Digital Leadership Workshop Program for Teens

Posted on February 15, 2022 by teenservices

Happy February, everyone! I am Tran Nguyen, a girl scout of Troop 2279, located in Santa Ana, CA. As a senior in high school, I am currently working towards my Gold Award, the highest award in the Girl Scout program.

During quarantine, everything was closed. Due to everything being canceled and closed, we couldn’t earn service hours or perform community service, and this went on for about 6 months. We didn’t know what else to do with our bucket-load of free time that we had during quarantine. We teenagers love spending time on our devices, and our parents couldn’t tell us to get off and do something productive easily. Social media is a HUGE part of our lives. But what if I told you that we, as teenagers, could use social media in a better way?

As a student who has struggled with procrastination and social media addiction from 8th grade to junior year in high school, I understood what it was like to be unproductive and how it was a challenge to balance school, extracurricular activities, and social media platforms. After learning about social media marketing and diving deeper into that skill during quarantine, I was able to find that balance. Knowing how many teenagers also struggle with finding that balance, I wanted to help them through my workshop program.

My online program, the Digital Leadership Workshop, aimed to show and help the teenage population become more aware of how they can use social media as a tool instead of something to waste time on. This program did that by teaching the basic skills of social media marketing — a skill where one could use social media to help other communities, groups, clubs, charities, organizations, businesses, and even grow him/herself to serve the people in his/her community.

The Digital Leadership Workshop taught basic skills of social media marketing including:

defining a target audience

how to run a business page on social media

how teenagers can apply these skills to help others in their community

and how advertisements work on social media

While collaborating with the Central Library, I was able to share these skills with up to 10 people, and their awareness about this subject grew from 50% to 85%. I would like to thank the Mission Viejo Library and Mr. Allen Kesinger for giving me the opportunity to share my expertise with the teenagers there. I know I didn’t get much of an audience throughout the duration of my workshop program, but the feedback I received was very insightful. It helped me to become more aware of how I can make the program better for future teenage audiences; I look forward to presenting at more locations.

Thank you!

–Tran N.

For more information, please see the flyer above or click to visit the website.

Why Discord is the Best Social Platform

Posted on August 29, 2021 by Jeremy L.

Nearly everybody has heard of or used social platforms such as Instagram or Snapchat. However, a less commonly used platform is Discord. Discord has all the features most social platforms already have, which include a messaging system, ways to attach media files, and the ability to create group DMs. However, it has extra features that are very nice and make Discord heavily underrated.

Discord was created back in 2015 and was meant to be a platform only for gamers. Since then, they have promoted their platform to include other activities and to make their platform more favorable for many people. For example, people can set up what is called a server, to do activities together. A server is a sort of group chat with a lot more features, such as voice channels, the ability to add bots, and different roles. These can promote a better form of communication and control between people. Discord users can join up to 100 servers, so there is a wide variety of servers they can join. These servers include public servers, such as servers for a video game or a server for memes, or private servers, which can include servers with just your friends. The possibilities are nearly endless with servers.

If users really want to step up their game with their servers and really make them complex, yet efficient for the user, they can add in bots. One very popular bot that a lot of servers have is the Mee6 bot. This bot has many customizable features, such as giving users a role when they react to a certain message, or timed messages (a certain message that sends at a certain time of the day).

The possibilities of Discord are nearly endless, and people meet new people nearly everyday on this platform. So if you are getting bored of the normal social media everybody has, consider Discord!

-Jeremy L.

The Other Side of Lost by Jessi Kirby

Posted on February 12, 2019 by Anmol K.

The Other Side of Lost by Jessi Kirby is about 18 year old Mari Turner, and her quest to avenge her cousin, while finding herself. Mari cultivates a perfect life to her thousands of followers on social media. She posts inspiring messages and stories, but she does not practice what she preaches. On the inside, Mari is empty and can not keep up with maintaining this fake profile. So one day she breaks down and posts a video of herself confessing to what she actually thinks: she is not happy, and does not feel the inspirational message she spreads herself.

Quickly, it goes viral, and pretty soon afterwards, she faces major backlash and people calling her a fraud. In order to escape all of this, Mari proceeds to hike the John Muir trail. She is doing this to honor her cousin, Bri, who was an avid hiker and died in an accident while doing what she loved. Her and Mari had made the promise to hike the trail together when they turned 18, but Bri did not make it till then. Mari has never had any experience hiking, but she feels that she should complete the hike for the two of them. With Bri’s diary and her hiking boots, Mari proceeds to hike the trail to the best of her ability; but it is much more than a simple hike because it helps Mari to see who she is without the people of the Internet.

This book should be read by everybody because it can help teach us about ourselves. It tells us to take a step back and to be aware of what we value in ourselves. Kirby was able to depict the growth of Mari and she was able to let go of her grief while finding what she knows about herself. Simply put, this book can help people not only see the effects of negativity on social media, but how to be mindful ourselves of what we seek in life.

-Anmol K.

The Other Side of Lost by Jessi Kirby is available fro checkout from the Mission Viejo Library.

Comparison: Thirteen Reasons Why

Posted on April 23, 2017 by Jessica T.

Recently, a series for the novel Thirteen Reasons Why, was released on Netflix. Out of curiosity and the large amount of people raving about it, I decided to watch it. I read the book a couple years ago and hoped the series would do well to mimic it. Please note that this is a serious and powerful piece of work with triggering and sensitive topics. While it holds important lessons, it may not be a book/series for everyone.

A quick synopsis: Hannah Baker is the new girl at her small high school, ready for a fresh start. Almost immediately she captures the attention and interest of many and while it seems like her life is going well, it takes an unexpected downward spiral. Social media, rumors and loneliness saturate Hannah’s life and turn it upside down. She suffocates under pressure and undergoes numerous internal issues. Eventually she commits suicide and leaves behind thirteen cassette tapes holding thirteen reasons why she ended her life. The thirteen people responsible for her passing are hit with the overpowering realization that their actions and words are more than just actions and words.

The book, written by Jay Asher, is incredible and captures the essence of what it is like to be a teenager, overwhelmed by the struggles of today’s society. The book was personal and eerie but the series made everything come to life. Yes, the series over exaggerated some parts and added more details to parts in the book that were briefly discussed. However, that realism and graphic detail is what really speaks and captures the attention of many. Without using detail to demonstrate the severity of Hannah’s problems, people can be tempted to overlook them. The book and series share similarities such as the relationships between the characters, and the secrets and rumors that get spread around. Like any book and show, they hold differences as well. The biggest difference is how raw the series is. There are more in-depth character backgrounds, more dramatic confrontations between characters and heavier, darker scenes.

This book is a huge metaphor; while Hannah is one individual in this one particular book, she stands for every human in this world that may be going through exactly what Hannah went through. She stands for those who are too scared to speak out and she stands for what our society needs to fix. Thirteen Reasons Why not only acknowledges flaws in our world but also shines a light on the importance of being kind and realizing that everyone fights their own personal battles.

-Jessica T.

Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why is available for checkout from the Mission Viejo Library.