GOSHEN — While quarantine has left many high school students apart, Anastasia Zhurova has sought to bring them together through the power of social media.
The incoming high school senior, who attends John S. Burke Catholic High School in Goshen, started her blog Community Connect in May as a way of providing a sense of community for high school students in self-isolation.
“I thought that Community Connect was a great way for me to create a platform that broke the barriers that self-isolation produces,” she said. “Even when we are isolated, we all share the same anxieties.”
The blog seeks to engage readers with forums on current events, resources for students applying to college and articles on travel.
So far, she has heard positive feedback from fellow students who have praised the site for being an accessible and informative resource in an era of disinformation.
“I heard that many students liked that Community Connect is a free platform where they didn’t have to pay for information,” she said. “Valid information has not been easily spread during the pandemic.”
As a self-described “science nerd” who hopes to be on a pre-med track in college once she graduates next year, Zhurova is especially passionate about educating fellow students on the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I just wanted to spread the information of why we have to quarantine and why we are actually capable of spreading COVID-19 [as young people],” she said. “I wrote that when there were a lot of research papers stating that it’s not okay for us to just hang out and not care.”
For fellow high school seniors, Zhurova posted an article on what the college application process would look like for the Class of 2021 with links to different websites and a primer on what to expect in the new application.
She hopes that the content on Community Connect will provide an antidote to the exaggerated, unrealistic posts that often flood social media accounts.
“We usually post pictures or videos that mask what we’re really going through,” she said. “I want Community Connect to be a place where someone can just enjoy the time that they have online and not base their own appearance and experiences on a post or judge someone.”
Zhurova operates the blog with a volunteer team of social media managers who seek to expand the blog’s reach on social media. As it grows, Zhurova would like to hire other writers and editors to contribute.
Eventually, she aims for the blog to attract more than just her fellow students at Burke Catholic High School.
“Having social media managers will allow us to have a bigger outreach, not only to the Hudson Valley but around the world,” she said. “Internet is the kind of medium that allows for that to happen.”
Community Connect can be found here.
