Time for a pitstop. In this last blog I will temporarily stop my car and take a look at the path that I left behind me. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I have been constructing my own story over the last couple of weeks, months and years. Approaching the end of my beginning, my Bachelor in Social Innovation, I will check my rear-view mirror to look back on which route I travelled [...]
This is a blog where I want to share my insights with everything I have learned over the past few months and which has helped me expand my professional view. Hereby I share my vision and my opinion on the topic of social media, youth, and mental health. But I also want young people to start sharing. Share how they feel and what they are experiencing in terms of mental health complaints. Share the different pressures they are feeling. Share what kind of impact the pandemic is having on them. Share it all, with each other.
My parents always taught me to keep myself up to date with what is happening in the world. I value this greatly because I think it helps me to also create my own perspective on important matters. So, to gather food-for-perspective-thought, I check my NOS app to check up on the daily news. Last week, I did the same. I came across an article that stated that the Documentary of Michael Moore: Planet of the Humans, got deleted from YouTube since it violated author rights (NOS, 2020). Planet of the Humans… Sound familiar? [...]
Right or wrong, left or right, win or lose - is it really this simple? If you feel that we tend to see things as less complex than they truly are, you might consider watching this talk. If you think I am talking nonsense, then you MUST watch!
The complexity of transformation, individualism, collectivism and our societal playfield. Complex concepts but closely connected in current society.
As a student, I come across this, and have been coming across this, my entire life: postponing, leaving things up to the last minute, evasiveness. The first time it is a presentation where I am writing my cue cards five minutes before showtime, the next time it is handing in my proposal at 11:59 pm when the deadline is at midnight [...]
If there is not enough ownership and urgency for participants to participate, developing a living system becomes hard. Participants together have to choose a structure, the foundation needs to be clear and sometimes transformation and doing a step back is necessary.
The circular economy and ownership. Often, whilst interviewing in my project, I heard from respondents that they feel like they are a drop in the ocean when it comes to making change. Everybody that I interviewed shared the opinion that they find the circular economy important. However, when I asked them where the ownership and responsibility lies, the answer was never: ‘with myself’ [...]
So many young people are experiencing so much pressure right now, that it gives them many mental health complaints. The pressure in your head where you think everything should be perfect, that you should be perfect. The pressure becomes too much for young people, which quickly causes depression and burnouts. I still believe that social media has to do with this pressure being felt even more. Purely because it gives us a lot of information that we simply wouldn't know without the online platforms.
‘Hey Emma, what do you study again?’ ‘I am a Social Innovation student, but no it is not what you think, I am not that ‘zweverig’. This is a situation I found myself regularly in over the last three years. Walking around at school, I got sick and tired of words such as vegetarian, sustainable, biological, ecological, climate changer or vegan. [...]
