adolescents

Study finds ultimate hack to protect teen brains from harmful screen time: Exercise (and good role-modeling)

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Recent­ly, the Wall Street Jour­nal ran an arti­cle about how Insta­gram was affect­ing teen men­tal health. In par­tic­u­lar, some inter­nal stud­ies at Face­book (which owns Insta­gram) appeared to con­firm that when teen girls used the site, they suf­fered poor­er body image and were at increased risk for depres­sion and eat­ing disorders.

But is social media use itself at fault for mak­ing teen men­tal health worse? While some stud­ies sug­gest it is, oth­ers paint a more nuanced pic­ture, find­ing it dif­fi­cult to pin­point prob­lems with screen time itself ver­sus oth­er fac­tors some­times asso­ci­at­ed with social media use that may reduce teen well-being—like cyber­bul­ly­ing or social iso­la­tion. Plus, cur­rent con­clu­sions are often based on data from a sin­gle point in time, which makes it hard to prove that extend­ed screen time actu­al­ly caus­es poor­er men­tal health.

Now, find­ings from an inter­na­tion­al study on teens (details below) add more to this debate and point toward poten­tial guide­lines for screen use. Focus­ing on over 577,000 ado­les­cents from 42 coun­tries across Europe and North Amer­i­ca, the study’s results sug­gest that we might not have to wor­ry about screen time in small­er dos­es, until it reach­es a cer­tain harm­ful lev­el, and that exer­cise can play a pro­tec­tive role no mat­ter how much time a teen spends on screens. [Read more…] about Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-modeling)

Study: Social media and general tech engagement not found to “fry” teenagers’ brains

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Lit­tle to no increase in asso­ci­a­tion between ado­les­cents’ men­tal health prob­lems and dig­i­tal tech (Sci­ence Daily):

With the explo­sion in dig­i­tal enter­tain­ment options over the past sev­er­al decades and the more recent restric­tions on out­door and in-per­son social activ­i­ties, par­ents may wor­ry that exces­sive engage­ment with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy could have long-term effects on their chil­dren’s men­tal health.

A new study pub­lished in the jour­nal Clin­i­cal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, how­ev­er, found lit­tle evi­dence for an increased asso­ci­a­tion between ado­les­cents’ tech­nol­o­gy engage­ment and men­tal health prob­lems over the past 30 years. The data did not con­sis­tent­ly sup­port the sug­ges­tion that the tech­nolo­gies we wor­ry about most (e.g., smart­phones) are becom­ing more harm­ful… [Read more…] about Study: Social media and gen­er­al tech engage­ment not found to “fry” teenagers’ brains

Lack of sleep seen to cause sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) in adolescents with attention deficits

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It is esti­mat­ed that up to 75% of youth with ADHD have sleep prob­lems. And, exper­i­men­tal stud­ies that manip­u­late sleep quan­ti­ty have demon­strat­ed a causal link between sleep and ADHD behav­ior in children.

How­ev­er, there has been no pri­or work in which sleep dura­tion has been manip­u­lat­ed in ado­les­cents diag­nosed with ADHD. [Read more…] about Lack of sleep seen to cause slug­gish cog­ni­tive tem­po (SCT) in ado­les­cents with atten­tion deficits

Large NIH study to collect and share data on the impact on kids’ brains of screen time and other social, behavioral, physical and environmental factors

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NIH Study Probes Impact of Heavy Screen Time on Young Brains (Bloomberg):

“Brain scans of ado­les­cents who are heavy users of smart­phones, tablets and video games look dif­fer­ent from those of less active screen users, pre­lim­i­nary results from an ongo­ing study fund­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health show [Read more…] about Large NIH study to col­lect and share data on the impact on kids’ brains of screen time and oth­er social, behav­ioral, phys­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal factors

Study: Raising a teen with ADHD adds significant stress to parents–especially to mothers

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MOTHER-TEENAGE-SONNumer­ous stud­ies have estab­lished that par­ents of chil­dren with ADHD expe­ri­ence more stress in their par­ent­ing role than oth­er par­ents. Although it is rea­son­able to expect that this would also be true for par­ents of ado­les­cents with ADHD, this issue [Read more…] about Study: Rais­ing a teen with ADHD adds sig­nif­i­cant stress to parents–especially to mothers

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, delivered as a Videogame, Can Help Lower Anxiety and Depression

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Young Depres­sive Patients Respond To Com­put­er Ther­a­py (Med­ical News Today):

- “Depres­sion is com­mon in ado­les­cents, although many are reluc­tant to seek pro­fes­sion­al help. Accord­ing to a study pub­lished in BMJ, spe­cial­ized com­put­er ther­a­py is just as effec­tive as [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py, deliv­ered as a Videogame, Can Help Low­er Anx­i­ety and Depression