Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Adolescents Who Use Smartphones for More Than Three Hours a Day Found to Suffer More From Back Pain

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

Thanks to the popularization of smartphones and tablets, and the multiplication of video channels, computer games and educational apps, children and adolescents are spending more and more time looking at screens, usually with bad posture, which can cause back pain, among other problems.

A study by Brazilian researchers reported in an article published in Healthcare identified several risk factors for spinal health, such as looking at screens for more than three hours a day, proximity of the eyes to the screen, and sitting or lying on the stomach.

The study focused on thoracic spine pain (TSP). The thoracic spine is located at the back of the chest (the thorax), mostly between the shoulder blades, extending from the bottom of the neck to the start of the lumbar spine. The data analyzed came from surveys of 14- to 18-year-old male and female students in the first and second years of high school in Bauru, a medium-sized city in São Paulo state.

TSP is common in different age groups of the general population worldwide, with prevalence ranging from 15%-35% in adults and 13%-35% in children and adolescents. Explosive growth in the use of electronic devices during the COVID-19 pandemic clearly made the problem worse

The risk factors associated with TSP are physical, physiological, psychological and behavioral, according to several investigations. There is also strong evidence of the effects of physical activity, sedentary habits and mental disorders on spinal health.

Information on risk factors for TSP in high school students is important because children and adolescents with back pain are more inactive, achieve less academically and have more psychosocial problems, according to the study.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-adolescents-smartphones-hours-day-pain.html

Too Much Time Online Might Raise Kids' Odds for Mental Health Woes

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

Children's screen use could be altering their developing brains as they enter adolescence and increasing their risk for mood disorders, a major new study finds.

Further, the investigators linked some of these mood disorders to actual structural changes occurring in the kids' developing brains, according to the report published online recently in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.

"There were specific brain mechanisms that in part contributed to this relationship, meaning from a statistical perspective there were brain-based changes occurring over the two-year period that mediated the relationship between screen media activity in the younger children and internalizing concerns relating to depression and anxiety two years later," said senior researcher Dr. Marc Potenza. He is a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine's Child Study Center, in New Haven, Conn.

For the study, Potenza and his colleagues analyzed data on more than 5,100 children participating in the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The data included brain scans, psychological evaluations and behavior tracking on these kids starting from ages 9 to 10.

When the researchers looked at the first round of data for 9- and 10-year-olds, they found a relationship between high levels of screen use and mood disorders, as well as "externalizing" behaviors like aggression and discipline, Potenza said.

They also observed brain structure patterns in those children similar to those associated with underage drinking in previous studies, he added.

They then followed the kids as they aged, to see if the mental health problems persisted and whether they correlated with any further brain changes.

As 11- and 12-year-olds, the kids continued to have depression and anxiety related to heavy screen use, and their brains had changed in ways that would explain some of those mood disorders.

However, the study did not link the same brain changes to heavy screen use and behavior problems like aggression, bullying or defiance.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/kids-and-social-media-2659636501.html

Excessive Screen Time Linked to Suicidal Behaviors in US Preteens

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

Amidst the worsening teen mental health crisis and new legislation proposing to ban children under 16 from using social media, a new study finds that greater screen time among children 9-11 is associated with a higher risk of developing suicidal behaviors two years later.

The study, published in Preventive Medicine, finds that each additional hour of screen time is associated with a 9% higher risk of reporting suicidal behavior two years later. In particular, each extra hour spent watching videos, playing video games, texting, and video chatting led to a higher risk of suicidal behavior.

"Screen usage could lead to social isolation, cyberbullying, and sleep disruption, which could worsen mental health," said senior author Jason Nagata, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. "More time on screens often displaces time for in-person socializing, physical activity, and sleep."

"Screen time can have important benefits such as education and socialization, but parents should try to mitigate adverse mental health risks from excessive screen time. Parents should regularly talk to their children about screen usage and role model screen behaviors," said Nagata.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-excessive-screen-linked-suicidal-behaviors.html

Exercising Doesn’t Help Kids Looking at Screens All Day Offset Obesity Risk

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

Just staying active isn’t enough to help children avoid obesity, according to a team from the University of Toronto. Researchers report lots of exercise does not offset obesity risk among preteens who spend eight or more hours in front of a screen daily. Many have heard about the importance of “work-life balance,” but these findings suggest parents and caregivers need to be aware of their kids’ “exercise-screen balance” as well.

“Spending most of one’s free time in front of screens can replace time for other important activities including physical activity, socialization, and sleep,” says lead author Jason Nagata, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California-San Francisco, in a media release.

Meanwhile, the study also finds that minimal screen time alone isn’t enough to offset obesity risk among teens who don’t exercise regularly.

Researchers reached these conclusions after asking 5,797 preteens (10-14 years old) how much time they usually spend on screens. Also, a Fitbit helped to track the participants’ daily steps. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, preteens reported an average of eight hours of recreational screen time per day.

It’s worth noting that in another study, also published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Prof. Nagata collected compelling evidence suggesting screen time during adolescence has an association with obesity, diabetes onset, and larger waist circumference some 24 years later. That project assessed a nationally representative sample of 7,105 adolescents for over two decades.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/exercise-kids-screen-time-obesity/

TikTok is Crushing YouTube in Annual Study of Kids' and Teens' App Usage

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by Yahoo!

For another year in a row, TikTok has found itself as the social app kids and teens are spending the most time using throughout the day, even outpacing YouTube. According to an ongoing annual review of kids' and teens' app usage and behavior globally, the younger demographic -- minors ranging in ages from 4 through 18 -- began to watch more TikTok than YouTube on an average daily basis starting in June 2020, and TikTok's numbers have continued to grow ever since.

In June 2020, TikTok overtook YouTube for the first time, with kids watching an average of 82 minutes per day on TikTok versus an average of 75 minutes per day on YouTube.

This past year, the gulf between the two widened, it said, as kids in 2022 saw their average daily use of TikTok climb to a whopping 107 minutes, or 60% longer than the time they spent watching video content on YouTube (67 minutes).

TikTok not only topped the average daily usage of other video apps, like Netflix (48 mins.) and Disney+ (40 mins.), it also came out ahead of other social apps, including Snapchat (72 mins.), Instagram (45 mins.), Facebook (20 mins.), Pinterest (16 mins.) and Twitter (10 mins.) among the under-18 crowd.

Overall, kids under 18 managed to increase their video content viewing by 18% in 2022, watching 45 minutes daily, on average, across long-form video services like YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Prime Videos and others.

Source: Yahoo!
https://www.yahoo.com/now/tiktok-crushing-youtube-annual-study-163237000.html?guccounter=1

Weed-Friendly Posts on Social Media Get Teens Using Cannabis

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

Laws bar advertising cannabis to teens, but that doesn't mean they always work.

In a new survey, researchers found that teens still see a lot of positive cannabis messages through social media posts.

These messages influenced their intentions and actual use of cannabis, the survey found.

"Youth, in particular, have really grown up bombarded with cannabis information compared to previous generations," said first author Jessica Willoughby, an associate professor of communications at Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman. "We found that they were seeing more positive messages about using cannabis and a lot less about the risks."

For the study, the researchers surveyed 350 teens and 966 college students across Washington state.

Recreational marijuana has been legal in the state since 2012, though it has regulations to prevent advertising cannabis to minors. These rules bar the use of cartoons or youth-oriented celebrities in cannabis advertising. Of course, the study noted, individuals can still post about cannabis on social media.

And more than 80% of survey participants reported seeing pro-cannabis messages on social media. These posts talked about being high or claimed marijuana was harmless. The pro-cannabis messages most often encountered were from celebrities or in song lyrics. Teens and college students who saw more positive messages were more likely to say they intended to use the drug. In contrast, when young people saw anti-cannabis messages, the intent to use lessened, but young people saw fewer of those messages, the study authors said.

"Parents might not understand that if their kid is using a social media site — whether it's Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat — they are going to see cannabis messages. That's just the reality," said study co-author Stacey Hust, a professor of communication at WSU.

"This means we need to be getting training into schools at much younger ages," Hust said in a university news release. "At the very least, middle school and high school health classes need to talk about cannabis and how it can be harmful to the developing brain."

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/marijuana-and-teens-2659340075.html

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

Screen Time Linked to OCD in U.S. Preteens

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

For preteens, the odds of developing OCD over a two-year period increased by 13% for every hour they played video games, and by 11% for every hour they watched videos, according to a new national study led by UC San Francisco researchers published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"Children who spend excessive time playing video games report feeling the need to play more and more and being unable to stop despite trying," said Jason Nagata, MD, lead author of the study and assistant professor of pediatrics at UCSF. "Intrusive thoughts about video game content could develop into obsessions or compulsions."

OCD is a mental health condition involving recurrent and unwanted thoughts as well as repetitive behaviors that a person feels driven to perform. These intrusive thoughts and behaviors can become severely disabling for the sufferers and those close to them.

Researchers asked 9,204 preteens ages 9-10 years how much time they spent on different types of platforms; the average was 3.9 hours per day. Two years later, the researchers asked their caregivers about OCD symptoms and diagnoses. The use of screens for educational purposes was excluded.

At the two-year mark, 4.4% of preteens had developed new-onset OCD. Video games and streaming videos were each connected to a higher risk of developing OCD. Texting, video chat, and social media didn't link individually with OCD, but that may be because the preteens in the sample didn't use them much, researchers said. Results may differ for older teens, they added.

"Although screen time can have important benefits such as education and increased socialization, parents should be aware of the potential risks, especially to mental health," said Nagata. "Families can develop a media use plan which could include screen-free times including before bedtime."

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221212140629.htm

Teens and Cyberbullying 2022

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by Pew Research Center.

While bullying existed long before the internet, the rise of smartphones and social media has brought a new and more public arena into play for this aggressive behavior.

Nearly half of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 (46%) report ever experiencing at least one of six cyberbullying behaviors asked about in a Pew Research Center survey conducted April 14-May 4, 2022.

The most commonly reported behavior in this survey is name-calling, with 32% of teens saying they have been called an offensive name online or on their cellphone. Smaller shares say they have had false rumors spread about them online (22%) or have been sent explicit images they didn’t ask for (17%).

Some 15% of teens say they have experienced someone other than a parent constantly asking them where they are, what they’re doing or who they’re with, while 10% say they have been physically threatened and 7% of teens say they have had explicit images of them shared without their consent.

In total, 28% of teens have experienced multiple types of cyberbullying.

Read the complete report at the source link below.

Source: Pew Research Center
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/12/15/teens-and-cyberbullying-2022/

Age That Kids Acquire Mobile Phones Not Linked to Well-Being

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

Parents fretting over when to get their children a cell phone can take heart: A rigorous new study from Stanford Medicine did not find a meaningful association between the age at which kids received their first phones and their well-being, as measured by grades, sleep habits, and depression symptoms.

The study, which appeared recently in Child Development, is unusual because it followed a group of more than 250 children for five years, during which most of them acquired their first cell phones. Instead of comparing phone-using kids with those who don’t have phones at a single point in time, the scientists tracked the participants’ well-being as they transitioned to phone ownership.

“We found that whether or not the children in the study had a mobile phone, and when they had their first mobile phone, did not seem to have meaningful links to their well-being and adjustment outcomes,” said lead author Xiaoran Sun, Ph.D., who was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford Medicine and Stanford Data Science when the study was conducted. For parents wondering when to get their child a phone, she said, “There doesn’t seem to be a golden rule about waiting until eighth grade or a certain age.”

The average age at which children received their first phones was 11.6 years old, with phone acquisition climbing steeply between 10.7 and 12.5 years of age, a period during which half of the children acquired their first phones. According to the researchers, the results may suggest that each family timed the decision to what they thought was best for their child.

“One possible explanation for these results is that parents are doing a good job matching their decisions to give their kids phones to their child’s and family’s needs,” Robinson said. “These results should be seen as empowering parents to do what they think is right for their family.”

Source: Stanford Medicine
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/11/children-mobile-phone-age.html