A new challenge is the subject of many posts on a social media website within a short period of time. Challenges have become a way to validate yourself. Some challenges have been for a good cause or harmful to yourself or others or just validation. One of the first popular challenges was the “ice bucket challenge.” This challenge was of you pouring a bucket of ice water on yourself or someone else. This challenge was to promote awareness of the disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and encouraged donations for research. This challenge was a great example of a good cause. Generation A also known as Gen A have taken a big part in these challenges. Gen A is a person from 6 to 26 years old. Our society  has made these challenges the new “norm.’’ It is almost as if people feel the need to do it to have that popularity. Most influencers participate in these trends because it is what brings them fame. It’s what our generation wants to see and it brings us entertainment. 

Being part of this generation and seeing these different things come out is interesting and yes, it is entertaining and distracts me from other things, but some challenges are pointless in my opinion. Some of these challenges have been taken to different extents. For example here at SCHS and many other schools, there are things being stolen and taken home. All because of a trend on Tik Tok that’s going around where kids take school properties and make it theirs. This has made the school take action. Some of those actions are in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, or referral to the police department. Dr. Joey Lefdal, the Director of Student Services at Schuyler Community High School explains “It has been more of a distraction.  It hurts our building, makes us look like we don’t care about our school to our community, and takes away from our education, which is what should upset our students.” Is this the image that students are trying to portray our schools as?