Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Young Chimpanzees and Human Teens Share Risk-Taking Behaviors

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

Adolescent chimpanzees share some of the same risk-taking behaviors as human teens, but they may be less impulsive than their human counterparts, according to new research. The study gets at age-old nature/nurture questions about why adolescents take more risks: because of environment or because of biological predispositions?

"Adolescent chimpanzees are in some sense facing the same psychological tempest that human teens are," said lead researcher Alexandra Rosati, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology and anthropology at the University of Michigan. "Our findings show that several key features of human adolescent psychology are also seen in our closest primate relatives."

The researchers conducted two tests involving food rewards with 40 wild-born chimpanzees at a sanctuary in the Republic of Congo. The chimpanzees voluntarily participated in the games in order to receive food treats. The research was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

n the first test, adolescent and adult chimpanzees could choose between two containers in a gambling task. One container always contained peanuts, a food that chimpanzees somewhat like. The other container concealed either an unliked food -- a cucumber slice -- or a favorite food -- a banana slice. The chimpanzees could play it safe and get the peanuts, or take a chance for some coveted banana at the risk of ending up with unappetizing cucumber.

During several rounds of the test, adolescent chimpanzees took the risky option more often than adult chimpanzees, but adolescents and adults had similar negative reactions when they received cucumber.

The second test, modeled after the famous "marshmallow test" with human children, examined delayed gratification where chimpanzees could receive one banana slice immediately or wait for one minute to receive three slices.

Both adolescent and adult chimpanzees chose the greater delayed reward at a similar rate. Human teens tend to be more impulsive than adults so they would be more likely to take the immediate reward.

Risk-taking behavior in both adolescent chimpanzees and humans appears to be deeply biologically ingrained, but increases in impulsive behavior may be specific to human teens, Rosati said.

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230123092539.htm

Teen 'Blasts Away' Parts of Retina by Staring Into a Pet's Laser Pointer

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

The dangers of staring directly into laser pointers are well documented, but an unfortunate incident involving a teenager from Ohio serves as a sobering reminder of just how little it takes to cause permanent damage to your eyes and vision.

In a recent medical report, physicians document the case of the anonymous teen, who stared directly into a laser pointer for several seconds while playing a 'shooting game' with his friends.

The device used was a laser pointer toy intended for exercising pets. While devices like this are often advertised as being low-power lasers, that's not always the case, and mounting evidence of retinal damage caused by such pointers suggests the risk is growing, researchers say, even though people might not be aware of it.

"Though commonly believed to be safe, even brief laser-pointer exposure to the eye can lead to permanent vision loss, with children being particularly at risk," the team, led by first author and medical student Carol Vitellas from Ohio State University (OSU) explained in the report.

Sadly, that's exactly what happened to the teen in this case. Despite only looking at the laser directly for a matter of seconds, immediately afterward he experienced a form of vision loss for several minutes, after describing the initial visual effect as a bright light.

Five months after the incident, the boy, experiencing ongoing blurred vision and partial vision loss in his right eye, went to see OSU ophthalmologist Frederick Davidorf.

Using a high-resolution optical scanning system, Davidorf saw first-hand the damage done to the boy's retinas, where entire regions of light-sensitive photoreceptors cells (aka rods and cones) had been "blasted away" by the laser, as Davidorf puts it. "There's just nothing left there," Davidorf said. "The affected areas are devoid of cones."

The boy was diagnosed with macular laser burns in both eyes, given no other confounding conditions could explain the vision loss he was experiencing.

The teen had his eyes scanned with the ophthalmoscope on two occasions, at 11 and then 20 months after the injury was sustained. During the interim, the researchers observed a slight decrease in the size of the lesions. "It's never going to fully heal," Davidorf said. "There will always be scarring there."

The findings were reported in Retinal Cases & Brief Reports.

Source: Science Alert
https://www.sciencealert.com/teen-in-ohio-blasts-away-retina-by-staring-into-laser-pointer-case-study-reports

71,000 Reasons to Think Twice About Riding E-Scooters

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

You can pick them up with one hand, as electric scooters only weigh 30 pounds. Their attraction is obvious: You can get from here to there, with no effort at all, as many have found.

Like Adam Roberts, a 50-year-old senior claims advisor living in Atlanta, thought when he used one for the first, and last time, in May 2019. It was supposed to be a 3-block ride home.

 Since it was spur of the moment, he had no helmet or safety equipment. After 1 block, the wheel hit a pothole. “I flipped forward over the handlebar, landing in the street. I didn’t realize the extent of my injury so I got up, brushed off, bent my glasses back straight, and walked home. I knew I was banged up, and both arms hurt, but it wasn’t until I tried to unlock my front door that I realized my right arm wouldn’t move much.”

A new study published today in JAMA, Emergency Medicine, found there were almost 71,000 emergency room visits related to e-scooters from 2014 to 2019.  Dr. Eric R. Wagner, a hand and orthopedic surgeon with the Emory University School of Medicine, also in Atlanta, told Medical Daily that “Usually there are fractures, sometimes shoulder dislocations, but it's really common, it's happening a lot. I probably do surgery on 2 to 3 people who have scooter injuries every month,” he said. “And that was what spurred the idea of doing the study. … the amount of people that I treated in the last 2 years with scooter injuries has just been incredible.”

Scooters – once thought of as a child’s toy – have been turned into a popular form of transportation for adults. The e-scooters can move at a maximum speed of 20 mph, so they can move alongside traffic. Cities that had become accustomed to public-use bicycles allowed private companies to introduce similar e-scooter programs in 2017. They look like fun, harmless, and environmentally friendly ways to get around congested cities, so the popularity of shared e-scooter companies quickly soared. Globally, the market was estimated at $18.6 billion in 2019. And then people started getting hurt.

What the researchers found shouldn’t be too surprising -- with the increased public access, the increase in accidents began immediately. Accidents related to the scooters nearly doubled between 2018 and 2019. The most common injuries were of the head and half of those were traumatic brain injuries, which ranged from a mild concussion to much worse. Other injuries included fractures of the wrists and arms, as well as the lower limbs, and injuries to the chest and abdomen.

Dr. Wagner’s team looked at who was getting hurt and, while accidents happened to people of all ages, they found that most injuries occurred to men aged 15 to 39 years.

This study’s findings support those of prior research published in January 2020, in JAMA, Surgery, which found that most injuries occurred to people aged 18 to 34 years old.

Source: Medical Daily
https://www.medicaldaily.com/e-scooter-injuries-mounting-455674

Bad Fad: Teen Dies After Doing TikTok 'Benadryl Challenge'

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

A 15-year old girl from Oklahoma has reportedly died after taking an excessive amount of the anti-allergy medication Benadryl as part of a challenge on social media app TikTok.

The challenge involves TikTok users daring each other to take large amounts of the medication, which is usually taken to relieve allergy symptoms from conditions like hayfever. However, when taken in excessive quantities, the drug also known as diphenhydramine can cause hallucinations and a wealth of unpleasant and dangerous side effects, some of which can be fatal.

“Benadryl in large doses can cause seizures and cardiac arrests. If young people are being encouraged to take it in large doses on TikTok, this is very dangerous,” said David Juurlink, MD, head of the division of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Toronto in Canada. “This is not a drug people should be experimenting with,” Juurlink added.

Back in May, three teens from Texas were treated at Cook’s Children’s Hospital after also overdosing on the drug, one of them, a fourteen-year-old, reportedly taking 14 pills at once.

Source: Forbes.com
https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/09/02/teen-dies-after-doing--tiktok-benadryl-challengeas-doctors-warn-of-dangers/#330a102f0db8

Opioid Use By Teens a Red Flag for Other Dangers

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

Teenagers who've experimented with opioid painkillers are likely to be taking other health risks, a new study finds.

In a national survey of U.S. high school students, 14% said they had ever "misused" a prescription opioid such as Vicodin, OxyContin or Percocet. And those teenagers were much more likely than their peers to admit to taking a range of risks -- from abusing other drugs to unsafe sex to drunk driving to carrying a weapon.

The researchers said it's not clear whether opioid abuse led to the other problems, or vice-versa, or if the findings reflect the fact that some teens are risk-takers.

But it's important for doctors and parents to know these behaviors commonly go hand-in-hand, said lead researcher Dr. Devika Bhatia, a resident physician at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in Aurora.

So when teenage patients display other serious risk-taking, doctors might ask them whether they've ever abused opioids, according to Bhatia.

Similarly, if a teenager is known to have an opioid use disorder, it's likely other issues need to be addressed.

In recent years, the number of U.S. teens abusing prescription opioids has been declining, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: In 2018, just over 3% of high school seniors said they had misused a pain medication in the past year -- down from a peak of 9.5% in 2004.

The bad news is that overdose deaths are rising among older teenagers and young adults, often from illegal synthetic opioids (such as fentanyl) or heroin.

And in this study, teenagers who'd abused painkillers were 22 times more likely than their peers to have used heroin. Their odds of cocaine, methamphetamine and ecstasy abuse were nearly as high.

But the risks extended beyond substances: Teenagers who'd abused opioids were also about four to five times more likely than their peers to report a suicide attempt, risky sexual behaviors -- including sex before age 13 -- drunk driving, getting into physical fights, and carrying a gun or other weapon.

The findings, published online in the journal Pediatrics, are based on a government health survey of nearly 14,800 U.S. high school students, done in 2017.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/bone-and-joint-information-4/opioids-990/opioid-use-by-teens-a-red-flag-for-other-dangers-753621.html

Adolescents' Fun Seeking Predicts Both Risk Taking and Prosocial Behavior

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

Research shows that risk-taking behaviors, such as binge drinking, may increase throughout adolescence. At the same time, so can prosocial behaviors (behaviors that involve doing good to benefit others). A new longitudinal study from the Netherlands sought to determine if these behaviors are related and whether certain brain regions can predict them. The study found that the two behaviors may be related and that both behaviors may be motivated by teenagers' efforts to have fun.

The study was conducted by researchers at Leiden University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It is published in Child Development, a journal of the Society for Research in Child Development.

"We sought to test the pathways that support adolescents' development of rebellious and helpful behaviors," explains Neeltje E. Blankenstein, a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University, who was first author of the study. "Because adolescence is often associated with negative stereotypes, our findings provide a more nuanced view on adolescent development by focusing on the relation between risk taking and prosocial behavior."

Researchers examined 210 youth who were part of the Braintime study, longitudinal research conducted in the Netherlands in 2011, 2013, and 2015. The participants were ages 8 to 25 years at the start of the study, ages 10 to 27 when they were surveyed the second time, and ages 12 to 29 when they were surveyed the last time. Participants completed questionnaires each time they were surveyed, reporting on how often they engaged in rebellious and prosocial behaviors. They also reported on their tendency to seek out fun or rewarding activities, and their social skills—specifically, empathy and social perspective taking, which the authors define as the ability to understand others' viewpoints (e.g., understanding both sides when two peers disagree).

Each time they were surveyed, the participants had a magnetic resonance imaging scan to measure the maturation of two brain regions—the nucleus accumbens and the medial prefrontal cortex—to determine whether these areas, which are important for risk taking and prosocial behavior, predicted the behaviors.

The researchers found that rebelliousness increased from early adolescence to late adolescence before declining into adulthood, and prosocial behavior peaked in mid- to late-adolescence. Further, rebellious behavior and prosocial behavior were positively related to one another, even when controlling for age—that is, the more risk-taking behavior an adolescent showed, the more likely he or she was to behave prosocially.

The study also found that more risk-taking behavior was predicted by greater increases in what the authors termed fun seeking—the tendency to seek out fun and exciting activities. At the same time, this fun-seeking trait also predicted more prosocial behavior, suggesting that fun seeking leads some adolescents to develop risk-taking behavior and others to develop prosocial behavior. This suggests that the same developmental processes may result in both types of behaviors, the authors noted.

"Our study suggests that fun seeking may be a trait that leads to diverse aspects of adolescent development, and that adolescence is a time of both vulnerabilities—seen in risk taking—and opportunities—seen in helping behaviors," according to Eva H. Telzer, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who co-led the study.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-08-adolescents-fun-prosocial-behavior.html

Most Teens Do Have, and Use, Behavioral Brakes

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

Children who struggle with weak cognitive control at an early age are at most risk for trouble in adulthood following their engagement in risk-taking activities in adolescence, according to new research.

The study, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, found that only a subset of children who engage in excessive levels of impulsiveness, such as acting without thinking during their teen years, later struggle with addictions or other problem behaviors as young adults.

"People have heard so much about the teenage brain being all gas and no brakes, stemming from an imbalance between the reward and control regions of the brain," said lead author Atika Khurana of the University of Oregon. "This study shows that this is not true. There is an imbalance for some youth, but it is not universal."

The findings challenge the traditional thinking that adolescence is a time of universal imbalance, with kids lacking cognitive control and taking risks to reap instant rewards, said Khurana, associate professor and director of prevention science graduate programs and member of the UO's Prevention Science Institute.

"Previous studies modeling changes in impulsivity and sensation seeking during adolescence drew conclusions based on age differences without looking at the same adolescents over time as they developed," she said. "This study looked at individual trajectories and captured distinct patterns of change that were not otherwise observable when looking at youth at different ages."

Khurana and colleagues analyzed six waves of data collected from 387 adolescents, ages 11 to 18, in the Philadelphia area. They looked at changes in sensation-seeking and impulsivity during in their teen years in relation to working memory, a measure of cognitive control, and as predictors of substance use disorders in late adolescence.

Cognitive control is the ability to exert top-down control over behavior, thoughts and emotions. This ability, tied to executive functions, rests in the brain's prefrontal cortex.

Only adolescents identified at the beginning of the study with weaknesses in cognitive control were at risk for impulsive action that put them at higher risk for substance abuse, the researchers concluded. While sensation-seeking rose in adolescence, it was not associated with weakness in cognitive control or later substance abuse.

The research speaks to the need for greater emphasis on early interventions that can strengthen cognitive control, Khurana said.

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180809125549.htm

1 in 3 Young Adults Ride With Impaired Drivers

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

One-third of young adults in the United States have been in a vehicle with a driver impaired by alcohol or drugs, a new study finds.

Riding with a marijuana-impaired driver was more common than riding with an alcohol-impaired driver, researchers found.

"We've put a lot of emphasis on drinking and driving, but less effort on driving under the influence of marijuana. Maybe we need more of the latter," said study lead author Kaigang Li.

"Parents should be a role model by not driving while impaired, and real friends should stop their friends from driving after using substances -- if using substances cannot be stopped," said Li, an assistant professor of health and exercise science at Colorado State University.

For the study, the researchers analyzed 2013-2014 national survey data gathered from young adults who graduated high school within the past two years.

Thirty-three percent reported riding with an impaired driver at least once in the previous year.

Of those, 23 percent said they were with a pot-impaired driver, and 20 percent were with a booze-impaired driver.

Six percent said they had ridden with a driver hampered by drugs other than marijuana, including ecstasy, amphetamines, opiates, cocaine/crack cocaine, glue or solvents, LSD or anabolic steroids.

The findings were published in the March issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

The risk of riding with an impaired driver was much higher when participants were with young adult drivers than with older adult drivers, the study found.

The odds were also greater among young adults not going to a four-year college, those attending technology school, and those living on their own or on campus.

Riding with an impaired driver in the past raised the odds of doing so again, the findings showed. This underscores the importance of teaching youngsters safe driving habits, the researchers said.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/public-health-information-30/drunk-driving-and-riding-health-news-219/1-in-3-young-adults-ride-with-impaired-drivers-732004.html

Energy Drinks Unsafe for Children, Teens

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

Highly caffeinated energy drinks aren't safe for children and teens, and should not be marketed to them, a leading sports medicine organization warns.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has released an official statement about the beverages.

"Energy drinks are extremely popular, and concerns about their consumption are coming from every sector of society, which is why we've published these recommendations," said Dr. John Higgins. He's an associate professor of medicine at the University of Texas McGovern Medical School in Houston.

Children and teens appear to be at particularly high risk of complications from energy drinks because of their smaller body size, and potentially heavy and frequent use, according to the statement.

The warning applies to beverages like Red Bull and Full Throttle. The fact that they are not meant for children needs to be emphasized and widely publicized, the group stated.

"Our review of the available science showed that excessive levels of caffeine found in energy drinks can have adverse effects on cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal, renal and endocrine systems, as well as psychiatric symptoms," Higgins said in an ACSM news release.

"More needs to be done to protect children and adolescents, as well as adults with cardiovascular or other medical conditions," he added.

Among the group's recommendations was a warning for children and teens to avoid consuming energy drinks before, during or after intense exercise, as some deaths linked with energy drinks occurred when a person consumed energy drinks before and/or after vigorous activity.

The statement, which also called for more research into the safety of energy drinks, was published Feb. 9 in the journal Current Sports Medicine Reports.

The American College of Sports Medicine is said to be the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/vitamins-and-nutrition-information-27/caffeine-health-news-89/hey-kids-just-say-no-to-energy-drinks-730950.html

Bad Fad Alert: Tide Pod Challenge

*The following is excerpted from online articles posted on CBS News and TechCrunch.

A government watchdog is expressing concern over the dangerous misuse of a laundry detergent. In this latest social media fad, teenagers are putting detergent pods in their mouths in what's being called the "Tide Pod Challenge."

Ingredients in the pods include ethanol, hydrogen peroxide and polymers – a highly-toxic mix of detergent meant to wipe out dirt and grime. Manufacturers have been concerned about toddlers mistakenly ingesting them, but now teens are popping them on purpose and posting videos of the results online, reports CBS News correspondent Anna Werner.

Nineteen-year-old Marc Pagan, who did it on a dare, told CBS News he knew better but did it anyway.

"A lot of people were just saying how stupid I was or how – why would I be willing to do that," he said. "No one should be putting anything like that in their mouths, you know?"

Ann Marie Buerkle, acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, says ingesting any of the liquid carries a deadly risk.

"This is what started out as a joke on the internet and now it's just gone too far," Buerkle said.

The pods are bright and colorful and to children they can look like candy. At least 10 deaths have been linked to ingesting these pods. Two were toddlers, eight were seniors with dementia.

Procter & Gamble, the maker of Tide products, told CBS News: "They should not be played with... Even if meant as a joke. Safety is no laughing matter."
—CBS News

YouTube appears to be trying to get ahead of any wider societal outcry over (yet more) algorithmically accelerated idiocy on its platform — i.e. when sane people realize kids have been filming themselves eating detergent just to try to go viral on YouTube — and is removing Tide Pod Challenge videos.

A YouTube spokesperson sent us the following statement on this: “YouTube’s Community Guidelines prohibit content that’s intended to encourage dangerous activities that have an inherent risk of physical harm. We work to quickly remove flagged videos that violate our policies.”

At the time of writing it’s still possible to find Tide Pod Challenge videos on YouTube, though most of the videos being surfaced seem to be denouncing the stupidity of the ‘challenge’ (even if they have clickbait-y titles that claim they’re going to eat the pods — hey, savvy YouTubers know a good viral backlash bandwagon to jump on when they see one!).
—TechCrunch

Sources:
CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tide-pod-challenge-ingesting-detergent-risks/

TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/youtube-is-pulling-tide-pod-challenge-videos/