Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Internet Addiction Linked to ADHD, Depression in Teens

Some children and teens are more likely than their peers to become addicted to the Internet, and a new study suggests it's more likely to happen if kids are depressed, hostile, or have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or social phobia.

Although an Internet addiction is not an official diagnosis, signs of a potential problem include using the Internet so much for game playing or other purposes that it interferes with everyday life and decision-making ability. (The diagnosis is being considered for the 2012 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the "bible" of mental ailments published by the American Psychiatric Association).

Past research suggests that 1.4 percent to 17.9 percent of adolescents are addicted to the Internet, with percentages higher in Eastern nations than in Western nations, according to the study published Monday in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Definitions vary, but an Internet addiction usually includes symptoms such as spending a lot of time on the Internet (especially more time than intended), an inability to cut back on usage, a preoccupation with online activities, and symptoms of withdrawal such as anxiety, boredom, or irritability after a few days of not going online.

Boys were at a higher risk of Internet addiction than girls, and those who used the Internet for more than 20 hours a week, every day, or for online gaming, were at higher risk as well.

Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, says the findings were no surprise.

"The study's indication that children who are hyperactive or diagnosed ADHD are finding an outlet on the Web makes such perfect sense," he says, because those children crave the constant stimulation of fast-paced video games and interactive social networks.

If at-risk children -- such as those identified in the Taiwanese study -- are given sufficient time and exposure without careful monitoring, Internet addiction could easily become one of the most chronic childhood diseases in America, says Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis of the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development, in Seattle.

Since adolescents cannot easily avoid computers, treatment for addiction cannot simply involve abstaining from the Internet, says Christakis. Parents, educators, and medical professionals need to identify high-risk children early on and monitor their Internet usage to prevent problem behavior from forming.

Time on the Internet needs to be monitored as well, especially for children who may be at high risk for addiction because of depression, ADHD, or social problems, says Christakis.

Source: CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/05/depression.adhd.internet.addiction/

Study Finds Peer Pressure Helpful for Teens

Those of us involved in youth ministry have long stressed to kids the negative influence of peer pressure. We've given kids lots of advice on how to avoid giving in to the pressures to conform and have urged them to step up to be a positive influence in the lives of their friends.

All well and good. Yet, a newly released study reveals (in the book Escaping the Endless Adolescence by Joe Allen) that peer pressure is actually good for kids. In the end, it appears, the more peer pressure kids face, the better off they are as adults. Who knew?!

According to Allen, kids who face a lot of peer pressure learn skills that are important to success in adult relationships, such as empathy, negotiation, accommodation, and the ability to agree to disagree while preserving friendship. These kids had better academic scores, healthier romantic relationships, and were less likely to have problems with drugs or alcohol.

Conversely, kids who do not experience much peer pressure, or who easily say no to peer pressure, did not fare as well in the long run in terms of developing relational skills. Academically, their GPAs were almost a full point lower than kids who felt more peer pressure.

And what about the stereotypical peer pressure to smoke, drink alcohol or take drugs? Allen says that this type of pressure occurs less than people think, and is more about peer selection than peer pressure, with kids about to engage in these at-risk behaviors selecting friends who are in a similar spot.

So, perhaps its time that we youth workers and parents ratchet down the rhetoric about peer pressure, while encouraging kids to actively engage in their friendships (so kids can hone their relational skills) and expend more energy in talking about the importance of selecting good friends.

According to every pop theory of adolescence, peer pressure is peril. Being able to resist it should be considered a sign of character strength. But a funny thing happened as Joe Allen, a professor at the University of Virginia, studied kids and peer pressure over a period of 10 years: the kids who felt more peer pressure when they were 12 or 13 were turning out better.

Notably, they had much higher-quality relationships with friends, parents, and romantic partners. Their need to fit in, in the early teens, later manifested itself as a willingness to accommodate ─ a necessary component of all reciprocal relationships. The self-conscious kid who spent seventh grade convinced that everyone was watching her learned to be attuned to subtle changes in others’ moods. Years down the road, that heightened sensitivity lead to empathy and social adeptness.

Meanwhile, those kids who did not feel much peer pressure to smoke, drink, and shoplift in seventh grade didn’t turn out to be the independent-minded stars we’d imagine. Instead, what was notable about them was that within five years they had a much lower GPA ─ almost a full grade lower. The kid who could say no to his peers turned out to be less engaged, all around, socially and academically. Basically, if he was so detached that he didn’t care what his peers thought, he probably wasn’t motivated by what his parents or society expected of him, either.

Source: Newsweek
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/09/23/teens-who-feel-more-peer-pressure-turn-out-better-not-worse.aspx

The Importance of Family Dinners

The latest research from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) once again confirms the importance of regular family dinner times in reducing teen at-risk behaviors, and improving relationships, communication and academics. Teens who have a family dinner 5 to 7 times per week see the greatest benefits in all areas.

Interestingly, according to the study, family dinners only last 35 minutes on average, which strikes me as not a huge investment of time (okay, I know there's dinner preparation and cleanup time too) for some terrific benefits!

Read the study results clicking on the source link below.

Source: CASA
http://www.casacolumbia.org/absolutenm/articlefiles/380-Importance%20of%20Family%20Dinners%20V.pdf

Study Examines Youth Access to Indoor Tanning

Many indoor tanning businesses require parental consent for teenagers to use their facilities, but most would allow young tanners more than the government-recommended amount of exposure during the first week, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Facilities with specific state laws regarding parental consent or accompaniment were more likely to require these steps.

"Exposure to UV radiation from indoor tanning lamps has been linked with both melanoma and squamous cell cancer, and first exposure before age 35 years may increase melanoma risk by as much as 75 percent," the authors write as background information in the article.

Indoor tanning is especially popular among adolescent girls in the United States, which may contribute to the recently reported increase in melanoma rates among U.S. women ages 15 to 39. As of 2005, 28 states had laws regulating indoor tanning, including 21 with youth access restrictions.

Approximately 87 percent of the facilities required teens to get parental consent, about 14 percent required a parent to accompany the tanner and 5 percent would not allow a 15-year-old to tan at all. "State law and youth access law each were significantly related to parental consent and parental accompaniment, with facilities in states with a law more likely to require these than facilities in states without such a law," the authors write.

Only around 11 percent of the facilities limited teens to the FDA-recommended three or fewer sessions the first week. The average number of sessions allowed the first week was 6.02, and about 71 percent of facilities reportedly indicated they would allow a teen to tan seven days a week.

Source: EurekAlert!
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/jaaj-nse091709.php

Texting Affecting Quality of Sleep for Teens

Another recent study confirms that texting is interfering with the quality of sleep teens receive.

A recent study revealed that text messages on mobile phones are making an impact on the quality of sleep for almost 50% of the 16 year old people. According to a report, the sleep of 25% of 13 year old youngsters can also be affected.

The Leuven study on media and adolescent health was conducted in Flanders in which about 2500 children studying in 1st and 4th year - aged 13 and 16 years were asked how many times they wake in the night because of incoming SMS messages in their mobile phones. In the 13 year old children, 13.4% reported that they wake up 1-3 times in a month, 5.8% wake up one in a week, 5.3% wake up many times in a week and 2.2% wake up every night. In the group of 16 year old children, 20.8% wake up 1-3 times in a month, 10.8% wake up at least one time in a week, 8.9% wake up many times in a week and 2.9% wake up every night.

Source: News-Reviews.org
http://news-reviews.org/uncategorized/text-messaging-affect-quality-of-sleep/

Study: Beers With Friends May Help Teen Girls (?!)

I've been doing some thinking about how to comment on this post. It's regarding a news excerpt that I'd really rather not post at all. But, I feel obligated to post about research that points out both current dangers and positive trends, and studies that fit my convictions as well as those that do not. This is one of those times.

As you can easily decipher by the post title, research done by Purdue University has found that there is some benefit to high school girls who sneak out for some beer occasionally with their friends. My first response is to reject the notion for a whole host of reasons, some of which I'll note below. Still, often research doesn't deal with morality and values, just behavior and effect. So, taken at face value, I can see how the study reached its conclusion.

According to the excerpt below, it seems the study focused on the outcome of high school girls who occasionally sneak a few beers with friends. Researchers found that the girls who do this are less depressed due to the ability to "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers."

Okay, again on face value, teen drinking is typically includes a social aspect. Not many occasional teen drinkers are going to be found pounding beers by themselves.

So, couldn't another legitimate conclusion have been reached had the study not focused on beer drinking, but rather the outcomes of teen social interaction, or even other behaviors that foster teen social interaction? In other words, I would argue that teens who get together "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers" are likely to see the same benefits regardless of what they do when they are together.

Perhaps someone will come up with a better analogy, but this is simply what I thought of first. What if the focus of the behavior that resulted in the beneficial teen social interaction had been texting while driving. Teens text a lot today. They are known to text while driving on occasion. If doing so allows them to "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers," would it be a good idea even if the result was that teens who text while driving are found to be less depressed? I don't think anyone will do research into this, for the obvious dangers of texting while driving outweigh any potential benefit!

I would argue the same for high school girls sneaking out to have some beers with friends. First, doing so is against the law (generally -- unless there are some very old high school girls.) Call me old fashioned, but this in itself, makes the behavior wrong, no matter what the potential benefit there might be socially. Further, there have been studies which have shown that teen drinking can lead to dangerous consequences, such as driving while drinking, and making it more likely that occasional drinking can lead to heavier drinking, drunkenness, alcoholism, and other at-risk behaviors.

Consequently, in the end, I've concluded in my own mind that the potential dangers of teen drinking far outweigh any potential benefits.

My advice to parents: stay the course in setting clear expectations with your teens regarding drinking. There's a good possibility that your kids will experiment with alcohol before they graduate from high school, but hang in there. Doing what you can to help prevent your kids from drinking is the best course of action.Help your kids find alternative, safer ways to "blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers." There's no doubt in my mind that kids benefit from healthy social interaction with their peers -- and with a little homework and communication with your teens, you can find better options than drinking beer!

Sneaking an occasional beer with friends could actually be a good thing for teens -- especially girls --according to new research that upends typically negative views on teens and alcohol.

Timothy Owens, a sociology professor at Purdue University in Indiana, found that high school girls who drank once or twice with their friends in the past month were less likely to feel depressed than those who didn't.

"The realistic explanation is that teens drink for a lot of reasons, and one of them is to blow off steam, get together, have fun, joke around with their peers," Owens says.

"Getting out with their friends and maybe having a few beers can actually have a positive effect on some, especially girls. It can loosen them up, but even more important, it gets them interacting with their peers.

"And because girls especially value building and maintaining social relationships, it seems to have a positive effect on how they feel," he adds.

"We forget a lot of that in our research because most research is oriented toward addressing a problem, rather than looking at the normal experiences of teenagers," Owens says.

"We wanted to look at it open-mindedly."

The research included more than 1,000 high school students, and the results are published in the Journal of Adolescence.

Source: Ottawa Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Beers+with+friends+help+teen+girls/1972965/story.html

National Study Finds Parents a Big Factor in Teens Drinking, Drug Abuse

Parents be warned: It might not seem like your words and actions have any impact on your teenage child, but they do, at least according to a newest annual survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA).

The report found that teens are influenced by their parents' behavior and attitudes. For instance, according to the study, teens who have seen at least one of their parents drunk are more than twice as likely to get drunk in a typical month (and three times as likely to use marijuana and smoke cigarettes) as their peers who haven't seen a parent intoxicated.

The CASA report also found that teens who believe their father is OK with their drinking are two and a half times more likely to get drunk in a typical month as teens who believe that their dad opposes their drinking.

Elizabeth Planet, CASA vice president and director of special projects, said the center wanted more insight into how parental attitudes and behavior affect teen substance use and abuse.

"This is the first time we've asked about parental behaviors," Planet said. "Parents need to understand why some kids use and some don't and what they can do about it."

In other results, the CASA study showed that kids who drink at least once a month get drunk at least once a month, and that those who get drunk at least once a month are 18 times likelier to use marijuana and likelier to associate with teens who abuse other illegal and prescription drugs.

CASA also reports that more than one-third (8.7 million) of teens can get prescription drugs within a day and nearly one in five (4.7 million) can get them within an hour.

Parents are also a factor in this speedy prescription drug procurement, Planet said, as the majority of teens are getting these drugs from home. "The medicine cabinet remains a big source" for prescription drugs, she said.

Planet said the survey's biggest message is that parents need to clearly state, and back up, their disapproval about alcohol and drug abuse.

Source: Connecticut Post
http://www.connpost.com/ci_13209103?source=most_emailed

To read the entire CASA report, click the following link:
http://www.casacolumbia.org/absolutenm/articlefiles/380-2009%20Teen%20Survey%20Report.pdf

Are the Brains of Reckless Teens More Mature?

Thrill seeking and poor judgment go hand in hand when it comes to teenagers—an inevitable part of human development determined by properties of a growing but immature brain. Right? Not so fast. A new study turns that thinking upside down: The brains of teens who behave dangerously are more like adult brains than are those of their more cautious peers.

Psychologists have long believed that the brain's judgment-control systems develop more slowly than emotion-governing systems, not maturing until people are in their mid-20s. Hence, teens end up taking far more risks than adults do. Evidence supporting this idea comes from studies looking at functional and structural properties of gray matter, the important part of the brain that contains the neurons that relay brain signals.

At least two observations undermine this theory, however. First, American-style teen turmoil is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences. Because brain research is virtually always correlational in design, determining whether brain properties are causes or effects is impossible.

Now neuroscientists Gregory S. Berns, Sara Moore and Monica Capra of Emory University suggest that teen risk-taking is associated not with an immature brain but with a mature, adultlike brain—exactly the opposite of conventional wisdom.

The new research discovered a strong positive correlation between engagement in dangerous behaviors and increased brain white matter, typical of mature brains. In other words, young people who engage in dangerous behaviors generally have a more adultlike brain than their conservative peers.

If valid, the study has important implications for interpreting risk-taking in teens. It suggests that the brains of many teens who behave dangerously are maturing early. The new study says nothing about causation, just like the gray matter studies. "Could someone whose brain develops earlier start to engage in adult activities earlier?" That is one possibility, Berns says, but it is also possible that "engaging in adult activities makes the brain mature faster."

Source: Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-teens-who-behave-reck

College Students Are Sleep-Deprived, Stressed Out

Stress about school and life keeps 68 percent of students awake at night — 20 percent of them at least once a week. Stress affects the quality of their sleep far more than alcohol, caffeine or late-night electronics use, a new study shows.

Not only that, more than 60 percent of college students have disturbed sleep/wake patterns and many regularly take drugs and alcohol to help them do one or the other.

The study of 1,125 students appears online in the Journal of Adolescent Health. It found that only 30 percent of students sleep at least eight hours a night — the average requirement for young adults.

On weeknights, 20 percent of students stay up all night at least once a month and 35 percent stay up until 3 a.m. at least once a week. Twelve percent of poor sleepers miss class three or more times a month or fall asleep in class.

Source: Health Behavior News Service
http://www.cfah.org/hbns/archives/getDocument.cfm?documentID=2098

Sunbeds And UV Classed As Definitely Cancer-Causing

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, tanning beds have just made the list of highest cancer-causing risks, joining other notorious agents such as tobacco, asbestos and benzene. Parents should pointedly help teens "just say no" to tanning.

Global health experts have moved use of sunbeds and exposure to ultraviolet radiation (including sun exposure) to the highest risk category for causing cancer: they now join agents such as tobacco, asbestos and benzene in being classed as "carcinogenic to humans" whereas before they were classed as "probably carcinogenic".

The move follows a new report reviewing available research that found that starting to use sunbeds before the age of 30 increased a person's risk of developing the deadliest form of skin cancer (melanoma) by 75 per cent. Other agents have also been moved to the highest risk category following the report.

The findings that led to the decision by the World Health Organization (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to reclassify the cancer risk of sunbeds, ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and other agents, are published in a Special Report in the August issue of The Lancet Oncology.

Source: Medical News Today
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159124.php