The 24-hour movement guidelines, in summary, are a short list of recommendations that Canadian youth should keep in mind over the span of 24 hours. Some of the recommendations include getting 7 to 9 hours of rest, participating in moderate physical activity for 150 minutes over the course of a week, limiting screen time to no more than 3 hours, and including light physical activity throughout the day. But the loyalty to the commitment has been dipping below average.

Pursuing health and wellness should be one of the most important priorities for students. That could mean getting proper sleep, setting aside time to work out and eat healthy during and in between school, or even going on a quick walk in between classes can make all the difference. Referencing back to the Canadian Public Health Services, Students who reported a higher well-being were more likely to meet the 24-hour movement guidelines.

Students like Trinity McCulloch and Barb Husband make it in their best interest to stay healthy during their busy schedules. Even though it can be difficult not to slip under and start to neglect your physical health while focusing on your studies.

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McCulloch views healthy lifestyles as eating well and staying active, whether it’s a 10-minute walk or a 4-hour hike.

“I live on a bike path. I could go biking. The mountains are 45 minutes away, so I could drive to go do a hike, casually. And hitting my calories, hitting my protein is what keeps me going,” said McCulloch

Keeping up with physical health can be simple; it doesn’t have to be elaborate, which seems to drive students away from committing to an honest workout. Some small and quick workouts you can fit into your day could be running in place for 1 minute every hour or a 5-minute yoga session.

Husband sees that health and school are tightly intertwined and should be prioritized equally.

“If you’re being healthy and doing things that make you happy, it makes it easier to focus on school,” said Husband

According to Tutorlyft, high oxygen consumption helps your brain achieve excellent academic results. Some of their research findings include improved problem-solving, increased memory function, and better concentration.

Regular fitness in your daily life improves executive function, blood flow and oxygen to the brain, and neural connectivity.

All these factors can increase stress hormones, which can play a role in your schooling, but this can be quickly alleviated by incorporating daily fitness into your life.

Give it a try!

How did we as a society turn a ball of codes into a literal monster? The amount of appalling things I’ve seen online but still continue to use it’s insane, but that’s the experience of every user, yet we still use it, why?

It gives us comfort, it keeps us connected and educated, and we have no choice but to use it; otherwise, we’re out of the loop or living under a rock.

My neighbourhood has literally stopped putting out newspapers on the streets; now, all we have are gossip magazines from months ago behind a paywall. Let’s be real: who intentionally buys magazines? Hello! It’s 2024, we have social media (For Free!)

Insecurity vs Comfort? Comfort wins every time. Even though some people can’t handle that, it’s true...

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Insecurity vs Comfort…

I’ve seen people innocently post and immediately get made fun of because they aren’t attractive enough or they are attractive enough, but their morals and ethics are atrocious, so they get death threats. How did we make a space so unsafe, yet you can’t stay away? It’s fascinating.

But there are of course positives to weigh out the negatives, the presence of social media has picked all of us up from horrible times by a quick- witted meme or tik tok, countless times, or the numerous times we’ve learned something new about ourselves, others or the world, it’s like a warm hug every time, it gives us comfort, maybe that’s why people stay.

Spotify Wrapped was first officially created in 2016, previously called Year in Music in 2015. Spotify Wrapped is a comprehensive data collection of users’ music habits from the first of January to early/mid-November. Towards the end of the year, Spotify releases a unique, customized animated slideshow featuring the user’s favourite genres, artists, songs, comedic insights, and the total calculated minutes of the user’s listening activity.

Former Spotify design intern Jewel Ham is the creative mind behind Spotify Wrapped, but was previously denied proper credit for her concept.

The primary platform used for this campaign is Instagram. It is solely used by users to share and compare their data on their 24-hour stories, as everyone has their unique data and numbers and can’t wait to see what others receive. It has become highly anticipated for Spotify users.

The Wrapped target audience is strictly Spotify users, and it caters only to them, as it requires a year’s worth of use to collect data accurately.

Spotify Wrapped’s goals are to increase social media shares, solidify brand loyalty, and maximize user engagement with the app.

The content strategy for Spotify Wrapped concludes with animated visuals, interactive elements, and artist clips. All designed to uniquely match the user’s activity and make receiving and watching your gift a special moment. Every year has its own theme, colour palette and layout to differentiate from previous and following years, but all the Wrapped share the same collection of data that matches the user’s activity.

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Spotify creates a complimentary playlist of all the users’ most-played songs and saves them to the user’s account, naming them “Your Top Songs (year)”, so the user can see how their musical taste has grown and/or changed. Lastly, the Wrapped includes an “artist clip ” , a 30-second or less video clip where your favourite artists record a message for their fans, usually expressing gratitude and promoting new projects. Users receive only one video, usually from their top artist, and can choose to share it with friends or on social media.

Instagram is the perfect platform for this content because it is best for recent, up-to-date events, especially its 24-hour stories. A quick and clean post to share with your followers and your followers share with you. On “Spotify Wrapped Day,” everyone’s wrapped is posted in their stories for everyone to see, making it hard to miss and unavoidable (from personal experience).

Since 2015/2016, Spotify Wrapped has become highly anticipated, attracting brand recognition and loyalty, and every year inflicting jealousy among users of alternative music apps. According to the 2018 Q4 Spotify Shareholder Letter, Spotify received almost 7 million subscribers through the campaign, including a single-day record of almost half a million new subscribers.

(Safe to say it was a bit successful.)

Moving on to my critique, the idea of a carefully curated, personalized collection of data “Wrapped” into an aesthetically pleasing, interactive piece is a fantastic campaign. It gives curious users something to look forward to and lets others know how excited they are. Ultimately, Spotify did an amazing job at giving people something to talk about, and that’s the most successful part of this whole campaign. What could have been improved is more in-depth data for all 12 months, more specific data on the genres, and a little more personalization wouldn’t hurt either. I might be a little biased because I am one of Spotify’s top listeners myself, having reached a personal best of almost a quarter of a million minutes of listening every year since 2017. I believe the concept of Spotify Wrapped is incredibly admirable and a seemingly genius way to gather users together and celebrate “Spotify Wrapped Day.”

I have also researched the risk of AI media taking over in the near future, changing the process of gathering news and replacing real human journalists. Further damaging the already occurring issue with misinformation and ethics.

After internet surfing, the most significant recurring threats in journalism I found were concerns about AI replacement and the safety and well-being of journalists.

Starting with the AI concerns, I’m personally not a huge fan of AI to begin with, but it’s certainly a useful tool. But unfortunately, we are in that day and age where it’s everywhere, and it’s starting to take over businesses and replace staff as a cheaper stand-in. I don’t think industries realize it yet, but it won’t last as long as they think it will. News outlets will lose their spark and flair because they will be missing the authentic richness that human stories provide.

Here’s an article from May 2024 that covers AI-written stories. click here. This article talks about the news outlet Hoodline, founded in 2014. Hoodline started using AI for their articles, and to justify these actions, they are being “transparent” with their audience and their usage. But I do believe they are actively ruining their audiences’ trust simultaneously and costing many people jobs in the process.

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The second threat I came across is journalists’ physical safety; in that thread, I found the story of Peter R. de Vries. De Vries was an investigative journalist in the Netherlands who was assassinated in 2021, following his involvement in uncovering the Marengo trial, involving a Dutch-Moroccan criminal organization. I read up on the story here. The article goes into detail on what happened. One quote that made physical safety a threat to journalists was, “always sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong,” one of the suspects said, “that’s why they shot him.”

Arguably, being a journalist is more dangerous than being a police officer. It might be a controversial take, but I think it’s true in some ways. Police have weapons; we have a pen and a notepad. It explains itself.

My vision of the future is that journalists are likely to work hand in hand with AI in the workforce, whether we like it or not. But I still do think it will not last, and we will go back to normal eventually. As regards the safety aspect, I do think it will get worse as people get more passionate and/or violent in what they believe in or support and some reporters will get stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s inevitable.

Some essential skills for journalists are to stick to your craft, be stubborn, because the world is going to change, either for the better or the worse and the media needs and is going to need more ethical thinking individuals.

Optimistic or pessimistic? I’m smack dab in the middle of the scale, and it all depends on how the world evolves. I always strive to be optimistic, but you also have to be realistic. If the world evolves toward a better, healthier self, I’ll be more optimistic on the scale, but right now the world seems to be evolving backward and shows few signs of getting better and healthier for all, so, while writing this, I’m leaning more pessimistically.