The Newport Times
Ethan Snapp
Texting and Driving... Death by thumbs
Teenagers are texting and driving
Teenagers text and drive, there's no doubt about it. Every day teenagers hop in their cars to go to school or to head to a friends house and while they're behind the wheel, decide to send a few text messages. Texting and driving is dangerous and everyone knows it, yet we continuously do it. The teenagers in today's society see nothing wrong in texting and driving, and it's become accustomed to them. It's our job as teenagers to raise awareness about it. Even if it means we only save one life, that's one more death we avoid, and that one life saved could open the eyes of thousands of others.
Teenagers are the main age group that text and drive. Now of course, this has a lot to do with immaturity. Some teenagers aren't mature enough to put their phone down and just drive. Teen drivers are 4x more likely than adults to get into car crashes or near-crashes when talking or texting on a cell phone. One big reason teens text and drive is that teens aren't encouraging each other to stay off of their phones while on the road. Instead of telling them to wait until they're done driving, they continue on with a conversation. Teens have to take responsibility and help each other stay safe on the roads. 11 teenagers die every day because of texting and driving. Telling someone to wait until they're off the road could save 11 young lives. Be the difference.
Video Games are a good influence on children
Parents tend to approach video games like junk food: games are fine in moderation but ultimately they are an evil temptation that’s more bad than good. But according to an article published in Pediatrics: The Official Journal Of The American Academy of Pediatrics, we may be fundamentally mistaken in our thinking about how video games impact behavior.
Anti video game people often say that children shouldn't play video games because it destroys their social skills. However, this is nothing but a myth. In fact, according to Psych Central, the opposite may be true, since video games often allow players from around the world to work together to solve problems or complete tasks. People need to face the fact that kids nowadays interact with each other over cell phones, social media, and another big one... VIDEO GAMES!
Not all video games are mindless. According to John L. Sherry, assistant professor at Michigan State University, educators are increasingly using educational games in the classroom as a motivational tool. The right video games help children master everything from basic grammar to complex math without the drudgery of old-school flash cards. Many games require kids to anticipate movements and, in the case of three-dimensional video games, require players to manipulate objects through a three-dimensional place, improving spacial-relationship skills.
Video games aren't all that bad. My brother plays them all the time, and he's turned out fine! The problem is and never will be the game that the kid is playing, and it won't even be the kid playing the game. It's the kid's parents. If they constantly bash video games, and tell their kids that they can't play them while their friends can, they will react in a negative way, causing them to show off bad behavior. So instead of shunning video games altogether, how about letting your child play a few here and there, and heck, they might even get tired of 'em so you won't have to worry about it!
Cyber Bullying
It Has To Stop!
Every second of every minute of every hour of every day, someone is getting bullied online. As social media begins to grow, the amount of people being bullied grows with it. It happens so often that kids get onto their Facebook and Twitter accounts just to harass another user. More and more these social media websites are being used as bully sites. Kids are constantly being harassed over social media, and at such a young age, kids can only take so much of it.
Kids on social media know what's going on when it comes to cyber bullying. They all see it happen, but not all kids intervene when they witness it. 95% of social media-using teens who have witnessed cruel behavior on social networking sites say they have seen others ignoring the mean behavior. That means that less then 6 kids out of every 100 kids that witness the harassment stop the bully from bullying. That percentage is way too high! One big problem that causes cyber bullying is because they're kids, and kids will be kids. That doesn't make bullying an ok thing to do however. Instead of preaching to kids to not bully, why not preach to kids to help someone that is being bullied, or better yet, preach to kids that they should influence their friends to help someone that is being bullied. It's not always about attacking the issue straight on. To start off, you should try to work your way around it, and when you're deep enough into solving it , THEN you try to tell kids to stop bullying altogether. These thing aren't easy to deal with, because if they were, we wouldn't have this problem and I wouldn't be writing this. But one thing we can do is make it easier for ourselves and make it easier for the kids out there that are constantly bullied online, and approach this subject the right way!
Cyber bullying is something that could possibly never be stopped altogether. There's millions and millions of people that use social media, and it's almost impossible to manage every single account that's out there. But we could start a "chain reaction" (Rachel Scott reference, R.I.P Rachel) and by stopping one kid on Facebook to stop bullying, we could stop a hundred kids, and then maybe even a thousand, and then a million!... I think I'm a little too far ahead right now, but you get the idea! You can't stop it, you can only contain it!
Newport Basketball
Newport High School Men's Basketball team will be playing on Saturday @ Lexington Christian High School in the Central Bank shootout. The Wildcats will be taking on the Rowan County Vikings @ 5:45 pm. Both teams enter the contest with records of 1 win and 2 losses (1-2).
The Wildcats recently earned their first victory over Boone County, thrashing them 81-51.
The Vikings' only victory this season was a 35-point win against Bath County High School.
This game is a highly anticipated matchup, and both teams are looking to break even.
When asking Newport student and member of the basketball team Najee Williams about what he thought about the game on Saturday, he told me: "I think the team has a really good chance to win this Saturday. The team has been practicing hard this week and we're really determined to beat Rowan. They're a very good team, and they are going to play just as hard as us because they need this win just as much as we do."
Come support the Wildcats!
Our newspaper headquarters are located in the luxurious room 113 on the first floor of the beautiful Newport High School. All the employees for our newspaper are very hard working, and give nothing but 100% facts in our articles and stories. We appreciate you guys reading, thank you!
Email: ethan.snapp@stu.newport.kyschools.us
Website: www.newportwildcats.org
Location: 900 East 6th Street, Newport, KY, United States
Phone: (513)-884-0152
Twitter: @EthanSnappy