TIME creates an annual list of the 30 most influential teens. When the TIME staff puts the list together, they consider accolades across numerous fields, global impact through social media, and overall ability to drive news. Here is a quick look at just a few of the teenagers who TIME considers to be among the 30 Most Influential Teens of 2017.
Rayouf Alhumedhi is sixteen-years-old. She is from Saudi Arabia, is muslim, and wears a headscarf. When she searched for a headscarf emoji, she couldn’t find one. Rayouf started a campaign for the headscarf emoji, and appealed to both Apple and the Unicode Consortium (which controls emoji standards.)
Her efforts paid off. Apple included an emoji called “Woman with Headscarf” in the newest batch of emojis. The new collection of emojis rolled out as part of the iOS 11.1 update.
Krtin Nithiyanandam is seventeen-years-old. He is from the United Kingdom. In 2015, when he was fifteen-years-old, he developed an antibody that can help detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. That project earned him a $25,000 award at the Google Science Fair.
In September of 2017, he won an award for creating a bioplastic that can clear wastewater of toxins. Now, he is working on a method to make triple negative breast cancer more treatable.
Mikalia Ulmer is thirteen-years-old. She is from the state of Texas. After learning that honeybees are going extinct, and that they are critically important to the ecosystem, she decided to help. Mikalia made lemonade, using her great grandmother’s recipe, and sweetened with local honey. She sold it at community business fairs and donated 10% of her profits to honeybee advocate groups.
In 2014, she started her own business called Me & the Bees Lemonade. Her lemonade is sold in more than 300 Whole Foods Markets, Wegmans, and other grocery stores in the United States. Mikalia also has a nonprofit called the Healthy Hive Foundation, which raises awareness of the plight of the honeybee.
If you do a quick Google News search for the word “teen”, you end up with a bunch of articles about teens who have committed crimes, done drugs, or otherwise engaged in negative behavior. TIME’s list of the 30 Most Influential Teens of 2017 is filled with teens who are doing amazing things that are both positive and beneficial. Teenagers who read the list might be inspired to see what wonderful things they can do.
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