Hi y’all, my name is Rea and I’m The Sunny Millennial! I am a 23-year-old woman living in Colorado. I love to write and create, and I’m excited to engage with all of you through this blog! I want to talk about millennial life as I love reading and thinking about it myself. I’m a generally positive person, so I plan to gear these articles to be upbeat, but also real and relatable; articles that talk about life situations we commonly deal with as millennials, as well as articles that give tips and tricks to millennial living. I know we’ve all been (or still are—like me heh) in a place... Read More

I spend a lot of my time doing things by myself. I would like to play a team sport like soccer, but I don’t have enough social skills to handle that, and so I run marathons instead. Sometimes this singularity bothers me more than others. Mostly, I’m OK with it. It provides connections I would not otherwise make. When you venture out alone and decline the Succubus of your cell phone, the world offers you unexpected opportunities. Such was the case when I found myself without a biking buddy one Wednesday night and so I pedaled myself down to the Denver Cruiser bicycle ride all by myself.  A... Read More

By my current estimate*, roughly 29% of social media is devoted to decrying why social media is so terrible for us. They’re not wrong. We spend a shocking amount of time comparing other people’s carefully-curated presentations of their mundane lives to our own, known-to-be-dreary existences. People who I know are boring as dirt in real life look like rock stars online. I am not immune to this: my phone tells me that I spend upwards of two hours a day staring at it, which is far more than I have ever spent staring at any lover I have ever had. Make of that fact what you will. I bring this up... Read More

Offline October is a challenge for people to give up social media for the month of October to support teen suicide prevention.  Recently, the Littleton community has experienced a number of teen suicides and they are trying to address what they believe is one of the contributors – social media. The challenge is meant for people to realize the importance of  human relationships and the happiness that can come from direct human interaction. ​Consider these statistics about teens and technology: Teens check their phones 157 times per day Teens spend 4 hours on their phones per day Teens send... Read More

Mindlessly scrolling through our social media feeds when we have a few spare minutes is not the best habit when it comes to our collective psychology. The American Academy of Pediatrics has evaluated the potential for negative effects of social media in young kids and teens, including cyber-bullying and “Facebook depression,” but the issue impacts adults as well. There’s some good evidence that internet addiction may exist. A recent review of earlier research on the psychological characteristics, personality and social media use and found that it is plausible to speak about “Facebook... Read More