Recently, many Thousand Oaks High School students have been starting new and creative ways to share how they are staying busy during the unexpected break due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Some are learning new skills, while others are doing online sports practices or playing games with their families.
A recent trend that many students are participating in is Instagram challenges. One of these challenges consists of “Until Tomorrow,” in which students post ‘embarrassing’ photos of themselves and delete them the next day. Another challenge is “See a pet, Share a pet,” where you take a picture of your own pet and tag three people to pass it on and share theirs.
Multiple other challenges such as “See a Flip, Share a flip” offer students ways to stay active and participate in challenges.
One student participated in a drawing challenge, where students were nominated to draw an object and then nominate five or more to also complete the trend. Although these trends provide entertainment for some students, others feel that the challenges do not help enough with their boredom.
“They are short so they don’t take a lot of time” said Freshman Taha Khambati.
While some challenges are fun to show off your pets or skills, there are other challenges being used to spread positivity. Girls are posting pictures of themselves and tagging others to do the same as a way to encourage body positivity.
Challenges like these help students who are bored over the break and allows them to communicate with their peers. In fact, these challenges are becoming very popular among Instagram-users and are filling the stories of participants. In a survey of 55 TOHS students, 45 percent said that they did participate in one or more of the challenges and 55 percent said they did not.
As more and more challenges are arising, including ‘favorite things’ challenges, several students are joining the trend and sharing videos of themselves on their story. While many people do complain the over-posting is annoying, many others enjoy communicating with their friends in a fun, uplifting way.
“People are just having harmless fun and honestly I feel if you don’t like something, just don’t look at it” said Senior Verin Malang.
Another challenge that was very popular was to post a picture of yourself and then tag 10 beautiful people. Many students participated in this one, as it helps with self esteem.
“I think it started to entertain people in quarantine but it probably helped boost a lot of people’s self confidence” junior Annalisa Whale said.
TOHS students have found ways to stay connected through Instagram Stories, helping each other get through the quarantine boredom.
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