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100 years ago people probably would have thought that the life we live now was something out of a dream. Advancements in technology have made it so we barely have to leave our homes, more people have more civil rights in our country than they ever have and as of right now there’s no giant war going on. However, here in the present, things aren’t exactly perfect. Sure I have an infinite amount of possibilities and opportunities at my fingertips with the touch of a smartphone, but the part where I have to actually navigate through this life and talk to real people to get things done is where things get tricky. People don’t really talk face to face anymore, and while many of us are working on understanding each other better, it's hard to keep an open mind when you only talk to the same few people everyday. This is going to be a guide to life in the 21st century, based off of some papers I have already written that should help you stay afloat in this crazy life where it can easily feel like you're drowning in this sea of endless possibilities.

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My name is Jasynn. I’m a 23 year old military brat from Anchorage, Alaska. That’s right ALASKA, land of the midnight sun, giant mosquitos and free money. I’ve been living in California for almost 5 years now. I’m a licensed cosmetologist and I have been doing hair for about 3 years. While I’m certainly no expert on the following topics, being thrown into the wonderful world of adulting has forced me to become more and more familiar with them. Balancing a career, school, a social life and trying to prepare for the future all seem like normal things that people would be stressed about, however when you combine these with the everyday problems of living in the 21st century, it’s easy to feel like a little guppy in a sea full of sharks. What I plan to do in this guide is tell you some things I wish someone would have told me before I started my journey into adulthood. That being said, batten down the hatches and set your sails for life in the 21st century!

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Digital technology has come a long way in a short amount of time. In a lot of ways it has it has generally improved the way we live today. But what if the price of convenience is costing us more than an email and a password?

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The more we use social media and other apps and websites that require our personal information, the more vulnerable we become to whoever may be watching. The data we put out into the world via the internet is monitored and stored even if it gets deleted. Despite this basically being common sense by now, we still put ourselves at risk, leading some to believe that technology might be making us dumb. Whether you’re a student or not, you probably rely on google or youtube to teach you things you don’t know. Author and professor Brett Frischmann who focuses on the topics of technology and humanity writes about how technology has become more of a crutch than a tool. In his article “Is Smart Technology Making Us Dumb?” He sheds some light on the subject, saying that “we may be making ourselves dumber when we outsource thinking and rely on supposedly smart tech to micromanage our daily lives for the sake of cheap convenience.” In other words: start thinking for yourself! Read a book, turn your phone off for a day, watch the news instead of snapchat to learn about current events. Don’t just spew out the first few sentences of an article you read online whenever you get the chance, take the time to internalize things and actually learn something!

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Empathy basically means understanding how someone else feels or where they’re coming from, taking a walk in their shoes if you will. Now I know what you’re thinking; first you want me to put down my phone and now you expect me to talk to people about their feelings? Well it’s not necessarily just about feelings but more so about how understanding each other affects the way we treat each other. Everyone develops empathy in their own way (or maybe not at all), but it’s the way we use it that makes a difference. The problem we as americans have now with empathy is practicing it without bias. Everyone has their own natural biases that cause us to empathize more with people who look, act and think in similar ways that we do.

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Perhaps the biggest problem we as americans face with bias is when it comes to race. We all know what kind of atrocities can come from racism and some might argue that empathy actually leads to discrimination, but it doesn’t have to. Take a look at the conflicts plaguing present day Israelis and Palestinians. Their fear and hatred for one another has led them to stereotype and dehumanize one another. Professor of Bioethics Jodi Halpern suggests that “The promotion of empathy is a critical component of reconciliation.” This view insists that we need to use empathy to rehumanize our enemies in order to truly reconcile our differences. And apparently it works! An organization called the Parent Circle Families Forum (PCFF) promotes peace by encouraging mutual understanding between Palestinians and Israelis. Now thanks to them the two groups have started to come together and get to know each other instead of going off of hateful stereotypes. Now the people involved in this group come together and write cookbooks and create clothing lines in the name of peace.

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Okay so now that we know peace is definitely possible through empathy, where do we start? Not everyone is racist but it’s the 21st century, there are plenty of different types of people and situations that are making us redefine the word “normal” and there is little to no room for old fashioned thinking. Now in no way am I encouraging anyone to become something they’re not or go against their beliefs, the real message here is to accept people for who they are. So instead of deciding you don’t like someone because they’re gay, take the time out of your day to talk to a gay person or do research about the LGBTQ community, you’ll find that they are humans just like you. Instead of living in denial about the current state of our planet, take the time out to look at some evidence based studies about climate change, just because it’s not happening right in front of you doesn’t make it any less true! And we don’t have a lot of time to fix it so really it doesn’t matter who you like if the earth catches fire our ashes will all look the same.

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The housing crisis might be one of the most (or maybe THE most) stressful problems we face today. The shortage of homes, affordable or otherwise, paired with sky high rent and home prices has many americans literally wondering how they’re going to live. In the bay area, which is now basically the housing crisis capital, neighborhoods of color are being hit the hardest. Big fancy buildings are starting to be built in low income neighborhoods near jobs and public transportation. When these new developments pop up, the lifelong residents of these neighborhoods are forced out by rising rent prices. Housing reporter Louis Hansen says that  “Residents priced out of neighborhoods near employment centers are often forced into more affordable communities with fewer jobs, lower quality schools and fewer opportunities for children.” Meaning that once people get priced out, their quality of life is also put at risk.

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Families earning $117,000 qualify as "low income" in Bay Area

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More low income black, latino, and asian residents have been displaced from their homes than poor white residents, I can’t say that I know exactly why, but I know of a few factors that are making matters worse. There are some signs that realtors “steer” by race, in 2012, white and black “homebuyers” (in fact actors) were sent to 8,000 randomly selected realtors. Black home-seekers were shown 18% fewer homes. The homes that the black actors were shown turned out to not be as nice as the others, and only in close proximity to lower quality schools.

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The system has never been designed for people of color to succeed. Several banks have been caught pushing black homebuyers into subprime mortgage deals, overcharging them for home loans, and other breaches. Black people make significantly less money than white people now than they have in the past quarter of a century. Incidentally, we will briefly note that compared to whites, black Americans face the same risk of unemployment today as in the 1960s. Dayna Bowen Matthew, Edward Rodrigue, and Richard V. Reeves in their article “Time for justice: Tackling race inequalities in health and housing”, state that “the median white household now has a net wealth 13 times greater than the median black household.” If you ask me the housing crisis doesn’t really have one quick fix, right now the only useful advice I could give you is to move anywhere but here!

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Growing up, girls are always told to sit pretty, suck in that gut, and smile. Beauty standards are instilled upon us very early, often causing depression and lack of self love later in life when we find ourselves unable to live up to them. Typically the definition of beauty in america is super thin bodies, silky smooth hair, tan skin (but not too dark), full lips and big butts. In this section of our guide, I’m here to let you know that even if you don’t look like Jennifer Aniston we can still be friends!

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Attractive people definitely get the long end of the social stick in the 21st century.
- Attractive applicants have a better chance of getting jobs, and of receiving higher salaries. In court, attractive people are found guilty less often.
- When found guilty, they receive less severe sentences.
- The 'bias for beauty' operates in almost all social situations – all experiments show we react more favorably to physically attractive people.

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Beauty standards have also seemed to make their way into the workplace and what is considered “professional” or “appropriate”. Women have been sent home from work for not wearing uncomfortable high heels to work. Black employees have recently began receiving more and more criticism about wearing their natural hair or traditionally black hairstyles to work as they have been deemed unprofessional. That’s right, we live in a place where someone can lose their job for wearing their hair the way that it NATURALLY grows out of their scalp! The federal court once ruled that is was legal for employers to ban dreadlocks.

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Every country has its own set of beauty standards. Leaving people everywhere feeling discouraged about how they look when they don’t see anyone in the mass media that looks like them. Thing that everyone is overlooking is how we define beauty, beauty should not be categorized as only physical features, but what’s inside. Learn to love yourself because of who you are, not for what you look like. Learn to judge others not by what’s on the outside but what kind of heart they have and how they use it. Thick, thin, tall, short, dark or light we all come in different shapes and sizes, but we are all only human.

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WoA Podcast: Pretty Hurts! A Discussion on Beauty Standards