Public Service Announcement 2

Is It Really Worth It

Valeigh Mitts, Ella Young, Mollie Meredith, Lily Simon, Riya Arora. Grade:8

Drakes Creek Middle School

PSA

To begin, we tried to brainstorm ideas that would be effective and meaningful to the students and staff at Drakes. We ultimately decided on doing a vaping PSA. Many kids don’t know the risks and damages vaping causes, so we decided to make this so they could realize what they’re doing and how to get help before the damages get any worse.

First, we brainstormed how to make an impact on the students at Drakes to hopefully lead them to a path of either not starting vaping to begin with, or to quit while they’re young. 

Then, we took an example of a discipline issue from a previous year at Drakes where kids would hide vapes in the bathrooms and text their friends to go get it. We filmed 2 girls hiding a “vape” in the bathroom, then they texted another girl to come get it. After the girl came to the bathroom and used the vape, she texted her friend to do it next. This is a cycle that keeps on going and causes widespread vape usage among some girls at the school.

Next, we got rid of unwanted footage and started to trim the video down to make it our wanted time of 30 seconds. 

Finally, we added transitions, text, and music to make the video as seamless and have the best quality as possible

The audience for our PSA is the DCMS staff and student body. The video is going to be seen by the teachers and students on our news show.  

Over the past couple of months, there have been more and more reports of students vaping. Due to this, we decided to make a PSA showing the effect vapes have on lungs and a number that people can text to help start their journey of quitting.

The goal of this PSA is to hopefully help kids who have vaped before or currently do it, realize that 1, they are not alone and there are resources and things to help them! And 2, for kids who haven’t vaped to make sure they know the risks of it and to hopefully stop it before it ever even happens. 

A problem we encountered while filming this PSA is finding the right words or things to do to really connect with the students struggling with vaping addiction. At first, we didn’t know what would really help them realize what they’re doing and how to stop.

What we enjoyed most about filming and creating this PSA was having the opportunity to help kids start their path to quitting. We’ve loved getting to be a part of something important for our school.