Daryan Cem

When you flick your thumb upwards, scrolling to the next Tiktok, the creator has three seconds to capture your attention. They speak fast and use eye-catching visuals, starting with a question you’ve always wondered about or a brief preview of what the rest of the short video will show you. This strategy is effective. It takes advantage of one of the keystones behind social media addiction—the average attention span is

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Grace Bland

If the Empowerteen Middle School Retreat could be summed up in just a few words, it’d be described as loud and exhilarating. The participants showed their enthusiasm with high energy and hollers of approval. Almost every activity was met with good spirits and full effort, which was one of the special characteristics of this year’s group.  The Middle School Retreat, like the High School Retreat, was centered around brain activity

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Kris Sanders

During the school year, it’s easy to keep in touch with friends. You see each other nearly every day for months! But when summer break rolls around, it may become more difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. If you want to meet up with your friends, there are ways around most of the obstacles.  Starting with the most important thing, getting your friends interested. It’s summer, so you might still message

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Daryan Cem

Generative AI is everywhere. Anything you can imagine can now be generated using AI tools– images for posters, plans for businesses, even videos with premises wild that they go viral within days. Some estimates say that 71% of new social media posts utilize generative AI in some way or another. Considering how much time people spend online, this means that exposure to it has increased dramatically– and as what it

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Kris Sanders

Earlier today, my math class was told that at the end of the month, everyone would be taking a final test of everything we learned over the semester. When I heard this, I sighed. The last thing I wanted to do was start preparing for some big test, answering hundreds of questions for hours. As my advisory teacher talked about it a bit more, I started doodling on a piece

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Grace Bland

The best part about Empowerteen’s high school summer retreat is seeing the close bonds the participants and mentors develop. Within a matter of hours during that first day of the week, the participants began cracking jokes with the mentors and looking up to them as both role models as well as friends.              “I would say my favorite part about yesterday was just the morning when everyone starts rolling in,”

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