Sunny Youth Journal

A few months ago, when the virus first surfaced, nobody expected it to become so bad, forcing the entire world into lock down. During the pandemic, the U.S has faced a surge in mental health issues among people. But who is most affected? And how can we help them?

In the article, it states that out of 2,032 adults who were interviewed about how many times they had negative feelings over the past month, 28% were likely to screen positive for mental illnesses. That’s almost 8 times as much as 2018’s 3.4%. This shows that the pandemic has caused a very large increase in mental health problems.

As for who is most affected, younger adults and parents have taken the force of most of these issues. This may come as a surprise to some people, as seniors are more prone to the coronavirus, yet they are not facing as many problems. A possible reason why they are not as affected is because they are more protected from the economic troubles during the pandemic. They most likely are retired and safe from money woes. Young adults however, are more likely to lose their jobs at stores and restaurants as they are closing, and may have been in a bad financial space to begin with. Also, young adults already may have problems with their mental health.

Parents are affected because of what you might think. With schools closed, most parents must juggle work with watching and teaching their kids. Also, most of the kids recreational activities have also been closed, leaving kids unoccupied with nothing to do and being bored out of their minds. In 2018, adults with kids were less likely to have mental health issues than those without, but now, parents are more likely to be in distress than the others.

Another example of mental health problems increasing is that calls to mental health hotlines have increased. How we can help does not mean we can open up the country to improve the economy, as that would mean even more cases and deaths, causing even more problems and worries among people going to work about their health and safety. Instead, people should be prepared for a surge of Americans in need of help, so they won’t be overwhelmed if it happens.

In conclusion, lots of people are struggling during the pandemic, and if you are feeling down, know that you are not alone and that there are probably other people out their with way worse problems than you.

Today’s Ted Talk was about how false information on the internet can cause major disruptions in our society. For instance, when some Syrian hackers hacked into verified press and fabricated an extremely surprising story about a bomb hurting the president. This fake news was instantly retweeted about 4,000 times in about 5 minutes. Many major companies were fooled by this tweet and ran their company according to a world in were the president was hurt, which therefore made the stock market crash by almost 139 billion dollars in just a single day.

Because our technology is so advanced, adroit, and enhanced compared to olden days, it is much easier to create photos, videos, tweets, articles, etc that look and sound very authentic. There are many AI automatons and apps who are battling other AI apps who are trying to find the make out if the photo or article is real, or is a concoction of made-up stories. To add on, lots of people are avid social media users, who check social media many times a day. In which spreads the false news and information even faster.

This has been very damaging to the society as from the president example, we can see that the stock market has lost a big fortune. In a foreign country, spreading false information will cause you to become a felon and spent 6 years in prison. Many people do this because they want to cause harm to something or someone, often spreading false stories of them doing horrific things. The other reason is to gain attention and for people to notice them.

In this video, the speaker talked about many ways to stop us from being cajoled into believing the false news. One of the easiest ways is to be vigilant. Another way is to look at other articles about the same situation and see if it is telling the same thing. The last one is to use common sense. There could be small nuances that could just not make sense, or the whole thing could just seem as if the writer is a rudimentary in writing. Whichever way you chose, always be careful about rumors and things on the internet since you never know what’s real or what’s fake.

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” tells the story of Walter Mitty on a trip to town with his wife, Mrs. Mitty. In his fantasy world, Walter often is heroic and adventurous, but in real life he only runs errands every so often and doesn’t do anything exciting unlike his daydreams. In the beginning of the short story, Mitty pretends to be driving through a hurricane and on an iceberg. Then, when Mrs. Mitty starts yelling at him, he finally snaps back to reality, where she scolds him for driving too fast. After Mrs. Mitty left, Walter goes back to daydreaming, where he is a nurse and helps heal a millionaire banker who is a friend of Roosevelt.

I think this short story’s theme is that success and failure is examined through Mitty’s inability to live a fulfilling life, which causes him to retreat to an internal life full of images of conquest. Walter Mitty is neither exciting nor successful in his everyday life, whilst in his fantasy world, he is prosperous and is considered as hero and adventurer.

He likes to be the leader, but he instead’s a dreamer

He wants to be mighty , but he actually is tiny

He thinks he’s so great, in reality he’s a grape

But he thought he could kill with his lefty?

But that was all a dream

He tried to fend the Germans, alone with a plane

He defeated the German soldiers, and was deemed a real hero

But that was all a dream

He was a innocent, a man, a hero

But fate was cruel to him, so he got blamed for murder

The firing squad was upon him

But that was just a dream

So here is Walter who is much of a dreamer,

But in the end he’s still…

A good man

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” tells the story of Walter Mitty on a trip into town with his wife, Mrs. Mitty. Walter is clumsy at many things; he can’t handle simple tasks, and he forgets things easily. Although, Walter has a huge imagination.

While Walter goes through a day of tasks and errands, he escapes into a series of daydream fantasies, each based on by some part of reality. As he drives his car, he imagines he is commanding a hydroplane through a terrible storm, but this is merely his wife telling him to slow down while driving. When he rides past a hospital, he imagines he is a world-famous surgeon saving a VIP’s life. When he hears a newsboy shouting, he imagines he is being interrogated in the courtroom. As he waits for his wife to finish at the hairdresser’s, Walter sees pictures of German plane and imagines he is a British pilot willing to sacrifice his life for Britain. Lastly, as Mitty waits outside against a wall for his wife to buy something in a medicine shop, he daydreams that he is brave man about to be shot by a firing squad. The story ends with the inscrutable Walter Mitty awaiting this “gunny” death.

Walter is a daydreamer, and that is a bad thing. He can’t really focus on things, since he gets distracted by his daydreams.

Schools closed, and remote work became the norm,

restaurants shuttered and patients swarmed,

and everyone complains ” Why did this sickness form?”.

Clearly, the pandemic has had a devastating effect on mental health,

People should be more careful, and not for the sake of wealth.

Yet, some people are suffering more than others,

just think of all the sad and worried mothers!

Coronavirus is breaking out all around the earth,

so you should stay home and hold on to your dear life because you’re not going to get a rebirth.

In a recent article from Scientific American called If We’re Not Careful, Tech Could Hurt the Fight against COVID-19, the authors shed light on how new technology attempting to help the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic can actually lead to more destructive results. For example, even if one’s intentions and technology seem useful, it can lead to more distrust in science and even scams. If someone with little previous medical or ethical experience attempts to rush a project on COVID-19, it can backfire and cause even more deaths in the world. In this article, the authors ask four questions that every person making technology on COVID-19 should think about. These four questions cover the aspects of needs, action, credibility, and impact. 

The first question is “Are you listening to experts and vulnerable communities?” Answering this question should ensure that one has credible sources and can differentiate between helpful and harmful technologies. Through working with vulnerable communities, people can understand what others need and how to develop a solution. This is important as the base of a project to know that their project is working towards a good cause and people are willing to use it. The second question is “Can you join existing efforts?” Joining existing efforts can lead to a “jumpstart” to building something. Often, the most important part of a project is taking action and sparking the start. By joining efforts with big-name, professional companies, the technology can be more trustworthy and can receive proper funding. 

The third question is “Can your technology do what you say it’s going to do?” In millions of cases around the world, what is shown of a startup or technology is not what it truly is behind the scenes. This can be due to various reasons, such as lack of funding, mindset, or even the idea behind it. .In order to have successful technology in a large market such as present-day biotech or computer science needed for the COVID-19 pandemic, one’s technology has to be applicable and usable instead of only being written on paper. The fourth and final question is “How does your technology shift power?” This question is one of the most direct to the COVID-19 pandemic due to the need for urgent and impactful technology. A useful technology to shift power would impact people on a large scale. 

These four questions ensure that new technologies to help the COVID-19 pandemic are needed, applicable, credible, and impactful. In our world today, many startups and new products are being built to attempt to solve the pandemic. However, not all of these are good, and through the careful examination of these companies with these four questions, it can be seen how many companies bring harm and even greater complications. 

A Rose for Emily, ironically there was no actual rose, which is a flower that is used to show love and affections or romance. This story incorporates the rose in different ways based on its message it is trying to convey to us readers. One, Emily, the protagonist was never able to love or be loved, which is why she took to the extent to kill Homer, because she was scared of losing him after the death of her father. However, in my perspective, I think this story mainly introduces the idea of the rose being a wall of color that blocks the citizen’s view on the reality of Miss Emily and her life.
Rose is why being a color is not transparent, which is why it is a perfect symbolism. The society is living in this light or time that has never quite healed. Although if this story was real in today’s generation, many would have called her crazy, but in the story, she was regarded as not crazy and just in a grieving state. When my family member had passed away, I understood Emily’s pain. It is not easy to just move on, it takes time. However, Emily became mentally unstable and developed an unhealthy relationship with the society and the past. The society is behind a rose wall, where their view is different because they can’t move on. They did not want to respond to the bad part of their life and chose to seek the good part of their life and how they view their life because they could not get over the massive loss after the civil war had taken place. They even went to the extent to believe Emily would soon be able to find love and enjoy life, instead of trying to seek and help her or getting her the treatment and support she needed mentally.
I believe that the author wants us to accept reality as it is and that nothing will be perfect. You will go through ups and downs and be stuck, but there will always be a part of your life to heal, and that in order to heal, you have to accept the truth and not be behind rose glasses. When I encounter the bad parts of life, sometimes it is so tempting to ignore and move on, but to do better you have to accept reality and your problems to fix it and move on gradually, instead of handling her loss like Emily had did, or the way the town ignored the problems by putting up that rose wall barrier to view life differently, which is the main reason why it was so difficult for the South to heal.

At a first glance, the townspeople in A Rose for Emily do not seem to have any capacity for compassion. When Emily buys arsenic, they say ” ‘She will kill herself,’ ” remarking that it “would be (for) the best.” The townspeople also often gossip about her. Many attend her funeral out of “curiosity to see the inside of house,” though they hide it under a guise of respect.

When it becomes clear that Emily is insane, it is easier to pity her. In fact, she is exempted from taxes through a neatly packaged lie in a move of generosity by Colonel Sartoris, the mayor at that time. Nevertheless, pity isn’t always the same as compassion, especially in this case. If Emily had been allowed outside her house to work, she may not have gone batty, instead becoming a normal member of society. Though Colonel Sartoris certainly meant well, his action, in effect, was keeping Emily down instead of helping her.

One of the few times the townspeople truly felt compassion for Emily was after her father’s death. The narrator writes, “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.” However, other than empathizing with Emily, they did nothing. That’s not to say that people should immediately act whenever they feel compassion for somebody, but if Emily had been exposed to the townspeople’s feelings of genuine sympathy, she might have started living a drastically different life.

Faulkner isn’t dismissing or condemning Emily’s morbid actions in any way. However, he is calling for understanding of Emily — every part of her, including the murderous lunatic and the isolated captive. True compassion is forgiveness of even the worst crimes, and allowing room for growth. It is in this way that the town failed Emily. Instead of forcing the ideals of Antebellum South on her and watching her from “behind jalousies,” they should have stood behind her in facing her demons and untangling her life.

Us humans are exploring uncharted lands during the COVID-19 outbreak. People are panic-stricken and strive to receive trusted information about the situation. One major information provider is technology. Technology opens an entire world of information and products, but one must first confirm that these availabilities are reliable. In order to determine if an information site or product should be trusted, three of the questions Stanford suggests to ask oneself are: Are you listening to experts and vulnerable communities? Can you join existing efforts? Can your technology do what you say it’s going to do? These three questions not only help create technology, but can can also be used as help in many other aspects of life.

The first question is to ask if one is listening to experts and vulnerable communities. Anyone at any level of understanding can post information about the pandemic. This raises concerns surrounding the fact of how some sources are not reliable. Experts are trained to provide the truth, and listening to vulnerable communities helps people understand the opinion of those who don’t have a chance to speak. This is why people should listen to experts and vulnerable communities. Listening to trusted individuals and communities is shown to be effective almost everywhere. In today’s world, people are deciding whether to listen to Trump or medical experts for information on COVID-19. The medical experts, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, are much more reliable, but people still tend to listen to Trump because he is the president and in turn holds higher power. In the movie Contagion, a deadly disease sweeps across the world, infecting millions. A blogger pretends that he has contracted the disease and says how using Forsythia can cure the sickness, but it actually can’t. Many people end up listening to him and “harm” themselves by intaking ineffective chemicals. Listening to trusted and reliable individuals can help in any situation.

The second question to ask is if one can join existing efforts. There are many efforts, each solving separate problems, in action trying to combat the pandemic. By contributing to an existing effort, one can speed up the process. Joining existing efforts is also supported by the concept of strength in numbers. Mark Shields, an american columnist, once said, “There is always strength in numbers.” In the following scenario, strength in numbers denies to how a larger group of people working together can solve a problem faster and better. The slogan for the Warriors was also called “Strength in numbers.” Many different types of people agree a larger populated team means a better team.

The third question is to ask is if one’s technology is performing its advertised tasks. One’s technology should be able to do what it is assumed to do in real life. This is important because it can cause severe distrust if an individual feels lied to. Trust is not something easily forgotten, it is something that is remembered and stays in one’s heart. When a certain technology product is not trusted, it can cause a catastrophic chain reaction. Superstitions about a single bad product can lead to mistrust in an entire company or association. Many people currently relate black men to criminals because of the recent San Jose crimes, but this perspective is absolutely incorrect. An entire race should not be judged just by the wrongdoing of a single individual. If the technology truthfully advertises what is can actually perform, people will use it more, spread the information, and more people can have a better life.

In conclusion, these three questions are crucial in determining the reliability of technology. Listening to experts and vulnerable communities helps people receive the truth. Joining existing efforts is important because of the concept of strength in numbers. Truthfully advertising technology can help engage trust. People should try their best in order to sustain a reliable internet and trustable technological products.