I am from Sacramento, California and a senior attending Franklin High School. I volunteer with the American Cancer Society and am passionate about tobacco control advocacy. I am an avid varsity tennis player and really enjoy debating in my school. In the future, I hope to enter the healthcare field and work in the oncology field. However, my ultimate goal lies in finding ways to promote equity, inclusion, and diversity in healthcare by becoming a leader in public health.
I joined the HOPE Youth Coalition in September 2020 which was my sophomore year of high school. I joined because I saw the rampant consumption of alcohol and vapes in my community, especially among teens. It hurt me to see so many bright students ruin their future because of addiction. I know social media plays a role in every teenager's life so I thought if we could make it safer and healthier then teens all around could benefit.
Though our model policy lays out various guidelines to limit the exposure of alcohol and substance advertisements, I would like to focus on the prevalence of sexually explicit content on social media. Given the amount of teen pregnancies, I feel that social media normalized a lot of sexual behavior at a early age. I hope we can also restrict sexually explicit content especially on young folk's social media pages.