons and insult others.

Social media brings another new model of socialization, and it raises a whole new set of questions. But it will ultimately be a more direct and convenient way to communicate. It seems that the new model of social interaction brings a lot of joy and areas to explore.

[b-mc18]

Blog Post #1

The Common Sense and Pew Research articles/videos were very interesting. The Common Sense video and article showed a lot about how teens and young adults pretty much live on social media. Many of the kids in the video talked about having much less face-to-face interaction, since all of it is on social media. It also was talked about in the video and the infographic however half of teens are pretty much constantly distracted by their phones, whether it is homework, other people, etc. Another interesting thing I found in the Pew Research article was that a vast majority of the older population also use social media, even though it seems like they all talk about how bad and negative it is. However, while most teens use Instagram and Snapchat, most adult use other sources such as Facebook and even Youtube. 

Social media obviously has many pros and cons, everyone knows that. One of the major pros, which pretty much every kid talked about in the Common Sense video, is the fact that there can be endless interaction. Kids can always talk to their friends and have great relationships with others as a result of this. It was also talked about by Common Sense that social media can help teens feel less lonely and have better self esteem (this is according to those teens). 

However, for all the good, there is also bad. The biggest issue is obviously cyberbullying. Since social media can be completely anonymous, anyone can say or do anything to anyone they want with, most of the time, no repercussions. In part of the Common Sense article, a girl named Aija Mayrock talks about how she was very severely cyberbullies and receiving death threats and other messages from people she didn’t know. This drove her down a rough path until eventually she wrote a book and starting speaking at schools and with others to help them use social media. In the end, even though she was a victim of social media cyberbullying, she decided that there are actually immense positives with social media it just needs to be used with care. 

Another major thing social media is doing to adults and teens alike is decreasing in the amount of face to face time people have with others. According to Common Sense Media, since 2012 there has been an increase is video chatting and texting and a large decrease in face to face interactions with others. Many people can agree that while social media can be very useful for interaction and staying connected, face to face interaction is still very important and necessary.

[down-with-devina]

🎧 Listen Carefully 🎧

Next time they are cruel to you,

listen carefully,

and if you listen

you will hear their pain,

and just like that

you will see their heart.

~~~

Aija Mayrock

🌺

Forgiveness can be hard, but we must try to understand the pain of the person who hurt us. 💔

🌺

Think before you hurt someone! Is it really necessary to be evil? ⛔

🌺

If you answered yes, I pray that you find happiness within yourself. I forgive you for being mean. 🥰

[jyslw77]

You were not born to please

You were brought here to disrupt.

Awaken.

Speak truth to ease the pain scattered around.

And so when you are told to quiet down...

I hope you grow louder.

You are an entire symphony

And you need no applause.

- Aija Mayrock

[meganwestland266]

Social Media and its Relationship with Teens and Adults

When reading through the research from Common Sense Media and the Pew Research Center I found that there are many fixed views about social media. That for both teens and adults there is clear explanations as to why social media is negative and harmful but on the other hand the positives and the good it is doing. When reading I asked myself how I felt about the positives and negatives, and I feel that I have a split view on social media as well.

When reading Common Sense, Julie Lythcott-Haims talked about social-emotional well-being and how she found comfort of others through social media groups who were experiencing what she was experiencing. I found this to be a great positive for social media because people can connect with one another and form communities with others they may not even know. People who may not have friends or family that they can connect or open up to have platforms to express themselves and to connect with others. I also liked how Julie talked about the power of the kindness that comes from social media. There is a lot of negativity that swarms around social media but there is also kindness and gratitude that comes from what people post.

There were multiple things that came up about the negative parts of social media. The first one that stuck out was the story from Aija Mayrock who told her story of being cyberbullying to the point where her parents didn’t let her use social media. Cyberbullying and trolls on social media are a huge problem due to the secrecy that some social media platforms can provide. Harold S. Koplewicz also talks about the effects of mental health and social media. He says that when there is a higher investment of social media that it correlated with higher levels of anxiety.

What I found the most interesting was when Aija Mayrock referred to social media as “social currency”. I think that we can take that to mean many things. That for young people it’s a place to look for hope and to find themselves. For adults I view this as a way to make money off of others. Bloggers and youtubers to gain followers and make money off of the number of likes or views. I believe that we do live in an age where social media is the new form currency. People who are well known within social media platforms profit from it.

[ifmymindcouldtalk]

Aija Mayrock

[doseofmz]

Reading the Common Sense Media’s study took me back to my early teen years. I remember being a young girl that wanted friends and that connection online that a lot of kids my age had. My parents and older siblings didn’t agree however, so I would even try and set up my own social media accounts secretly too. Aija Mayrock isn’t wrong when she says that kids are going to find their ways around their parents. Maybe banning social media for young teens isn’t the best route either because they may see that as punishment or a form of unnecessary control (I know I did). 

Teaching kids instead to consume social media in a more healthy and controlled way will probably be best for safety precautions. I think of it almost like a sex talk even...because there are so many dangers and distractions to young teens and children. Predators are out there to try and meet young girls, boys, and do harm to them in ways we don’t want to imagine. Think of human trafficking, serial rapists/murderers, and phedophiles. Parents are righteously so when they present their crazy concerns about their children consuming media. It’s more than just the hate speech that kids see and the cyberbullying, it’s also about other dangers that are all too overwhelming to think of. Kids are distracted by the comments, likes, shares, and the fun that they have on social media though. It’s inevitable that they will find it and use it. 

I think even now that the distraction that social media has on us is so prevalent. Even as a college senior, my phone annoys me and I might get sidetracked when doing homework. I like to set my phone up with ‘downtime,’ which limits my times on apps and whatnot for a certain number of hours throughout the day. I even deleted all my social media apps on my phone so that I wouldn’t stare mindlessly on a screen all day (Facebook, Instagram, etc). The only communicative app that I have is now Messenger on my phone. Everything else is saved for browser access (which means I’ll spend less time on it).

The fact that 72% of teens believe they’re being tricked to consume all this media is not surprising, and they’re probably right. I fear that these children will grow up to wish that they weren’t so distracted and were more focused on human interaction, and the times that they missed out on their friends and families because they thought commenting and liking their posts were enough to show love. I fear that girls and boys will grow up to think that their worth from their romantic partners is based off of how well he/she shows them off on social media and posts about them. I fear that the popularity and the feeling of being less lonely for these teens are temporary and they might have better chances actually conversing with their best friends during sleepovers instead of phone banging. Children are always seen as children though. Adults almost never see them as people who will eventually grow out of certain habits. I only hope these kids grow up remembering that there is nothing like the human connection. 

Although a majority of social media users (56%) in the U.S. feel that it wouldn’t be hard to give up social media, I don’t see that as a trend in the next few years in this society. Furthermore, half the people our age, 18-24, say that it would be a challenge to give up social media. Social media for us is just the center of our information sharing and information consumption. It’s the place for us to discuss our opinions, our experiences, our beliefs, and even our disagreements. How we use it (and how often) is up to us. 

Resources: https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/social-media-social-life-infographic

[yukangma-blog]

Blog Post #1

From the article of Common Sense Media, we can get that most teens treat social media as a tool for sharing their life and chatting with others. Since “Teens don’t value face-to-face communication with friends as much as they used to” that what I get from the research, also we can see from those charts that this research provides, the line which represent teens who prefer to have face-to-face communication has declined substantially. In this way, there are more teens would like to have communicate with friend by social media rather than face-to-face. Then for adults, the article of Pew Research Center talks about the usage of different social media application of people of different age, but we can also get that adult usually use those application to get some information like news and some activities.

The positive effect of social media that were shared by teens is social media can make them more popular, confident, better about themselves according to those charts of Common Sense Media. Since teens can find many new things and communicate with their friends, I think that is also a kind of social activity. Also, we can find that “Teens with low social-emotional well-being experience more of the negative effects of social media than kids with high social-emotional well-being.” from that article, teens will feel less lonely and depressed if they use social media. That can represent the positive effects of social media in my mind. Then for adult, I think the positive effect of social media is similar with the teens’, and there are something different which is it is easy to transfer information and communicate with other people by social media for adult, since the research shows that “A majority of Americans use Facebook and YouTube, but young adults are especially heavy users of Snapchat and Instagram”.

Although social media has so many positive effects for human, it also gets some serious negative effects and the main idea that those two researches provides is cyberbullying. “bullying that takes place over devices like phones, tablets, and computers. It can happen in social media, texts, or gaming, where people can view, participate in, or share content. It includes repeatedly sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, or mean content about someone else, on purpose. It can include sharing private information about someone else to cause embarrassment or humiliation.” The Common Sense Media defines cyberbullying as so. As we can see from the example of Aija Mayrock, cyberbullying is a really serious problem for teenagers, even it will cause someone to suicide. Also, the effect for adult may be lighter than teens’, but it still a big problems. here usually are many people suicide because of cyberbullying according to news. By the way, long-time usage of social media also will cause mental health problem for teenagers.

What makes me surprising is there are 89% children who have their own smartphone, because when I was a child, I don’t have smart phone and get a phone which can only make call service until high school. From those two articles, we can see that social media will influence young people more than adults. Maybe it is important to create a way that can teach teens how to treat social media and prevent negative effects of social media.

[cbmccabeumn-blog]

Blog Post #1

The research definitely paints a vivid picture about how people are using social media today and what they are using most. The first statistics that comes to mind are how the landscape of social media and technology as a whole is changing people’s mindset, especially young people. More and more often now people are feeling the negative effects of bullying, feeling alone or depressed etc. Interestingly enough this has to be taken with a grain of salt because the opposite is true in many senses a well. Social media has proved to be a space for people to communicate easier and feel less alone and feel more confident about themselves. Another statistic of note is the different platforms increasing. Obviously, with the increase in users there needs to be an increase of platforms to account for all the new people using these sites. I just think that it is of note because there are so many more ways to be active on social media even since 2012.

           There were lots of positives that many different people shared just from the information we read about this week. Some of note include feeling less lonely and less depressed because there are more people to talk to and who can understand what people are going through. There is a whole new level of support for people who need it and that is amazing to hear. Another person shared that it is a way for her to be creative and express herself through art on different platforms. Julie Lythcott-Haims wrote about social media being an opportunity to connect to people and it shows that people care about someone or something. My favorite positive story about social media in this weeks readings comes from Aija Mayrock who discussed how social media put her in a very sad place and how social media has showed her again how positive it can be. Out of her sadness came an inspirational story for so many people around the world and now she sees how people can benefit from it.

           There are plenty of negative effects of social media as well unfortunately such as discrimination that Lythcott-Haims references. She was discriminated against for her race at a young age and she sees it happening more and more now. As with positive outcomes there are just as many negative ones, with more opportunity there are more people jumping at those opportunities. Mayrock’s story as well sheds a light on how people can be cyberbullied which has become an overwhelming problem for many young people all over the world. Young people are able to express their disinterest in people and say things that they normally would not say in person. Finally, as I have said before and many people say as well social media allows there to be much less human contact in person. This can have a detriment on people and can stunt people socially in a world where social interaction permeates so much of what we do in this world.

           One notable fact I found most interesting is the increase in the amount of people using Youtube. I think this is a positive trend because although it can be edited to show people what they want to see, it also gives more of a glimpse of who people really are. I think it is a natural way for us as humans to find human interaction in the most real sense of the phrase through a social media site. Other sites like Instagram and snapchat have become more popular as well because a video is more telling than a picture. This is just interesting to me because although you can share so much on so many different places, Youtube has become so popular with so many people because there is infinite content on there and it is not limited by pictures or words in my opinion.