Aloha! My name is Rylee Skye Saturnio. I am from the Island of Maui . I love the culture , the energy and the positive atmosphere of this place. What makes me Gen Z. Well that’s the catch, the most Gen Z thing to do is writing an essay for a scholar to explain just how Gen Z it gets. I catch myself scroll through TikTok’s late at night cackling to the funniest memes and sending it to a group chat where they just react with a crying emoji. I’ve used the crying emoji many times to express laughter and complete dying of it. The one time I used it in a text to my dad he goes, “What’s wrong.” The thing with all these different generations and how we all find ways to surprise each other entirely entertains me. Ironically just last week I had to ask my grandma why she wants to Skype me. I’ve never used that, I’ve always just done the classic FaceTime. Only recently I found out what a Skype was which was hilarious. I am the type of person that is definitely unfilteredly filtered in a way. Yes, I have tried fake hacks on TikTok, Yes, I have tried to levitate someone is light as feather stiff as a board and yes, I have tried to get rich off being an “influencer.” Although I’m not quite sure what I was trying to influence because all I’d post is food and TikTok dances.

Aloha! My name is Rylee Skye Saturnio. I’m currently a Senior at King Kekaulike High School and I live in Maui, Hawaii.I’ve lived in Maui for most of my whole 17 years alive. I was born in Guam and lived in North Dakota for a year because my dad worked in the Air Force. I then moved to Maui when I was 3. My parents have split shortly after and it was just me, my mom and younger brother. I involve myself with the community by attending school clean ups, helping elders , and I work at my family food truck. The financial need I have as I enter higher education is very much needed. My family wouldn’t be able to afford the college education I’ll need to become a Forensics Pathologist. Which is why I am continuing to work and apply for every scholarship I am eligible for. How I keep children in my community safe and online from in-person and cyber bullying is from teaching them simple things like “treat others how you would like to be treated.” I’ve believed in that saying my whole life and it usually brings back positive long life relationships and connections. Having younger siblings and cousins has taught me to become protective over them and watch over them to keep the younger ones safe. As we live is thing fast evolving world with all the new technology coming out, the kids begin to get more interested and involved. Online my younger siblings and cousins love to play video games and most of those games allow them to have interactions with real people. The main thing I teach them is to never give out information onto the internet and to not trust somebody you don’t know. There are so much predators out there and the scariest part is most people target these children and play a role of pretending they’re someone they’re not, to become friends with them to retrieve personal information. For example, on Roblox there are many “Online Daters” that fume the lobbies and interact with children lying about their age. To teach the children of my community to avoid this I talk about it a lot and go into detail with all the dangers. The dangers of how such an innocent kids game has become predators ground to lurk and pretend to be people they aren’t just so they can interact with young children.