SHEQUILLE, 18

TORONTO

I REALLY WISH I DIDN’T have to grow up in a time period like now.

It’s a shame how teenage boys talk to women on Instagram. They’ll ask for nude pics and, oh man — if someone talked to my sister that way? There’d be a pretty big problem.

I cannot stand social media girls. Girls are Selfie Queens. I see a lot of skin exposure. You have Beyonce and Kim Kardashian and girls try to be like them. Everybody wants to be Instagram famous. I see the same pictures on Instagram all the time: girls take a picture in the bathroom with one leg on the bathroom counter that makes their butt look bigger. I’ve seen that literally a million times from a million different girls. Everyone has done nudes. I feel like half my life is in the real world and my other half is on the Internet and I’m not the same person on Instagram that I am in real life.

The thing people don’t realize is they can act how they want on social media, act tough, act like a thug, act like how they aren’t in life — real life — but my best friend was the kid who got killed on Bloor Street. It wasn’t social media, but life. Real life. And people think it’s a joke, but it’s not. My friend is gone.

I really wish I didn’t have to grow up in a time period like now.