Student Reporter Articles
Scroll to see student articles! These students are in Journalism One, and from students submissions
News Articles
Instagram’s Audience is Furious with August’s New Update
Uncommon app changes affect millions of creators and users through the new August 2020 Instagram app update.
Artists, musicians, and small businesses are experiencing lower interactions with their followers. Instagram updates their algrothuim “rules” monthly based on what was most popular. Augusts’ algorithm update boost depends on public engagement such as liking, commenting, sharing, and saving, leaving creators dependent upon trends in hopes to boost engagement.
“It puts pressure on artists to follow trends just to get interactions only for interactions to decrease” Omon (ig@ jugmug), small Instagram artist, said. “For me, the pressure isn't about having to follow trends; the pressure is just hoping the trend hasn't died out yet by the time I posted it.”
Once Instagram registers that you have seen all of the posts the users’ timeline a pop up icon reads, “You’re all Caught Up. View Older posts.” Right under the pop up icon is “suggested Posts” which takes the explore page and places it onto the users home page. This feature was implemented to keep Instagram’s audience scrolling and on the app longer, therefore, gaining more money through ad revenue. This feature is put in use whether the user is actively looking at their posts or accidentally opening up the app, thereby affecting everyone.
“It frustrates me that the home page isn’t specifically dedicated to my following. I feel more disconnected from my friends because I’ll only see three to four at a time. It seems Instagram has chosen to say ‘no, what you’ve curated for yourself isn’t right. We know what’s better for you,’” Cade Norman (11), said
In light of the threats of banning social media platform Tik Tok; Instagram includes in their update “Reels” to directly compete with the popular platform. With a layout similar to Tik Tok the reels take up the user's full vertical screen; users swipe up or down to move on from the current reel. The new reels allow creators to make, edit, and post their own videos keeping up with the 15-20 second attention span trend.
“As someone who uses Tik Tok daily, I think it's understandable, but it's a little annoying when you know who was originally doing it and all the other versions are just knockoffs,” Elora Lobo (11), said.
Sarah Manning
Student Reporter
Teens. School. Health Pandemic?
Living in a pandemic will affect a teen’s mental and physical health
Starting school in the middle of a global pandemic, parents may see a rapid decline in their teenagers’ mental and physical state from doing school online rather than in-person.
The world has decided to move on while the Coronavirus is moving on a steady continuum. Coronavirus is keeping many teenagers isolated from those close, their usual schedule, and their usual state of mind.
“I had hope for quarantine and that the virus was going to go away in a month,” said Reagan Bohman (11) “but here we are.”
The pandemic came unexpectedly and brought a huge change to the way the world went on with its business. School came back in-person this fall, after being remote for the remainder of the spring. Students have tried their best to adapt to a new way of learning. On top of being apart from their friends, daily schedules, extracurriculars, and their teachers. Having to end the past school year online, knowing that their summer was wiped away from them was a whole new experience.
Not only did online school bring a huge lack of motivation for students, the workload piled up faster and made students stressed. The lack of an in-person teacher and class-to-class schedules just touches the surfaces of the online trials students face.
“Each assignment seems a lot more daunting online because teachers don’t always answer your questions and doing it with people in class makes it easier, and you also see all your assignments at once which is very overwhelming,” said Bohman.
Reagan Bohman is currently ranked number one out of six hundred seventy juniors, but she is still going through problems that all teenagers are feeling, “I definitely struggle with procrastination like everyone else.”
Struggles, like a lack of motivation, stress, overthinking, and low self-esteem are all things teenagers experience. Being away from school at a stressful time hasn’t helped fix those struggles.
“It has made me sit along with my bad thoughts and has caused me to overthink everything and made learning feel like a chore,” said Bohman.
Even the smartest teens have been having huge struggles with learning and just getting through this pandemic. It has been hurting their mental and physical health.
“It has taken a toll on my mental health, and physically it ruined my sleep schedule,” said Reagan, “but going back in-person will get me into a better routine.”
Emily Trevino
Student Reporter
The world has decided to move on while the Coronavirus is moving on a steady continuum. Coronavirus is keeping many teenagers isolated from those close, their usual schedule, and their usual state of mind.
“I had hope for quarantine and that the virus was going to go away in a month,” said Reagan Bohman (11) “but here we are.”
The pandemic came unexpectedly and brought a huge change to the way the world went on with its business. School came back in-person this fall, after being remote for the remainder of the spring. Students have tried their best to adapt to a new way of learning. On top of being apart from their friends, daily schedules, extracurriculars, and their teachers. Having to end the past school year online, knowing that their summer was wiped away from them was a whole new experience.
Not only did online school bring a huge lack of motivation for students, the workload piled up faster and made students stressed. The lack of an in-person teacher and class-to-class schedules just touches the surfaces of the online trials students face.
“Each assignment seems a lot more daunting online because teachers don’t always answer your questions and doing it with people in class makes it easier, and you also see all your assignments at once which is very overwhelming,” said Bohman.
Reagan Bohman is currently ranked number one out of six hundred seventy juniors, but she is still going through problems that all teenagers are feeling, “I definitely struggle with procrastination like everyone else.”
Struggles, like a lack of motivation, stress, overthinking, and low self-esteem are all things teenagers experience. Being away from school at a stressful time hasn’t helped fix those struggles.
“It has made me sit along with my bad thoughts and has caused me to overthink everything and made learning feel like a chore,” said Bohman.
Even the smartest teens have been having huge struggles with learning and just getting through this pandemic. It has been hurting their mental and physical health.
“It has taken a toll on my mental health, and physically it ruined my sleep schedule,” said Reagan, “but going back in-person will get me into a better routine.”
Emily Trevino
Student Reporter
HOSA Impacts the Medical Field
How HOSA ClubI Influences Future Doctors
Ms. Rodriguez impacts students interested in the medical field. In her classroom students are able to gain certifications and experience during the school year.
The co-leader of HOSA and medical teacher at Samuel Clemens is Ms. Rodriguez.
“The benefits are it gets you a good head start.” Rodriguez said.” We expose you to so many parts of the medical field. So, that way if you’re still undecided of what you want to be or do, you know, you can decide.”
HOSA offers the opportunity to direct students to their desired medical career path. The club has potential to benefit them in many ways such as becoming better speakers and learning correct etiquette. Students will achieve this through attending competitions, obtaining certifications, and gaining experience.
Reagan Bohman is a junior in HOSA, she has been involved in HOSA both of her freshman and sophomore years.
“I think in general, it helps you gain a lot of important skills that you're gonna need, and that will get you ahead in college, so you'll show up with all this prior knowledge and experience,” Bohman said. “Especially when you’re doing things like CPR certification, or learning about it, that's obviously going to be used in your career, so it's good to learn young.”
Bohman developed a complex understanding of the aspects of the medical field from HOSA. Bohman is an example of how HOSA gives students a base to grow off of and succeed in their future. This club is not limited to certain occupations in the medical field, it's a general medical informational club that benefits all students.
“It's helped to show me how many different paths you can take in the medical field,” Bohman said, “because in HOSA there are so many different competitions involved in dentistry, physical therapy, emergency medicine, first aid, things like that.”
Marisa Gomez
Student Reporter
The co-leader of HOSA and medical teacher at Samuel Clemens is Ms. Rodriguez.
“The benefits are it gets you a good head start.” Rodriguez said.” We expose you to so many parts of the medical field. So, that way if you’re still undecided of what you want to be or do, you know, you can decide.”
HOSA offers the opportunity to direct students to their desired medical career path. The club has potential to benefit them in many ways such as becoming better speakers and learning correct etiquette. Students will achieve this through attending competitions, obtaining certifications, and gaining experience.
Reagan Bohman is a junior in HOSA, she has been involved in HOSA both of her freshman and sophomore years.
“I think in general, it helps you gain a lot of important skills that you're gonna need, and that will get you ahead in college, so you'll show up with all this prior knowledge and experience,” Bohman said. “Especially when you’re doing things like CPR certification, or learning about it, that's obviously going to be used in your career, so it's good to learn young.”
Bohman developed a complex understanding of the aspects of the medical field from HOSA. Bohman is an example of how HOSA gives students a base to grow off of and succeed in their future. This club is not limited to certain occupations in the medical field, it's a general medical informational club that benefits all students.
“It's helped to show me how many different paths you can take in the medical field,” Bohman said, “because in HOSA there are so many different competitions involved in dentistry, physical therapy, emergency medicine, first aid, things like that.”
Marisa Gomez
Student Reporter
