Dear Mr. or Mrs. President,

I am an 18-year-old girl from Northern New York. I now attend a boarding school by the name of Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro New Hampshire. This is the second High School that I have attended. Due to attending a boarding school, I have met many different and unique types of people. I was that freshman in High School who always acted older than she really was because I always played sports with the older girls, like the juniors and seniors. But now I look back, being a senior in high school now and I ask myself… Why did I want to grow up so fast? I remember wishing and wanting to be a senior and here I am now, my 18-year-old self, finally there. As a freshman in High School, maybe even an eighth grader in middle school, I was so self-conscious about who I was. I really wasn’t myself, I tried to act older. But I think that the biggest factor as to the reasoning as to why I wanted to be older than I actually was because of social media. As a freshman, my best friend and I would go outside and take photoshoots of each other, upload them onto her Mac laptop, then edit the ones that we wanted to post on Facebook. As soon as we put them on Facebook, we would wait and wait until possibly a cute upperclassman boy would like them, once they “liked” that photo on Facebook our confidence would go way up and we would just love life so much just because of one like on Facebook.

Now with the new apps such as Instagram and snapchat, now people can see your appearance all of the time. There is no privacy anymore because people insist on “checking in” on Facebook, people are becoming more selfish and causing more jealousy because people post pictures or even statuses about what they are doing, or where they are going all of the time. Now our world has more important things to worry about like how many “likes” they get on an Instagram, or if their crush doesn’t like there Instagram, they freak out and begin to overthink things like “oh he didn’t like my Instagram, therefore he isn’t in to me at all” or “oh he didn’t like my Instagram, therefore I am not pretty enough for him” I think my generation today is honestly so screwed up. People are starting to lose confidence because they don’t look like the models you see on TV or in magazines, or just about anywhere on social media. This issue matters to me because I am around teens every day and every second of the day, I hear them talking, or I even see the insecurities that most teens have, being a dorm proctor. More and more people are worried about what people are thinking of them so they can’t really be themselves, because they are constantly feeling as if someone would be judging them if they were to be themselves. I think a way that you could solve this is by getting the schools involved. I think teens need to almost have a class to teach them how to be themselves and be open about who they are as a person all throughout the country.

Sincerely,

Victoria Daley