Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Researchers Find Strong Adolescent-Parent Relationships Lead to Better Long-Term Health Outcomes in Young Adults

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by ScienceDaily.

Researchers from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have found that adolescents who report strong relationships with their parents have better long-term health outcomes. Study findings, published today in JAMA Network Open, suggest that investments in improving parent-adolescent relationships could help improve general health, mental health, and sexual, health while also reducing substance use in young adulthood.

The study utilized data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Reseachers tested whether adolescents' reports of specific, measurable characteristics of their relationships with mother- and father figures with whom they live were linked to health outcomes measured 14 years later. The researchers looked at data from more than 15,000 adults who were initially enrolled in the study in the mid-1990s when they were between 12 and 17 years old.

The researchers looked at characteristics such as reported parental warmth, communication, time together, and academic expectations as assessed when the participants were between 12 and 17 years old. When those same participants were 24 to 32 years old, they reported on current levels of stress, depression, optimism, nicotine dependence and substance abuse, and other measures of general health. The study controlled for age, race, ethnicity, family structure, and other factors and separated the data based on relationships with mother and father figures who lived in the home. More than 10,000 participants were analyzed for the study.

The study found that participants who reported higher levels of mother-adolescent and father-adolescent warmth, communication, time together, academic expectations, relationship or communication satisfaction, and inductive discipline reported significantly higher levels of general health in young adulthood. Similarly, they reported significantly higher levels of optimism and romantic relationship quality and lower levels of stress and depressive symptoms as young adults. Higher levels of adolescent-reported parental warmth, time together, and relationship or communication satisfaction were also significantly associated with lower levels of nicotine dependence and substance abuse in young adulthood as well as lower odds of unintended pregnancy.

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230321112658.htm

Parental Support Linked to Teen Internet Addiction

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by Phys.org.

Teenagers who feel well-supported by their parents are more likely to report increased internet addiction over time, in a surprise finding from a new University of Sydney Business School study.

The researchers studied nearly 3,000 adolescents across four critical years of development, from Year 8 to Year 11 (age 14–17), to examine the link between social support and compulsive internet use.

Surprisingly, teenagers who reported high social support from parents were more likely to later report compulsive internet use. The teenagers who reported compulsive use were likely to afterward report a decline in social support from teachers.

Compulsive internet use, also referred to as problematic internet use, refers to difficulty regulating internet use and often involves withdrawal symptoms, rumination about being online when not online, and disengagement from daily activities.

Dr. James Donald, lead investigator and senior lecturer in work and organizational studies said the study became even more relevant with the unexpected difficulty of COVID-19 lockdowns seeing young people spending even more time online.

Dr. Donald said the biggest surprise was that parental social support led adolescents to experience greater compulsive internet use over time—which in turn led to less support from teachers.

"When youth saw their parents as being relatively supportive compared to the parents' own average, they reported more compulsive internet use in the following year. This is contrary to what we predicted but consistent with previous studies which found children who reported low levels of neglect by their parents were more likely to increase in internet addiction over time."

The study was published in the journal, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Source: Phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2023-01-parental-linked-teen-internet-addiction.html

Happy, Loved Teens Become Heart-Healthier as Adults

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by HealthDay.

When teenagers feel good about themselves and their lives, it may also do their hearts good in the long run, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that teenagers who generally felt happy, optimistic, and loved went on to show better cardiovascular health in their 20s and 30s versus kids who lacked that level of mental well-being.

Overall, they were more likely to maintain a healthy weight, as well as normal blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol levels. And having such positive feelings appeared particularly important for Black teenagers' future health.

"One thing I'm struck by is we really don't have a handle on the 'good things' that kids need to support their cardiometabolic health," said lead researcher Farah Qureshi, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore.

To dig into the question, her team examined data from a national health study that enrolled nearly 3,500 U.S. high school students in the 1990s and followed them for more than two decades.

At the outset, the students answered questions that gauged five psychological assets: happiness; hopefulness about the future; high self-esteem; feeling socially accepted; feeling loved and wanted.

The bad news: More than half of kids — 55% — had none or only one of those positive feelings.

But when they had four or five of those assets, they were about 69% more likely to maintain good cardiovascular health into their 30s compared with their peers. That was with a range of other factors — like family income, parents' education, and kids' body weight — taken into account.

In line with past research, this study found that an unfortunately small number of participants maintained good cardiovascular health into their late 30s: just 12% overall.

The study was published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/heart-disease-adolescent-health-2659080064.html

Depression in Fathers and Children Linked, Regardless of Genetic Relatedness

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by ScienceDaily.

Adolescent depression and behavior problems are on the rise and paternal depression may be contributing to this increase, regardless of whether the fathers and children are genetically related, according to new research from Penn State and Michigan State.

"A lot of research focuses on depression within biologically related families," said Jenae Neiderhiser, Social Science Research Institute co-funded faculty member and distinguished professor of psychology and human development and family studies at Penn State. "Now more information is becoming available for adoptive families and blended families."

The researchers looked at naturally occurring variations in genetic relatedness between parents and their adolescent children in the 720 families participating in the Nonshared Environment in Adolescent Development (NEAD) study, with over half of those families containing a child-rearing stepparent.

Mothers, fathers, and children each answered questions to measure symptoms of depression, behaviors, and parent-child conflict. The researchers then examined the association between paternal depression symptoms and child behavioral symptoms in a series of models.

Neiderhiser and Alex Burt, professor of clinical science at Michigan State, along with their colleagues found paternal depression was associated with adolescent depression and adolescent behavior problems regardless of whether the fathers and their children were genetically related.

"The results pointed squarely to the environmental transmission of depression and behaviors between fathers and children," said Burt, who has been collaborating on projects with Neiderhiser since the early 2000s "Additionally, we continued to see these associations in a subset of 'blended' families in which the father was biologically related to one participating child but not to the other, which was an important confirmation of our results. We also found that much of this effect appeared to be a function of parent-child conflict. These kinds of findings add to the evidence that parent-child conflict plays a role as an environmental predictor of adolescent behaviors."

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220706153059.htm

The Teen Brain Tunes in Less to Mom’s Voice, More to Unfamiliar Voices

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by Stanford Medicine.

When your teenagers don’t seem to hear you, it’s not simply that they don’t want to clean their room or finish their homework: Their brains aren’t registering your voice the way they did in their pre-teenage years.

Around age 13, kids’ brains no longer find their moms’ voices uniquely rewarding, and they tune into unfamiliar voices more, a new study from the Stanford School of Medicine has found.

The research, which was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used functional MRI brain scans to give the first detailed neurobiological explanation for how teens begin to separate from their parents.

“Just as an infant knows to tune into her mother’s voice, an adolescent knows to tune into novel voices,” said lead study author Daniel Abrams, Ph.D., clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “As a teen, you don’t know you’re doing this. You’re just being you: You’ve got your friends and new companions and you want to spend time with them. Your mind is increasingly sensitive to and attracted to these unfamiliar voices.”

In some ways, teens’ brains are more receptive to all voices — including their mothers’ — than the brains of children under 12, the researchers discovered, a finding that lines up with teenagers’ increased interest in many types of social signals.

However, in teenage brains, the reward circuits and the brain centers that prioritize important stimuli are more activated by unfamiliar voices than by those of their mothers. The brain’s shift toward new voices is an aspect of healthy maturation, the researchers said.

Source: Standford Medicine
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/04/teenager-brain-mother-voice.html

Social Connectedness, Sleep, and Physical Activity Associated with Better Mental Health Among Youth

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted by the National Institutes of Health.

Longitudinal survey data of more than 3,000 adolescents ages 11-14 recorded before and during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 found that supportive relationships with family and friends and healthy behaviors, like engaging in physical activity and better sleep, appeared to shield against the harmful effects of the pandemic on adolescents' mental health.

The research, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and other entities at the National Institutes of Health. The research is based on data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study(link is external), the largest long-term study of brain development and child health ever conducted in the United States.

Researchers also explored predictors of perceived stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, and found that girls were more likely than boys to experience psychological distress during the pandemic. Psychosocial factors, including poorer quality and functioning of family relationships, more screen time, and witnessing discrimination in relation to the pandemic, also predicted youth distress.

n this study, investigators analyzed data from a longitudinal cohort of over 3,000 ABCD Study participants ages 11 to 14-years-old and their families. These young adolescents and their parents completed pre-pandemic assessments by February 2020, which documented baseline parent/caregiver reports of externalizing problems (e.g., acting aggressively, breaking rules) and sleep disturbances (e.g., sleep duration), and youth reports of internalizing problems (e.g., feeling anxious or depressed). Participating parents and youth then separately completed three online COVID-19 surveys, conducted between May and August 2020, which featured more than 200 items across psychosocial and lifestyle domains.

Researchers used machine learning methods to look for patterns of positive affect, anxiety, stress, and depressive symptoms across the surveys. They then interpreted the results through an algorithm to provide an overall ranking of variables according to their importance for predicting youth mental health outcomes. The top variables were categorized into eight domains: demographics; coping behaviors (e.g., having a regular mealtime); physical activities; relationships; resources (e.g., unable to afford food), screen time, sleep (e.g., pre-pandemic sleep disturbances), and other (e.g., pre-pandemic psychological problems).

Out of all the possible predictors considered, positive relationship variables, such as talking about plans for the coming day with parents, participating in family activities, and those related to healthy behaviors like physical activities and better sleep were among the top predictors of high positive affect and were also protective against stress, anxiety, and depression. Conversely, more screen time activities, including social media and video games, as well as witnessing racism or discrimination in relation to the coronavirus, emerged as important predictors for negative affect. The study also found that girls, and those who entered the pandemic with existing mental health or sleep problems, appeared to be particularly vulnerable to the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: National Institutes of Health
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/social-connectedness-sleep-physical-activity-associated-better-mental-health-among-youth-during-covid-19-pandemic

Helicopter Parenting Creates Social and Educational Problems Later in Life

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on News Medical.

Overly strict parents undermine the autonomy of their children which can lead to less favorable outcomes well into adulthood, a new study has shown.

A team of researchers at the University of Virginia reveals that teenagers whose parents are overbearing and overcontrolling may have difficulties in social relationships and educational attainment by the time the teens reach 32 years old.

The study findings, published in the journal Child Development, highlights the long-term impact on the youth when their parents are overly strict and protective.

For the study, researchers studied 184 individuals between the ages of 13 and 32, from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds.  The study participants were equally distributed by gender. The team asked the participants to answer questionnaires about themselves and their parents.

They gathered information about the participants' experiences of being controlled by their parents during their teen years.

Study results revealed that having overcontrolling parents at age 13 was tied to less supportive romantic relationships for those who were in relationships by the time they were 27 years old.

The team also found that the children of overcontrolling parents were less likely to be in a relationship by age 32, and they had lower educational attainment by the same age. The most critical age of when parents begin to be controlling was between 15 and 16, the team said. Further, these teens were less psychologically mature and less liked by their friends.

Source: News Medical
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200618/Helicopter-parenting-creates-social-and-educational-problems-later-in-life.aspx

Four in Five Parents Say Coronavirus Lockdown Has Brought Family Closer Together

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on StudyFinds.

It’s quite understandable if family relationships are under a lot of strain while everyone is stuck at home together during the coronavirus lockdown. Yet a recent survey conducted in the United Kingdom shows that even amid such difficult circumstances, most families have risen above the stress to become even closer than they were before.

According to the survey of 2,000 British parents conducted by MumPoll, four in five parents believe their families have formed an even stronger bond since parents and kids have more time together during the lockdown. The survey finds that half of the families are getting together to play board games and make puzzles. These can be a fun and competitive way to bring the family together for a few hours. Another 30% say they’ve formed book clubs and read together.

And some parents are engaging in new activities with their kids. Just over a quarter of families (28%) have picked up family gardening. Not only is it a great bonding activity and an excellent way to brighten up your backyard, but another recent study found that growing a garden is linked to a better body image.

Many parents have been keeping their families together by keeping everyone’s screen times the same — an interesting strategy for a time when children may be tempted to turn on the TV or flip open the laptop more than usual. Only one-third of parents allow their kids to watch more TV, and just one-quarter of parents say their kids are spending more time on phones, tablets, and video games.

Source: Study Finds
https://www.studyfinds.org/quarantine-quality-time-4-in-5-parents-say-coronavirus-lockdown-has-brought-family-closer-together/

Family, School Support May Help Stop Bullies in Their Tracks

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on HealthDay.

Children with strong family ties and school support are more likely to try to stop bullying when they see it, new research suggests.

The study included 450 sixth-graders and 446 ninth-graders who were asked about their relationships with their family, friends and teachers.

The students were then presented with six scenarios of specific aggressive acts: physical aggression; cyberbullying; social exclusion/rejection by a group; intimate partner violence; social aggression, such as teasing or harmful gossip; and exclusion by a former friend.

The investigators then asked the students to rate the acceptability of intervening in these situations.

"We found that family is very important," said study co-author Secil Gonultas, a doctoral student at North Carolina State University.

"The stronger a student's reported 'good family management,' or positive family relationships, the more likely a student was to deem aggressive behaviors and retaliation unacceptable, and the more likely they were to intervene in either case," Gonultas said in a university news release.

And according to study lead author Kelly Lynn Mulvey, "sixth-graders were more likely than ninth-graders to find aggressive behaviors unacceptable and to intervene." Mulvey is an assistant professor of psychology at N.C. State.

"That suggests it's important to maintain anti-bullying efforts into high school -- which many places are already doing," she added.

The researchers also found that students who felt excluded or discriminated against by peers or teachers were less likely to stand up for victims of bullying.

"The study tells us that both home and school factors are important for recognizing bullying behavior as inappropriate, and taking steps to intervene," Mulvey said.

The study was published online recently in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/bullying-health-news-718/family-school-support-may-help-stop-bullies-in-their-tracks-739633.html

Teen Monitoring Apps Don't Work and Just Make Teens Hate Their Parents

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on Gizmodo.

So-called parental control apps on smartphones might suck at actually protecting kids from iffy stuff on the internet, new preliminary research from the University of Central Florida suggests. And unsurprisingly, they also seem to drive a wedge between teens and parents.

Researchers first surveyed over 200 pairs of parents and teens (ages 13 to 17) online. About half of the parents said they at least sometimes used these apps, which can block certain websites, limit screen time, and track children’s online activity. They found that parents who relied on these apps were more likely to be stricter and authoritarian, meaning they’re often demanding and rarely willing to listen to their kids or meet them halfway. But, seemingly counterintuitively, the teens whose parents reported having these apps were also more likely to report being exposed to unwanted explicit content, online harassment, and problems with other kids.

“The takeaway here is that parents should not treat parental control apps as a magic bullet to keep their teens safe online,” senior author Pamela Wisniewski, an assistant professor of engineering and computer science at UCF, told Gizmodo via email.

Building on their initial findings, the researchers then looked at 736 online reviews left by parents and kids (ages 8 to 19) of 37 parental control apps available on Google Play. The parents were generally rosy about the apps, but two-thirds of the kids gave them one star reviews, and they often confessed the apps negatively impacted their relationship with their parents.

Both studies, which haven’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, are set to be presented later this month at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems held in Montreal, Canada. Wisniewski says that the research was peer reviewed prior to its acceptance into the conference, though.

One drawback of the studies, however, is that they can’t tell us exactly why these apps are linked to more online risks.

“It is possible that teens who are experiencing online risks have parents who are more likely to use parental control apps. However, based on the parent reports and our own prior research, parents are often unaware of the online risks their teens are experiencing and this did not statically explain why they chose to use parental control apps,” Wisniewski said. “Another possible explanation is that teens are not getting the support they need from their parents to help them navigate both offline peer problems and online risk experiences. The use of parental control apps, as opposed to more engaged parenting styles, might be symptomatic of this lack of engaged parental involvement.”

Rather than turning to automated safety nets, the authors say, parents should become more involved in their kids’ lives, which includes both directly supervising what they’re seeing on the internet and having open conversations about the dangers of online activities.

Source: Gizmodo
https://gizmodo.com/teen-monitoring-apps-dont-work-and-just-make-teens-hate-1824706829