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Teenage girls were a strange breed of animal, prone to strange trends and behaviors. – Bradley Convissar, Blink
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene, or poem that features the exotic creature known as the teenage girl.
Journaling Prompt: What is the strangest trend you have seen in teenage girls, whether in this generation or your own generation.
Art Prompt: Teenage Girls
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write a humorous piece about teenage girls and their strange trends and behaviors.
Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography on Flickr
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Rates of dieting, fitness, plastic surgery and eating disorders are at an all time high, but why do so many women, and an increasing number of men, feel insecure about their bodies? A famous study of teenage girls in Fiji, before and after the television was introduced to the island in 1995, is telling: “After three years with TV, the girls who watched it the most were 50% more likely to describe themselves as ‘too fat’; 29% scored highly on a test of eating-disorder risk.” Body images presented by the media are increasingly unrealistic while being presented as an achievable, even necessary, goal. -Orion Jones, Big Think
Writing Prompt: How does your character feel about his or her body? Include this in your character sketch.
Journaling Prompt: Write about how you feel about your body.
Art Prompt: Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Photo Credit: daniellehelm on Flickr
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“Everybody is aware of the risk of cell phones and texting in automobiles, but I see more and more teens distracted with the latest devices and headphones in their ears,” says lead author Richard Lichenstein, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of pediatric emergency medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “Unfortunately as we make more and more enticing devices, the risk of injury from distraction and blocking out other sounds increases.”
…Researchers reviewed 116 accident cases from 2004 to 2011 in which injured pedestrians were documented to be using headphones. Seventy percent of the 116 accidents resulted in death to the pedestrian. More than two-thirds of victims were male (68 percent) and under the age of 30 (67 percent). More than half of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains (55 percent), and nearly a third (29 percent) of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the crash. The increased incidence of accidents over the years closely corresponds to documented rising popularity of auditory technologies with headphones. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write about a distracted character and the accident their distraction causes.
Journaling Prompt: Write about an accident that you had because you were distracted.
Art Prompt: Accident
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about the dangers of distraction
Photo Credit: Ed Yourdon on Flickr
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I was good at football, so I survived school well enough. But my brother was legendary. They were reading The Old Man and The Sea in English class, and Raphael blew up at the teacher. She said that lions were a symbol of Hemingway being lionized when young. She said the old fisherman carrying a mast made him some sort of Jesus with his cross. He told her she had a head full of nonsense. I can see him doing it. He would bark with sudden laughter and bounce up and down in his chair and declare, delighted, “That’s blasphemy! It’s just a story about an old man. If Hemingway had wanted to write a story about Jesus, he was a clever enough person to have written one!” The headmaster gave him a clip about the ear. Raphael wobbled his head at him as if shaking a finger. “Your hitting me doesn’t make me wrong.” None of the other students ever bothered us. Raphael still got straight As. -Geoff Ryman, What We Found, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Extended Edition(Sept/Oct 2011)
Writing Prompt: Write a scene, story or poem about a kid like Raphael.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a kid who went to school with you.
Art Prompt: Class clown
Photo Credit: adecker31 on Flickr
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In a Duke University study out November 22, researchers found that pre-teen girls may not be any better at friendships than boys, despite previous research suggesting otherwise. The findings suggest that when more serious violations of a friendship occur, girls struggle just as much and, in some ways, even more than boys.
The girls in this study were just as likely as boys to report that they would seek revenge against an offending friend, verbally attack the friend and threaten to end the friendship when their expectations were violated, such as telling one of their secrets to other children.
The girls also reported they were more bothered by the transgressions, felt more anger and sadness, and were more likely to think the offense meant their friend did not care about them or was trying to control them…
“Our finding that girls would be just as vengeful and aggressive toward their friends as the boys is particularly interesting because past research has consistently shown boys to react more negatively following minor conflicts with friends, such as an argument about which game to play next,” Asher said. “It appears that friendship transgressions and conflicts of interest may push different buttons for boys and girls.”
The study found that anger and sadness played significant roles in how boys and girls reacted to offending friends. For both genders, the more strongly they felt a friend had devalued them or was trying to control them, the more anger and sadness they felt.
The angrier they felt, the less likely they wanted to fix the relationship. But feelings of sadness actually motivated both genders toward reconciliation: The more sadness the children reported feeling, the stronger their desire was to want to solve the problem and maintain the friendship.
Sadness, the authors said, can sometimes function like “social glue” that holds relationships together. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a scene about betrayal of friendship involving pre-teen girls.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a childhood friend who betrayed your trust and friendship.
Art Prompt: Girlfriends
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about betrayal in pre-teen girls
Photo Credit: Dottie Mae on Flickr
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- People who perceive their car as a reflection of their self-identity are more likely to behave aggressively on the road and break the law.
- People with compulsive tendencies are more likely to drive aggressively with disregard for potential consequences.
- Increased materialism, or the importance of one’s possessions, is linked to increased aggressive driving tendencies.
- Young people who are in the early stages of forming their self-identity might feel the need to show off their car and driving skills more than others. They may also be overconfident and underestimate the risks involved in reckless driving.
- Those who admit to aggressive driving also admit to engaging in more incidents of breaking the law.
- A sense of being under time and pressure leads to more aggressive driving.
Writing Prompt: Write a scene about someone driving recklessly for one of the reasons listed above.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you or someone you were riding with drove recklessly.
Art Prompt: Reckless Driving
Photo Credit: thanker212 on Flickr.
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If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. -J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Writing Prompt: Write a scene or poem inspired by this first line.
Journaling Prompt: How would you describe your life to someone who doesn’t know you?
Art Prompt: Teen Rebel
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about your teen age years.
Photo Credit: iwishiwashannah on Flickr
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If you’re writing about teens, consider including music in your story.
The amount of music that 8- to 18-year-olds listen to has increased by 45 percent in recent years, rising dramatically with the popularity of MP3 players, such as iPods. Previous research has indicated that there is a strong link between exposure to sexual media (on screen and in music) and sexual activity. Teens tend to overestimate the sexual activity of their peers and one source of this misperception is the entertainment media. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a scene about a teenager listening to music. What do the lyrics mean to him or her? What thoughts arise? What actions do the lyrics prompt?
Journaling Prompt: How does music and the lyrics affect you?
Art Prompt: Music
Photo Credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ on Flickr
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