Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Teen Drivers Spend a Fifth of the Time Looking at Their Smartphone

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

About a fifth of the time, a teenage driver is looking at their smartphone rather than the road or their rearview, a new study says.

Teen drivers spend an average of 21% of each trip looking at their phone, according to results published today in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention.

Worse, these weren’t quick glances — nearly 27% of the time, the drivers focused on their phone for two seconds or longer, a duration that dramatically increases the risk of a crash, researchers said.

Teen drivers most commonly check out their phone for entertainment (65%) or texting (40%), with 30% using the phone’s GPS to help them navigate roads, results showed.

“Distracted driving is a serious public health threat and particularly concerning among young drivers,” lead researcher Rebecca Robbins, an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said in a news release.

“Driving distracted doesn’t just put the driver at risk of injury or death, it puts everyone else on the road in danger of an accident,” Robbins added.

Across the U.S., 35 states have banned all types of phone use for young drivers, researchers said in background notes.

But a previous national study found that nearly 92% of teens still regularly engage in texting, talking or dialing in tunes on their smartphone while behind the wheel, researchers said.

For the new study, researchers quizzed more than 1,100 teenagers about their behaviors and beliefs surrounding smartphone use while driving.

Results show that many young drivers understand bad things can happen when they’re distracted, and they're aware that parents and friends wouldn’t like them to engage in distractions while operating a car.

Source: HealthDay
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/child-health/teen-drivers-spend-a-fifth-of-the-time-looking-at-their-smartphone-study-says

Teen Depression? Study Finds Clues in Screen Use and Sleep Quality

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

In this digital era, both kids and adults are often glued to smartphone screens. Digital technology keeps users entertained, connected to friends, and in tune with important news. But some reports suggest that, particularly for adolescents, excessive time on these screens can be linked to mental health problems and even depression.

New research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine published today in JAMA Pediatrics suggests that that association is driven by shorter sleep and worse organization of the brain white matter during this crucial adolescent phase of brain development.

"Brain white matter connections are just like highways that connect cities," said lead author Dr. João Paulo Lima Santos, M.D., research instructor in psychiatry at Pitt. "If these highways are not well-maintained, traveling from one city to another can be slow and inefficient, or even disrupted."

In the study, researchers analyzed over 1,000 surveys where teens were asked to estimate how much time they spend per day looking at screens and how long they sleep each night, on average.

Participants' brain scans revealed something intriguing: white matter connections between regions of the brain that control emotion regulation, memory and attention were weaker and more disorganized in teens who spent more time on their phone or tablet and did not get sufficient sleep—more like meandering paths through a forest than an eight-lane speedway. Those teens also had higher depression scores, suggesting that the intersection of screen time and sleep quality might hold the key to better brain function and mental health.

"Taking away all digital media is not the answer," Lima Santos cautions. "Digital media can be good—but in some situations, particularly when sleep is affected, we should be more careful and pay attention."

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-teen-depression-clues-screen-quality.html

Addictive Screen Use, Not Total Time, Linked Poor Mental Health in Teens

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

Problematic patterns of digital media use — including compulsive social media scrolling, gaming, or phone checking — may be more harmful to adolescent mental health than overall screen time, new research suggested.

Investigators found that teens with high or increasing levels of addictive digital use were more likely to report symptoms of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts or behaviors. In contrast, total screen time showed no consistent link to mental health outcomes.

Researchers analyzed 4 years of data from 4285 children (mean age, 10 years; 48% women) participating in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study.

They found that nearly one third of participants had an increasing addictive use trajectory for social media or mobile phones starting at age 11 years.

In adjusted models, increasing addictive use trajectories were associated with higher risks for suicide-related outcomes than low addictive use trajectories. Likewise, high addictive use trajectories across all screen types were associated with suicide-related outcomes.

Adolescents with high-peaking or increasing social media use or high video game use also had more internalizing symptoms such as depression/anxiety or externalizing symptoms such as aggression and rule-breaking.

Notably, there was no significant correlation between baseline total screen time and any suicide-related or mental health outcomes.

Source: MedScape
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/addictive-screen-use-not-total-time-linked-poor-mental-2025a1000gbs

Study Links All Types of Cyberbullying to PTSD in Teens

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by News-Medical.

A new national study adds to the growing body of research showing that cyberbullying should be considered an adverse childhood experience (ACE) – a category of childhood trauma linked to long-term emotional, psychological and physical harm.

While many assume that only extreme forms of online harassment – like threats or identity-based attacks – can cause significant harm, the findings suggest a more troubling reality: even less visible or indirect forms of cyberbullying can have equally damaging effects.

With more than 30% of students facing bullying globally, this is particularly alarming in the digital age, where cyberbullying is widespread and exacerbated by factors such as social media and online interactions.

The study, conducted by Florida Atlantic University in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, investigated the link between cyberbullying and trauma in a nationally-representative sample of 2,697 middle and high school students (ages 13 to 17) in the United States.

Researchers investigated the relationship between the prevalence of 18 different types of cyberbullying, including exclusion (being left out of an online group chat); impersonation (e.g., creating fake social media accounts in someone else's name); and stalking behaviors (e.g., being tracked or monitored after the victim told the aggressor to stop) – and symptoms of PTSD.

Results, published in the latest issue of BMC Public Health, reveal that cyberbullying is both widespread and strongly linked to a validated nine-item Post Traumatic Stress clinical scale. What was especially striking was that exclusion and rejection, often dismissed as less serious, were just as trauma-inducing as explicit threats to one's physical safety. Likewise, being the subject of gossip or cruel online comments had an emotional toll comparable to being harassed for personal traits like one's race or religion.

Among the different forms of online harassment, indirect forms were the most common. More than half of the surveyed students reported being the target of mean or hurtful comments or rumors, and a similar number said they were deliberately excluded from group chats or texts. Notably, almost 9 in 10 (87%) experienced at least one of the 18 forms of victimization, underscoring the increasing ubiquity of digital aggression and its normative presence when youth interact online.

When the researchers analyzed how cyberbullying relates to trauma, they found that girls and younger teens were more likely to experience higher levels of traumatic symptoms than boys or older teens. However, once they factored in how much cyberbullying each student had experienced, these demographic differences became less important.

Source: News-Medical
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250515/Study-links-all-types-of-cyberbullying-to-PTSD-in-teens.aspx

‘Perfect Bodies and Perfect Lives’: How Selfie-Editing Tools Distort Young People’s Perception of Themselves

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

Like many of her peers, Abigail (21) takes a lot of selfies, tweaks them with purpose-made apps, and posts them on social media. But, she says, the selfie-editing apps do more than they were designed for: “You look at that idealized version of yourself and you just want it – you just want it to be real […] the more you do it, the better you get at it and the more subtle your editing is the easier it is to actually see yourself as that version.”

Abigail was one of nearly 80 young people interviewed as part of research into selfie-editing technologies. The findings, recently published in New Media & Society, are cause for alarm. They show selfie-editing technologies have significant impacts for young people’s body image and wellbeing.

Many young people carefully curate how they appear online. One reason for this is to negotiate the intense pressures of visibility in a digitally-networked world.

Selfie-editing technologies enable this careful curation.

The most popular selfie-editing apps include Facetune, Faceapp, and Meitu. They offer in-phone editing tools from lighting, color and photo adjustments to “touch ups” such as removing blemishes.

These apps also offer “structural” edits. These mimic cosmetic surgery procedures such as rhinoplasty (more commonly known as nose jobs) and facelifts. They also offer filters including an “aging” filter, “gender swap” tool, and “make up” and hairstyle try-ons.

The range of editing options and incredible attention to details and correction of so-called “flaws” these apps offer encourage the user to forensically analyze their face and body, making a series of micro changes with the tap of a finger.

Editing practices varied from those who irregularly made only minor edits such as lighting and cropping, to those who regularly used beauty apps and altered their faces and bodies in forensic detail, mimicking cosmetic surgical interventions.

Approximately one third of participants described currently or previously making dramatic or “structural” edits through changing the dimensions of facial features. These edits included reshaping noses, cheeks, head size, shoulders or waist “cinching.”

Young people repoarted that selfie taking and editing was an important way of showing “who they are” to the world.

As one participant said, it’s a way of saying “I’m here, I exist.” But they also said the price of being online, and posting photos of themselves, meant they were aware of being seen alongside a set of images showing “perfect bodies and perfect lives”.

Participants told us they assume “everyone’s photos have been edited.” To keep up with this high standard, they needed to also be adept at editing photos to display their “best self” – aligning with gendered and racialized beauty ideals.

Young women in particular described feeling that the “baseline standard to just feel normal” feels higher than ever, and that appearance pressures are intensifying.

These findings suggest image-editing technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) filters and selfie-editing apps, have significant impacts for young people’s body image and wellbeing.

These technologies, through their potential to alter relationship between technology and the human experience at the deepest level, may have devastating impacts on key youth mental health concerns such as body image.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/perfect-bodies-lives-how-selfie-editing-tools-distort-young-peoples-perception/

9 in 10 U.S. Teens Have Been Cyberbullied

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

Cyberbullying is widespread among U.S. teens and is linked to post-traumatic stress symptoms in middle- and high-school students, a new study says.

Nearly 9 of 10 teenagers have experienced cyberbullying, according to the study’s survey of nearly 2,700 U.S. middle- and high-school students.

And results show that even subtle forms of cyberbullying can cause psychological harm, researchers reported in the journal BMC Public Health.

Intentional exclusion and rejection created as much trauma among teens as explicit threats or harassment, researchers found.

Likewise, being the subject of gossip or cruel online comments took an emotional toll comparable to being harassed for personal traits like one’s race or religion, results show.

“Cyberbullying in any form – whether it’s exclusion from a group chat or direct threats – can lead to significant trauma in youth,” lead researcher Sameer Hinduja said in a news release. He's a professor at Florida Atlantic University’s College of Social Work and Criminal Justice.

“We were surprised to find that no single type of cyberbullying caused more harm than others; all carried a similar risk of traumatic outcomes,” he said.

The survey, conducted in 2023, asked teens about 18 types of cyberbullying.

The most common forms of cyberbullying reported by adolescents were mean or hurtful online comments (56%); exclusion (53%); online rumors (53%); embarrassment or humiliation (50%); repeated unwanted contact via text or online (42%); and direct threats through text or direct messages (38%).

“What mattered most was the overall amount of cyberbullying: the more often a student was targeted, the more trauma symptoms they showed,” Hinduja said.

Source: HealthDay
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/mental-health/9-in-10-us-teens-have-been-cyberbullied

Screen Time Linked To Poor Sleep, Depression Among Teen Girls

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

Teenagers who spend more time on screens tend to get worse sleep, both in terms of sleep quality and duration, researchers reported in the journal PLOS Global Public Health.

Screen time also caused teens to put off sleep until later hours, affecting their wake/sleep cycles, researchers found.

These sleep disturbances are linked to later depression symptoms in girls but not in boys, results show.

“We found that adolescents who reported longer screen times also developed poorer sleep habits over time,” concluded the research team led by Sebastian Hökby, a doctoral student at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. “In turn, this led to increased depression levels, especially among girls.”

For the study, researchers tracked more than 4,800 Swedish students between 12 and 16 years of age, collecting data on sleep, depression symptoms, and screen time at three different points during the course of a year.

Depression symptoms among girls were more than twice those of boys, a gender difference that’s been found in earlier studies, researchers reported.

Results also showed that 38% to 57% of girls’ depression symptoms could be explained by changes in sleep patterns driven by screen use.

Boys who spent more time on screens also experienced sleep disruptions, but these were not significantly linked to later depression symptoms.

Source: HealthDay
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/mental-health/screen-time-linked-to-poor-sleep-depression-among-teen-girls

Excessive Screen Time Linked to Manic Symptoms in Teens

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by News-Medical.

A recent study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology examines the association between excessive screen time and manic symptoms in early adolescence.

Current estimates indicate the average adolescent spends over eight hours every day using screens in the United States, which is a rise of nearly two-fold as compared to before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Increased screen time among adolescents has been accompanied by a rise in mental health issues, with about 29% of American youth currently experiencing mental health problems.

Despite these observations, the association between manic symptoms and screen time in adolescence remains unclear. Manic symptoms include feelings of high energy, elated or irritable mood, extreme self-importance, needing little sleep, being easily distractable, impulsive behaviors, having thoughts that race or jump from one topic to another, stubborn, and overindulging in pleasurable activities.

In the current study, researchers identified associations, if any, between screen time and manic symptoms in adolescents, and whether problematic use characterized by addiction, conflict, relapse, and withdrawal contributes to this association.

Data were obtained from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which comprised 9,243 participants between 10 and 11 years of age. Six different types of screen use were assessed by self-reported survey in the first year of the study, of which included television, video games, texting, watching videos, video chatting, and social media.

The analysis identified a correlation between increased screen time and the risk of manic symptoms after one year. This association was observed for overall screen time, as well as social media, videos, texting, and video games. Texting and social media were most strongly associated with manic symptoms, even after adjusting for confounding factors.

Problematic social media use may explain 48% of the increased risk for manic symptoms, whereas video game use mediates 58% of this risk. Sleep duration in the second year accounts for 9% of the risk of manic symptoms.

The study findings indicate that limiting screen engagement among adolescent users could help prevent manic symptoms that predict the onset of BSD. Alternatively, early identification of manic symptoms could target individuals who would benefit from secondary prevention.

Source: News-Medical
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250225/Excessive-screen-time-linked-to-manic-symptoms-in-teens.aspx

Children Glued to Phones More Likely to Become High-Strung, Depressed Teens

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

In case you needed another reason to hold off on buying your child a phone, research shows a troubling connection between childhood screen habits and teenage mental well-being. The eight-year study, which tracked children from elementary school into adolescence, found that kids who racked up more screen time—especially on mobile devices—showed higher levels of stress and depressive symptoms as teenagers.

The study adds to the large body of research that should make parents think twice about unlimited device access, especially as more children experience mental health struggles at an early age. Between one-quarter and one-third of adolescents worldwide experience mental health problems, with symptoms typically first appearing during the teenage years. Researchers now have more concrete evidence about lifestyle factors that might help prevent psychological distress before it takes root.

Study authors used data from the Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children (PANIC) study, which followed 187 Finnish children over eight years, from ages 6-9 into their mid-teens. Researchers regularly checked in on their physical activity, screen time, sleep patterns, and eating habits. When these children reached adolescence (average age 15.8), the researchers assessed their mental health using standardized measures of stress and depression.

The data painted a clear picture: teenagers who had accumulated more total screen time and mobile device use throughout childhood showed significantly higher levels of stress and depressive symptoms. The connection between mobile device use and depression was particularly strong, showing a “moderate effect size”—substantial in behavioral research terms.

The team found that adolescents spent nearly five hours daily on screens, with over two hours on mobile devices alone. Many parents might find these numbers unsurprising, but the mental health correlations deserve attention.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/children-glued-to-phones-stressed-depressed-teens/

How Social Media Expectations Are Destroying Teenage Friendships

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

Today’s teens face a challenge that their parents never did: the pressure to be constantly available to their friends online. New research from the University of Padua in Italy reveals how this digital pressure is creating stress that leads to real-world friendship conflicts for teenagers.

The study, published in Frontiers in Digital Health, tracked 1,185 teenagers over six months to understand how social media affects their friendships. What they found paints a concerning picture of modern teen relationships.

“We show that adolescents’ perceptions of social media norms and perceptions of unique features of social media contribute to digital stress, which in turn increases friendship conflicts,” says lead study author Federica Angelini from the University of Padua, in a statement.

The researchers identified two main types of digital stress that teens experience. The first, entrapment, refers to the pressure teens feel to always be available and responsive to their friends online. The second, disappointment, arises when friends don’t respond as quickly or as often as expected, leading to negative feelings. Both types of stress play significant roles in the challenges teens face in their digital friendships.

Surprisingly, it’s not the pressure to be available that causes most problems, it’s the disappointment when friends aren’t available to them.

“Disappointment from unmet expectations on social media—such as when friends do not respond or engage as expected—is a stronger predictor of friendship conflict than the pressure to be constantly available,” explains Angelini.

In other words, teens aren’t fighting because they feel burdened by needing to respond to every message, but because they feel upset when their friends don’t respond to them.

The good news is that parents and educators can help teens develop healthier social media habits. Teaching teens strategies to protect their mental health online is crucial as parents navigate the uncharted territory of raising a generation growing up with social media.

“One such habit for teenagers could be setting boundaries, for example scheduling ‘offline’ times or managing notifications. When done in discussion with friends this can also help reduce misunderstandings,” says Angelini.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/teen-friendships-pressure-social-media-expectations/