ACT Writing — Essay Prompts, Examples & Scoring Guide

Social media empowers young people to explore and express authentic identities by connecting them with communities that share their interests, values, and backgrounds — especially for those who feel marginalized in their local environments.

Social media undermines authentic identity development by creating pressure to conform to idealized, algorithmically-amplified images of success, beauty, and popularity, replacing genuine self-discovery with performance.

The effects of social media on identity depend entirely on how and why a young person uses it. Intentional, community-oriented use builds identity; passive, comparison-driven use erodes it.

AI tools in education should be embraced fully because they can provide personalized instruction at scale, reaching students who would otherwise lack access to individualized support from teachers.

AI tools in education pose serious risks to the development of critical thinking, writing, and problem-solving skills that require struggle, failure, and genuine intellectual effort to develop.

Schools should adopt AI tools selectively — using them to support administrative tasks and identify struggling students, while keeping core academic work free from AI assistance to preserve authentic learning.

Remote work is a major step toward equality in the workforce — it removes geographic barriers, benefits caregivers, reduces commuting costs, and allows talent from underserved communities to compete for high-paying jobs.

Remote work weakens the social fabric of both workplaces and communities by eliminating the daily human interactions that build trust, creativity, and civic engagement — the unplanned conversations that drive innovation.

The benefits and harms of remote work are unevenly distributed: knowledge workers with dedicated home offices benefit most, while hourly workers, young professionals, and parents with young children often struggle.

Universal Basic Income would reduce poverty, provide economic security during career transitions, and recognize the value of unpaid work such as caregiving and community volunteering that markets do not reward.

Universal Basic Income would reduce the incentive to work, increase inflation, and misallocate resources — giving money to wealthy citizens who do not need it rather than targeting support toward those who do.

Universal Basic Income is a promising but premature idea: small-scale pilot results are encouraging, but the economic, behavioral, and fiscal effects of a full national program remain too uncertain to justify large-scale implementation.

Investment in space exploration drives scientific and technological innovation that creates benefits across society — from satellite communications to medical imaging — while inspiring future generations of scientists and engineers.

Billions spent on space exploration represent a moral failure when millions of people lack access to clean water, basic healthcare, and education. Humanity should solve Earth's problems before exploring other planets.

Space exploration and addressing Earth's problems are not mutually exclusive — the challenge is developing governance structures that can pursue both simultaneously, including international partnerships that spread the cost and benefit of space investment.

Standardized tests provide a consistent, objective measure of academic preparation that helps admissions officers evaluate applicants from different schools with different grading standards — a tool that, used correctly, promotes meritocracy.

Standardized tests systematically disadvantage students from low-income families who cannot afford test prep, penalize those who experience test anxiety, and fail to capture the range of abilities that predict college success.

Standardized tests should be one optional data point among many — available to students who believe their scores represent their abilities, but not required so that students are not penalized for the inequalities in their educational circumstances.

Governments have a responsibility to protect children from platforms that use addictive design, targeted advertising, and algorithmically amplified content to manipulate developing minds that cannot yet provide meaningful informed consent.

Age limits on social media are largely unenforceable, easily circumvented, and may push young users toward darker, unregulated corners of the internet — a cure that is worse than the disease.

Rather than simple age limits, governments should regulate the design practices of social media platforms themselves — banning algorithmic amplification for minors, eliminating targeted advertising to users under 18, and mandating transparency about engagement-maximizing features.

Government mandates are necessary to accelerate the clean energy transition at the speed and scale that climate science demands — market forces alone are too slow and too susceptible to short-term thinking to achieve the required transformation.

Forcing a transition to electric vehicles by a fixed deadline will raise vehicle costs, stress the electrical grid, create supply chain bottlenecks for battery materials, and harm lower-income workers and consumers most.

A more effective approach combines incentives (tax credits, charging infrastructure investment) with gradually tightening emissions standards — creating market pressure toward EVs without the rigidity and unintended consequences of hard deadlines.

A four-day workweek would improve worker wellbeing, reduce burnout, increase productivity during working hours, and allow more time for family, community, and personal development — all without sacrificing economic output.

A four-day workweek is impractical in many sectors — healthcare, retail, hospitality, education — where services must be available five or more days per week, and could harm lower-wage workers who depend on overtime hours.

The question is not whether the workweek should be four days or five, but whether workers should have more control over when and how they work — flexibility and autonomy matter more than a standardized reduction in days.

Arts education develops creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence — capacities that are increasingly valued in the modern economy and that cannot be cultivated as effectively through STEM courses alone.

In a competitive economy, requiring arts education for all students diverts time and resources from the STEM skills that most directly determine career opportunities and economic mobility, particularly for students from underserved communities.

Rather than mandating specific arts courses, schools should integrate creative and aesthetic thinking across disciplines — including STEM — so that all students develop these capacities without requiring a separate arts curriculum.