Signed, Midwestern Redhead

At a Halloween party a few months ago, I was watching one of our neighbor's kids who is 2. She had already played with her Play-Doh, puzzles, and blocks. So, her mom gave her her iPhone. I couldn't believe my eyes. A 2-year-old was finding the YouTube app, finding Sesame Street  videos, watching them, and selecting videos that were related. That took me 3 minutes to figure out when I started watching YouTube... at the age of 9... on the family computer. It was almost like she was born with the ability to do this. It got me thinking, how young is too young for an iPhone? When I was a little kid, iPhone's weren't even a thing yet until 2007. I never had apps or anything crazy on the internet. I was at my grandma's house playing house with my kitchen, dolls, and other toys. I played outside and not on the internet. That being said, now that I'm a teenager, things have definitely changed. Children under the age of 8 can open apps, take pictures, and even delete th...

One of my Christmas presents was the book Beneath a Scarlet Sky   by Mark Sullivan. A few months prior to me receiving the gift, I was reading a Buzz Feed article called 51 Books That Will Make You Cry.  Intriguing my interest, I clicked on the article and this was the first book I saw. The description made me want to read more of the story. To summarize the book, it's a mix of a biography and historical fiction about Pino Lella, a Italian boy who wants nothing to do with WWII. After he helps out on a secret underground railroad helping Jews escape, he works as General Hans Leyers driver throughout the rest of the world war. Four words: THIS BOOK WAS PHENOMENAL. I could not put this book down. Mark Sullivan did a fantastic job on the research behind WWII. Since he contacted Pino Lella, he was able to travel to Italy and visit the scenes where this book takes place. The descriptions are vibrant and make you believe you are traveling throughout the story. Pino is such a lova...

While I think that social media is great, it can have some damaging effects. To me, it just seems too constricting to the actual art of conversation and takes up so much of your time. This being said, I have friends who actually have every single form of social media. The big question that adults ask themselves and wonder about their teens: does social media isolate them? In The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, it said that people who spend up to 2 hours a day on social media had twice the odds of perceived social isolation than those who spent less than half an hour a day. You might not think that you spend up to two hours a day on social media, but it's split up into chunks throughout the day. 5 minutes here, 3 minutes here, 2 minutes on the way to your next class. You only think you spend that much time on your phone if it's two hours straight. "But I'm a very social person. I have 434 friends on Snapchat and Instagram!" This sentence is one of the ...

5 years ago, my mom was reading this book at our yearly 4th of July trip to the lake cabin. Eventually, it was lost in my mind. When I was walking laps after my scoliosis surgery, I walked down by our little neighborhood library and saw the book sitting inside. Remembering the familiar cover, I picked it up and took it home, waiting in line with the other books I was wanting to read. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein is about a dog named Enzo, a golden retriever with the mind of a human philosopher. On the night of his death (not a spoiler), he recounts his life with his owner, Denny Swift, whose an upcoming race car driver. While the book took a few chapters to take to my liking, I eventually could not put it down. Enzo, the dog, is such a well defined character (and great and relatable for dog lovers/owners.) Since it's told from his perspective, you really get to see the world in a whole new light. His mind speaks like a human, but in a very philosophical way. He ...