Three Luverne Middle School students were recognized as winners in the annual Rotary Club Four-Way Test essay contest for 2022.
Kloe Brockberg, the daughter of Mike and Kim Brockberg, Luverne, was selected as this year’s essay winner. Brockberg earned $75 for her winning effort.
Her essay titled “Social Media” is entered in the district essay contest. Brockberg’s winning essay is printed below.
Chosen as second place and earning $50 was Lauren Peters, and third place was Tiba Kadhim ($25).
Luverne Middle School sixth-grade teacher Deb Hoogendoorn organized the essay contest with the students, and nine sixth-graders entered the annual contest.
The contest introduces students to the Rotary’s Four-Way Test, which asked four questions to gauge whether thoughts, works or actions are appropriate. The questions are: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? And will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Below is Brockberg’s winning essay:
Social Media
By Kloe Brockberg
Is social media true? Most things aren’t true, because it is so easy to say something on social media and many people can believe this so easily and then you have false words out in the open, and someone can take that the wrong way and be very offended. Social media is dangerous mentally, and might ruin your day so be careful what apps you use and what source you can get your information from. Not everything on social media/the internet is true.
I think this is fair and that everyone should get the right information. Because no one likes false information because what if you are doing an essay on snow leopards and you got the wrong information and then you got a bad grade. So people need the right information to complete an assignment that you really need to be correct because it is part of your final grade. So do you go out and give false information because that could hurt someone and ruin their whole day.
Will social media build goodwill and better friendship?
It depends how you use social media. If you use social media to talk to your friends or parents or grandparents, you might get to know your friends and family that you don’t see often better. Social media is a good way to be able to talk to your friends over the summer. But if you use it to look at people’s posts and comment mean things that could ruin someone’s day. You shouldn’t use social media to hurt others because how would you like it if someone said something bad about your post, you should always use the golden rule to treat others how you want to be treated.
Is social media beneficial to all concerned?
Social media can be beneficial to you if you use it to talk to friends then it can be beneficial. Then you would be able to ask them about a question that you were stuck on for homework then they can help you figure it out. Social media is not beneficial when you use it to just look at people’s posts and watch videos that aren’t beneficial. In summary, social media is helpful if you need to get a hold of someone and it is not when you just look at people’s posts and watch videos. But be careful what you look up. There are bad things on the internet. So social media may not be the important/beneficial thing ever, instead of staring at the screen, go outside, go build a snowman, go ride snowmobile, go have a snowball fight.