My Gap Year

You can find here the information I've taken from.

The Blue Whale: a game or a challenge?

This news is about a new challenge that makes the person who is playing commit suicide after 50 days. This challenge is known as the Blue Whale, and it is quite famous in Russia. It is believed to be an online social media group, in which there is an administrator that gives daily challenges to the members. In total, there are 50 (one each day) and they consist of watching extreme horror movies, getting up at unusual hours, self-harming… They gradually get more and more extreme, until the last challenge is to commit suicide.

The photo that Yulia posted moments ago before her dead 

One of the reasons teenagers follow this type of challenges is because of pressure. Sometimes, friends incite  them to take dangerous experiences, but kids have to know how and when to say “no”. Parents have an important role in teaching their kids than they can still be accepted even if they don’t do exactly what the other friends do.

There have been about 130 suicides of children between November 2015 and April 2016, which can be related to this challenge. It is not proved, but there exist multiple bonds between almost all these teenagers, for example, most of them were members of the same internet groups and lived in good and happy families. Among these suicides, it stands out the case of two teenagers, Yulia Konstantinova and Veronika Volkova, 15 and 16 respectively, who jumped from a roof of a 14-floor building. Yulia, before committing suicide, posted a picture of a blue whale in her Instagram.

My opinion

The first time I read this news, the first thing it came to my mind was: “Who can be so sick to create this challenge?”. Because, behind all these challenges there has to be a person creating them. Encouraging people to commit suicide, especially when they are going through a bad period in their lives is really mean. We should try to help depressed people to overcome it and be happy. 

I hope this stupid game won't last for many years more. I can understang those people who like taking risks in their lifes, such as those ones who go bungee jumping, but what I can't understand is how come the people who play this game come to the conclusion of ending their own lifes.

New words

• Sway: influenciar
• Chilling: esgarrifós
• Goad: incitar, provocar

Bookstore on Wheels Turns Heads in Baghdad

In Baghdad, a man named Ali al-Moussawi turned his van into a mobile bookshop and makes up to $4,000 a month as he sells books around the city. His bookshop has done well and with his success, he hired four people to help him.

Al-Moussawi said that it took him nine months to achieve his idea and he hopes that it will bring people’s attention to and promote reading. He said that he wants to develop his bookshop and ‘improve its current shape’.

As he moves his van, he changes the books that are on display. This is because the city is still divided and in Sunni areas, the books on Saddam Hussein are still popular.

My opinion

I've chosen this news because when I saw the title of this piece of news, it kept my atention and I wanted to know about it. So, related to this news, I've never heard about something like this before. I mean, I have seen people selling food in vans, but nothing to do with books. I think it's a very good idea to sell books in a van which goes around the city. It beneffits everybody: the owner of the books, Al-Moussawi, earns lots f money and it's also a good point for those who enjoy reading. Instead of walking to "the library", "the library" comes to you!

I don't know if someoe had already done this lucrative activity before the arabic man did, but I'm 100% sure that he has find a job in which he earns a lot of money and also enjoys his job.

In this case, I've learnt two new words: bookworm (a person who enjoys books) and Sunni (a religious group within Islam)

In this webpage, you can find this news.

Should be cars banned in the centres of the cities?

Nowadays, most people have their own car. In a survey that was carried out here in Spain, most of those who were asked said that they couldn’t live without a car. It would be too difficult for us them to go to anywhere because of the madding crowd.

It's true that cars are a must in people's life but at the same they are a major factor of pollution. What people haven't tho0ught about is that one car pollutes the air less than twenty cars. So, it is more convenient to use public transport instead of their own car, if you think about nature and the air you breathe every second.

Another problem are the frequent traffic jams that happen mostly because of careless drivers of the rush hours. No one would like to be in the centre of Barcelona at 8p.m.

People should use public transport more than their own car. First of all because it would be cheaper. Secondly, because it would reduce the pollution rate by approximately 80% and the city would be also less noisy. All these improvements would make our life much easier, because unpolluted air makes our bodies healthier and we can do as much physical effort as usual, but with less energy consumed.

Why people now is less healthier than twenty years ago?

Nowadays, young people are prone to be less healthier than they were twenty years ago and also to suffer a lot of illnesses. These problems are mainly caused by the busy way of life we lead.

Twenty years ago, young people were healthier since, although they did not look their health consciously, they did it by eating food without additives. This was because they lived more quietly, they spent a lot more time in touch with nature as well as, despite not doing sports, they did more physical activities by working than young people do nowadays.

In contrast, nowadays a lot of people give more importance to their appearance rather than to their health. Added to this, most of the time they eat fast food and also some of them are not fond of doing sports, so they lead a sedentary life. All of these problems make them be unfit and unhealthy.

To conclude, young people should be able to look after their health since there are lots of medical treatments for curing and preventing illnesses as well as there is more information available than years ago. However, the responsibilities, stress and the lack of time lead us to live aside the care of our health.

The lie, is it necessary in our society?

Of course it is. In fact we can't live in a world without lying as we are not telling the truth every day. A reason that could explain why is the lie necessary is because we want other people feel better. If we told the truth, people wouldn’t be as happy as it is now. For example, if someone that I can't stand comes to me to me and ask me something, I won't tell him that I don't like him. I'll just try to answer the other person's question. So here is an example of lying. If we told the truth we would hurt people. Truth hurts. Another example is related to loving. When someone is having a parallel relationship with someone else that is not his or her girlfriend/boyfriend, this one won't say anything to don't hurt his/her relationship. And once the other get to know what the reality, problems is come. So we prefer living in a world with lies and being happy than telling the truth and offending other people.

Nevertheless, I always try not to lie, but I do. I try not to do it because I wouldn't like people lie to me even if it hurts me.

*Even if we can't live in a world that always tell the truth, we consider the lie as a bad thing. But why's that?

1. Lying is bad because a generally truthful world is a good thing: lying diminishes trust between human beings. 
2. Lying is bad because it treats those who are lied to as a means to achieve the liar's purpose, rather than as a valuable end in themselves 
3. Lying is bad because it makes it difficult for the person being lied to make a free and informed decision about the matter concerned 
4. Others *

So even if we know lying is bad for us, we still use it because we want to arrange with other people and we try not to look rare

NOTE: I HAVE EXTRACTED *THIS INFORMATION* IN THIS LINK

Addiction to Technology

Game Boy Color

According to the subject (global issue) we have recently done at class, I'm going to talk about one of them: addiction, related to technology. This global issue and especially to social media affects us very much as we spend most of the time with our smartphones.

In my opinion, we are all addicted to technology but with different grades. There is no one that doesn't look at any screen. The ones who were born since 1995 are addicted to any kind of technology. For example, I began being addicted to videogames at 4. I didn’t spend three hours per day playing Pokemon or Pac-Man but I did spend one. So it was my mum who taught me how to use the Game Boy Color. Since I got this video game console, she also got interested in this virtual world. She enjoyed a lot playing Pac-Man, so in her free time she used to play it. So I consider myself a low addicted person in video games. However, I am a high addicted person to social network or just to the smartphone. I spend about four hours per day using my mobile phone. What I usually use is social media (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram...) but I also play some simple mobile games such as Candy Crush. So this is me, and I'm sure there are lots of teenagers that are in my position.

I think we must stop using that much social media because if not we're going to be at "super addicted level". Of course we have to continue using Twitter (or others) to communicate our feelings but nowadays this fact has overpassed the communication of feelings. As I said in others texts, technology simplifies our lives and in this case it's trying to help us to communicate easier with other people. However, it doesn't help as the number of "super addicted people" is increasing considerably per year. I know a person who was in my class at second of ESO who only chatted by using his personal computer. He didn't even say "Hello" in the morning. His brain was living in that virtual world which now he can't get out of it. I'm not saying that technology is not helping at all, because it does help. For example, if we have a question at home of some homework, we only have to write an email to the teacher.

So is not technology's fault, it's our fault. We decide where the limit of consumerism (of addiction) is. And of course we must regulate it in case we don't want to finish as the boy I mentioned before.