One of the first ideas my group had was to talk about the controversies surrounding social media. Obviously, there are a lot of negatives surrounding social media that adults like to bring up at every chance they get, but what about the positives? Social media has done a great job of keeping people in touch with long distance friends, partners, or family members. I know for me personally, I tend to catch up with my cousins that live in Spain through social media and stalking their accounts to see what they’re up to. The same goes for friends I have that moved to different states and such. Social media also keeps generations caught up with not only social trends, but important news that may pertain to us or just be good to know, and also allows us all to continue having similar senses of humor, specifically through TikTok and Instagram. The negatives mainly have to do with screen time and personal confidence. Social media is a really great place to find everything that could ever upset you all in one tab, and although it has its benefits, it can really suck at times. There will always be someone prettier, more talented than you, or richer than you on social media, and often times it really affects the personal image of its users. However, this can also be seen as a benefit of social media, because it allows users to grow thicker skin and become used to the harshness of todays society. This topic is wonderful because the list of positives and negatives can go on forever, and there is so much research and data to back up virtually any point, so it is definitely a controversy that we can expand a lot upon.

The second topic we thought of, the one we most likely will use, is the controversy of whether or not the legal drinking age should be lowered in America. Like the previous topic, there are obvious negatives to this idea, such as causing teenagers to be even more reckless, or allowing kids even younger than what they are now to illegally drink. However, there is some concrete evidence that lowering the drinking age will cause the exact opposite, and that comes from the countries that DO have lower drinking ages than America. When we were brainstorming this idea topic, Amelia and I both chimed in with some personal experiences. We have both lived parts of our lives in European countries, and in Germany the legal drinking age is 16, while in Spain, it is 18. Coming from two people who have experienced living somewhere with a lower legal drinking age and seeing how many problems that alone has solved. It could be the result of simply a different culture, or a result of the legal drinking age, but teenagers in Europe are MUCH less likely to overdrink. The statistics for teenage alcohol poisoning in America are MUCH HIGHER than those of European teenagers, along with the fact that drunk driving accidents are a lot less common in Europe, which is very surprising considering that driving in any European country is a lot more difficult, confusing, and requires much more attention than operating any car in America. Overall, there are definitely lots of benefits to lowering the drinking age, but there are some downsides too, so this topic would pack a huge punch and allow for a lot of research to be done over this controversy.