Is Your Teen at Risk of Human Trafficking?
Child trafficking is a serious problem in the U.S. and worldwide. This abhorrent practice almost disappeared in the U.S. in the 1990s, but is back, and increasing every year. The return of child trafficking is directly related to the prevalence of the internet, smartphones, and social media/messaging technology. Texting and messaging technology appeared in the […]
Get to Know Your Teen: What Are YA Novels?
Nothing compares to getting lost in the pages of a fantastic book. Talented authors can keep you engaged for hours at a time, turning page after page as you anticipate what comes next. Summer reading programs at local libraries and Scholastic book fairs were a large part of childhood for many adults today. The advent […]
Get to Know Your Teen: What is Online Gaming?
Video games have come a long way from their very humble beginnings in the mid-20th century. The first rudimentary computer game made its debut in 1951, but Atari made game consoles a household name when they launched in 1972. These original home game systems were a far cry from the online gaming of today, though. […]
Does Social Contagion Cause Teens to Identify as Transgender?
News stations have spent the last few years stoking debates about transgender individuals. From transgender people enlisting in the military to whether transgender people should be allowed to play sports to which restroom transgender people should use, the small but substantial portion of the population has faced intense public scrutiny from every direction. An estimated […]
Get to Know Your Teen: What Are They Watching on TV?
Your teenager has access to an astounding number of television shows today. And if the hundreds of channels on cable television weren’t enough already, the rise of streaming services over the last few years expanded their options to an almost unimaginable extent. You could spend your entire life watching TV shows and never scratch the […]
Get to Know Your Teen: What is Twitch?
Video games today are not what they were 30, 20, or even 10 years ago. Parents used to insist they were a waste of time and that kids needed to get outside and quit spending afternoons in front of a screen. But today the video game industry is worth more than $138 billion and continues […]
Get to Know Your Teen: What is Discord?
Chat platforms have been an online staple since the advent of the World Wide Web. America Online Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger, and Microsoft Chat were some of the first household instant messaging programs. They paved the way for the ubiquity of live chat today, from private messages with friends to receiving customer support on […]
How Teens Use Social Media and Digital Technology in 2022
When a former Facebook employee testified before Congress in 2021, their testimony led to an avalanche of news stories across media platforms about the dangers of social media to teen mental health. The employee testified that Facebook – more specifically Instagram – intentionally withheld internal data about the harm social media use causes teens. This […]
Unique Ways to Support Your Teen’s Interests
There’s one thing we know about mental health that applies to people of any age, from children to teenagers to full-grown adults: people who are actively engaged in life report high levels of life satisfaction and overall wellbeing. That’s not only true for their mental health, but also true for their physical health. For the […]
Sextortion, Teenage Boys, and Suicide
Online Predators Target Adolescent Males When we think of online predators – more accurately, when we think of the victims of online predators – we most often think of young women. We think of teenage girls. We imagine older men grooming vulnerable young women, luring them into compromising situations that can end in about a […]