Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Teens Experiencing Facebook Fatigue

Online gaming site Roiworld surveyed 600 teens ages 13 to 17 in late April and found that teens spend two hours per day online on average, 80% of which is spent using a social network. These same teens are, however, showing signs of “Facebook Fatigue.” Nearly one in five (19%) who have an account no longer visit Facebook or are using it less.

Of the group that are saying goodbye to Facebook, 45% have lost interest, 16% are leaving because their parents are there, 14% say there are “too many adults/older people” and 13% are concerned about the privacy of their personal information.

The study also suggests that the teens that continue to stick to Facebook do so primarily to play games. Roiworld found that more than one-third of the teens who play games on Facebook admit to spending at least 50% of their time on the site immersed in gameplay. The online gaming trend extends far beyond Facebook, as 75% of surveyed teens claim to play games on the web.

Source: Mashable
http://mashable.com/2010/06/30/teens-social-networks-study/

Report Shows Teen Girls Are Drinking More Than Boys, for Different Reasons

New data released from the Partnership for a Drug Free America suggest that not only are girls now drinking more than boys, they turn to drugs and alcohol for more serious reasons as well. The report, which analyzed results from the 2009 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS), a survey of teen attitudes and behaviors, shows that the number of middle- and high-school girls who say they drink has increased by 11 percent in the past year, from 53 percent to 59 percent. Boys have stayed at about the same level, hovering around 52 percent.

These numbers are more indicative of a long-term trend than a sudden uptick. In 2005 the rate of girls who had used alcohol in the past year as surveyed by the partnership hit 57 percent, only to fall back to 55 percent in 2007 and 53 percent in 2008. (During that same time, boys continued to fall within a couple of percentage points of 50 percent, but the changes were not statistically significant.)

The Partnership for a Drug Free America results also show that girls are more likely to associate drugs and alcohol with a way to avoid problems and relieve stress. (Boys, on the other hand, show dramatic increases in seeing drugs and alcohol as social lubricants: in 2009 compared with 2008, they were 16 percent more likely to see them as a way to make socializing easier, and 23 percent more likely to label drinking as a necessary ingredient for a party.)

Teen girls are more likely to be attuned to their feelings, says Leslie Walker, M.D., director of adolescent medicine at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and therefore may seek alcohol as a way to self-medicate. “Girls tend to be more internalizers with issues that are happening anyway. It makes sense that if they have some stress and things that they are dealing with, they’re going to take care of themselves instead of reaching out.”

Source: Newsweek
http://www.newsweekinteractive.org/2010/06/29/study-shows-teen-girls-are-drinking-more-for-different-reasons-than-boys.html?from=rss

Some Teens Turn to Botox

In 2009, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reported 12,110 Botox or Dysport (another wrinkle-relaxing shot) procedures performed on patients 18 and under (in 2008, the number was 8,194) while the American Society of Plastic Surgeons found 11,889 cosmetic Botox/Dysport procedures were performed on patients age 13 to 19 (an increase of 2 percent from 2008).

“I wanted to be cute, to look cute, but I had these ugly lines in between my eyebrows and on my forehead,” says Stephanie Torres, 19, of New York. “So I asked if I could get Botox. My mom paid for it. It was like a little birthday present.”

Torres, who went under the needle at age 18, is one of many teens and early 20somethings who are turning to Botox in an effort to not only smooth existing furrows, but fend off the aging process itself.

While smoothing wrinkles is just one of many uses, recent reports of teens as young as 15 getting Botox have prompted organizations such as the Physician’s Coalition for Injectable Safety to come out against a “teen toxing trend.”

Source: MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37925133/ns/health-skin_and_beauty/

Good News About Teen Online Behavior

McAfee's just released study, "The Secret Life of Teens" is actually a reassuring portrait of how most young people are exercising reasonable caution in their use of technology. The study, conducted by Harris Interactive, included interviews with almost 1,400 10- to 17-year-olds.

The survey reported that "almost half of youth (46 percent) admit to having given out their personal information to someone they didn't know over the Internet," but when they break it down, the survey reveals that "when they do reveal personal information online, youth are most likely to share their first name (36 percent), age (28 percent), and/or e-mail address (19 percent). Only around 1 in 10 have given out slightly more personal information like a photo of themselves, their school name, last name, cell phone number, or a description of what they look like.

It's also reassuring to read in the study report that "youth draw the line at giving out personally identifiable information such as their parents' names, home address, or school address, and virtually no teens report having given out their Social Security number."

When it comes to cyberbullying, the report also paints a more optimistic picture than we've seen from some other studies. Only 11 percent "admit to ever engaging in some form of cyberbullying behavior. The report goes on to show that the percentage of teens reporting that they have "ever been bullied or harassed online decreased substantially from 15 percent in 2008 to 8 percent in 2010. Far from an increase, that's an impressive 47 percent decline in two years.

Source: cnet news
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-20008402-238.html

Texting While Driving More Common Among Adults Than Teens

Adults are guilty of the dangerous activity of texting while driving more often than teenagers, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. The Pew study also revealed that adults are substantially more likely to talk on a cell phone while driving than teenagers.

According to the study half (47 percent) of all adults who text have done it while driving. That compares with 34 percent of teens (aged 16 to 17) who text. The survey revealed that 74 percent of adults that own cell phones have talked while driving, while just over half (52 percent) of teens with phones have talked while behind the wheel.

Source: PCWorld
http://www.pcworld.com/article/199323/texting_while_driving_more_common_among_adults_than_teens.html

20% of Kids Say Their Parents Have No Idea What They Do Online

Surveying 2,800 kids about their online lives and experiences, The Norton Online Family Report found 20 percent saying their parents have no idea what they are doing online.

The study, conducted by research company StrategyOne, expands on the number of countries surveyed in 2008 and 2009, focusing on the gaps between parents and kids with respect to their online beliefs and behaviors.

Parents are reported to be more aware of how much time their children are spending online. In 2008, Norton found that kids reported spending nearly 10 times as much time online as parents realized. In 2009, the gap shrunk to kids reporting being online twice as much as parents realized. This year, kids and parents are fully in sync about the about the amount of time kids spend online. Kids actually want more parental involvement in their online lives, with nearly nine in 10 reporting they follow family rules for Internet use.

However, other gaps remain. Though almost seven in 10 kids say they would turn to their parents if something bad happened online, only 45 percent of parents realize their kids are having negative experiences. Over six in 10 kids said they have had negative online experiences — from exposure to nudity and violence to having a stranger try to meet them in real life.

Nearly half the kids surveyed said they believe they are more careful online than their parents.

To browse the entire Norton report, click here.

Source: Social Times
http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/06/kids-s-online-norton-report

Teenage Boys Really Do Eat A Lot

In a lunch-buffet experiment involving 200 kids ages 8 to 17, researchers found that boys routinely ate more compared with girls their own age. But boys in their mid-teens were the most ravenous of all -- downing an average of nearly 2,000 lunchtime calories.

The pattern makes sense, given that boys usually hit their growth spurt -- putting on height and muscle mass -- in late puberty, according to senior researcher Dr. Jack A. Yanovski, of the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Yet, while teenage boys have a storied reputation for packing it away, there had actually been little objective evidence that this is the norm.

"There's a lot of folk wisdom that says boys can eat prodigious amounts, but we haven't had much data," Yanovski told Reuters Health.

To fill the gap, he and his colleagues had 204 8- to 17-year-old boys and girls come to a lunch buffet on two separate days. On one day, the kids were instructed to eat as much as they normally would during lunch; on the other day, they were told to eat as much as they wanted.

Overall, the researchers found, boys ate more than girls did at each stage of puberty. Prepubescent boys -- generally between the ages of 8 and 10 -- averaged nearly 1,300 lunchtime calories, versus 900 among prepubescent girls.

Girls showed the biggest increase in appetite during early- to mid-puberty, roughly between the ages of 10 and 13. Girls that age averaged almost 1,300 lunchtime calories, and that figure was only slightly higher among girls who were in late puberty.

Boys, on the other hand, tend to develop later. And their calorie needs appear to shoot up significantly in late puberty, or between the ages of 14 and 17.

While boys in this study showed little change in calorie intake between pre- and mid-puberty, their average lunchtime calorie intake reached nearly 2,000 calories in late puberty. And as long as their teenage sons are healthy and normal-weight, a sudden surge in eating should not be alarming, according to the researcher.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65E3ZA20100615

Teen Boys Who Attempt Suicide More Likely to Abuse as Adults

Men who attempted suicide before age 18 are much more likely to abuse their girlfriends or wives, according to a study from the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene.

The U.S. study included 153 males from relatively high-crime neighborhoods who were assessed annually from ages 10 to 32. The men's romantic partners were added to the study when the men were aged 18 to 25. Researchers found that 58 percent of males who tried to kill themselves before age 18 went on to injure a girlfriend or wife, compared with 23 percent of males who didn't attempt suicide when they were youths.

The association between attempted suicide and later aggression toward partners remained even after the researchers controlled for a number of other factors, including aggression, depression, substance abuse and a family history of abuse. The study documented partner abuse through several types of data, including domestic violence arrest records, women's and men's accounts of injuries and live observations of couples.

The findings, published online in the journal Psychological Medicine, offer evidence of the need for intervention programs for suicidal teens, said study co-author David Kerr, an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University (OSU).

"The study began when these men were kids, before anyone knew who was going to be violent," Kerr continued. That is quite different from research that starts with violent men, or women from a domestic violence shelter, and tries to look back in time for explanations."

Source: Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/640054.html

Stupid Teenage Tricks, for a Virtual Audience

A fascinating blog post appears in the New York Times which ponders the question of whether teenagers are prone to take more risks today for the purpose of filming their antics and posting them to YouTube or Facebook. Given the lack of research into the matter, it can't yet be determined whether or not kids really are taking more risks or if it's just easier for teens to capture their antics on video for posting on the Internet. Either way, it's a good idea for parents to be aware of the trend.

Is the Internet making teenagers do more dumb things than ever?

Some child specialists worry that it is. Teenagers have always been prone to taking foolish risks (thanks partly to the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which governs decision-making and is still developing in adolescence). But with the rise of sites like YouTube and Facebook, these experts say, teenagers now face virtual peer pressure to emulate all kinds of dangerous stunts and dares, and post them online.

There are no data to demonstrate whether Web-inspired recklessness is really increasing or whether teenagers are taking the same risks as earlier generations — and just finding it easier to document idiotic exploits for all to see.

But some doctors say that at the very least, the Internet is causing adolescents to ratchet up the danger level. A few weeks ago, Dr. E. Hani Mansour, a burn specialist in Livingston, N.J., treated a teenager who had been severely burned after lighting fireworks. This was not your father’s fireworks accident. The boy had filled the family bathtub with fireworks, covered his body in protective clothing and set up a video camera to record the event. The resulting explosion, which the teenager later said he had hoped to post on YouTube, created a fireball that left the boy with burns on about 14 percent of his body.

“Boys have been trying to be rocket scientists for many years,” said Dr. Mansour, medical director of the burn center at St. Barnabas Medical Center. “But now we’re seeing it in a more brazen way. They’re doing it for the purpose of filming it.”

Source: New York Times
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/teens-take-high-risks-for-a-virtual-audience/

Sleep Deprivation Linked to Teen Depression

Sleep-deprived high school students who doze off in class aren’t just risking the wrath of their teachers. They’re also three times more likely to be depressed than their alert classmates who get enough sleep, a new study has found.

“Sleep deprivation and depression go hand in hand among teenagers,” says the study’s lead author, Mahmood Siddique, DO, a sleep medicine specialist at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, in New Brunswick, N.J. “Instead of giving them medications, I’d rather give them a chance to sleep better, and more.”

Daytime sleepiness appears to be the new normal for adolescents. More than half of the 262 high school seniors who participated in the study were “excessively sleepy,” according to a commonly used scale that gauges how likely a person is to doze off during everyday activities such as reading, watching TV, or sitting in a traffic jam.

The students reported sleeping an average of about six hours on school nights and eight hours on the weekend, far less than the nine hours a night—at least—that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends for high school students.

The students who were excessively sleepy during the day were three times more likely to have strong depression symptoms than their well-rested peers, Dr. Siddique and his colleagues found. However, it’s not clear from the study whether sleeping poorly is a symptom of depression, or vice versa. But, mounting evidence suggests that sleep deprivation in and of itself can contribute to depression.

Source: Health.com
http://news.health.com/2010/06/09/sleep-deprivation-teen-depression/