Research + News

Let Kids Be Kids A Little Longer: Wait Until 8th

The Wait Until 8th pledge empowers parents to rally together to delay giving children a smartphone until at least 8th grade. Visit the website here.

Should Kids Have Smartphones? Debate Grows On Mental Health Impact

Many kids have a smartphone by age 12, and some even younger. Read the article here.

Teens Using Emojis As Code To Buy Counterfeit, Dangerous Drugs Online

Emojis are an easy, popular way to share emotions in picture form via text message or on social media, but some seemingly innocent emojis are actually code for drugs! Read the article here.

‘Herping’ On TikTok Makes Georgia Teens Famous

Two Augusta teens are making headlines by doing something kids used to do all the time: going outside. Read the article here.

Why Teens Are Self-Diagnosing On TikTok

The social media platform has become the psychiatrist’s couch for Gen Z. Read the article here.

US Mobile Gaming Ad Revenues To Reach $6 Billion

US mobile gaming ad revenues will reach $6.26 billion in 2022, up 14.0% from $5.49 billion in 2021. Read the article here.

Mom And Dad’s Social Media Habits Reveal Their Parenting Style

Does a parent’s posting habits on Facebook really change the way they interact with their kids? Read the article here.

Is TikTok Dangerous For Teens?

Parents, make sure your kids understand that a TikTok video is not authoritative, even it has 10 million likes. Read the blog post from Leonard Sax here.

What Is The Metaverse And Are Kids Safe There? Our Top 3 Concerns

Generally, the metaverse is a future combination of several technologies that make the internet more immersive. Defend Young Minds discusses possible concerns. You can read them here.

Selfie Distortions Lead To Increase In Nose Job Requests, New Study Finds

Facebook Has Another Reason To Worry About TikTok After New Teen Survey

Facebook parent company Meta is doing everything in its power to get teens to love its myriad services, but a new survey shows the social networking giant is losing to viral short-video platform TikTok. Read the article here.

FBI Pittsburgh Warns About Recent Surge In Sexual Extortion Cases Targeting Teen Boys

Investigators say that predators are seeking out teenage boys online and posing as girls their age. Read the article here.

Social Media Might Be Bad For Teens’ Mental Health At Certain Age Windows

Researchers are trying to figure out who’s at risk. Read the article here.

The Dark Side Of Discord For Teens

Launched in 2015, Discord is less well-known among parents than big names like Instagram, even as it surged to 150 million monthly active users globally during the pandemic. Read the article here.

TikTok Trend Misfires After Teens Trying #OrbeezChallenge Charged With Aggravated Assault

The trend encourages people to use airsoft guns to shoot the small gel beads at people nearby. Read the article here.

Screen Time Terrors: 7 In 10 Parents Fear Their Kids Are Becoming ‘Internet Zombies’

Is all that time spent on social media, gaming apps, and streaming services turning kids’ brains into mush? Read the article here.

Instagram Releases Tools For Parents To Track Teens’ Activity

Instagram on Wednesday morning launched a “Family Center” with supervisory tools for parents to track their children’s time and activity on the platform. Read the article here.

‘They Cannot Be Trusted’: Lawmakers Slam Facebook Over Sale Of Deadly Children’s Products

Despite repeated warnings that Facebook Marketplace allows the sale of recalled products that have killed children, the platform’s parent company, Meta, has still failed to prevent such items from being available on its site. Read the article here.

How To Talk To Teens About Nudes And Online Safety

Teens may have sexted more during the pandemic, and the fallout can be intense. Read the article here.

What Teens See In Closed Online Spaces Like The Discord App

Unlike many other current popular social media platforms, Discord servers often function as closed communities, with invitations required to join. Read the article here.

Playboy Makes Perversion Woke

Playboy is once again trying to clean up its image and, in the process, contradict its own reasons for existence. Read the article here.

The Twitching Generation

Is There Hope For Gen Z?

A review of the book Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age. Read the article/review here.

What Is ‘Bigorexia’?

Most Children Under 5 Are Spending An Excessive Amount Of Time In Front Of Screens

Researchers found only a minority of children worldwide are meeting the recommended hours of screen time. Read the article here.

How Digital Youth Became Unhappy – And Dangerous – Adults

How could the older and wiser ignore the dangers of adolescents’ reading fewer books and logging more screen hours? Read the article here.

Mom Pays Teen Son $1800 To Stay Off Social Media Until His 18th Birtday

6 In 10 ‘Couldn’t Cope’ Without Smartphone For A Day

1 in 8 suffer anxiety from low battery. Read the article here.

Smartphones Make Teenagers Lonelier At School Because They Isolate Young People From Their Friends, Study Shows

Proportion of 15 and 16-year-olds feeling alienated has tripled in twenty years. Read the article here.

A Child’s TikTok Stardom Opens Doors. Then A Gunman Arrives.

Too Much Screen Time: Teens And Unhealthy Social Media Use

According to a study by The National Institutes of Health, the proportion of young people in the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 17 years who own a smartphone is 89%, more than double the amount just six years ago. Read the article here.

Young Media Consumers Spend More Time With Online Video, Gaming, Social Media, Less With TV, Movies

Young media consumers continue to spend more time with online video, gaming and social media, and less time with traditional screen-based TV series and movies, according to a new study from Hub Entertainment Research. Read the article here.

Viral Image Of Family Meal At Restaurant Is Mix Of Creativity And Tragedy

An Australian restaurant came up with a solution for keeping kids off their phones, but it unveils a bigger problem. Read the article here.

Teen Girls’ Sexy TikTok Videos Take A Mental-Health Toll

Girls are often anxious and overwhelmed by the attention they get after posting suggestive videos; therapists say more are suffering emotionally. Read the article here.

Teens Are Looking For Love In Online Places

How to help teens have safe and healthy online relationships. Read the article here.

Social Media Is Having A Negative Impact On Teenagers’ Mental Health

Here’s how parents can mitigate it. Read the article here.

Kids’ Behavior Worsened With Remote Learning

As the Omicron variant surges and U.S. schools deal with a substitute teacher shortage and related pandemic fallout, don’t be surprised if a return to remote or hybrid learning leads your kids to act out, a new study warns. Read the article here.

Social Media Filters Are Changing How Young People See Themselves

This article is part of a series of articles from Teen Vogue exploring how social media impacts mental health. Read the article here.

Teens Who Are “Addicted” To TikTok Experience Worse Depression And Anxiety, And In Turn, Reduced Working Memory Capacity

A study among teenage TikTok users found that those who showed addictive tendencies toward the platform performed worse when recalling number sequences. Read the article here.

Porn Addiction And Kids – Neuropsychologist Reveals Who Is Most Vulnerable

Kristen Jenson of Defend Young Minds interviews Dr. Mateusz Gola about problematic pornography use and the latest neuroscience of addiction. Access the interview here.

Streaming Video Hits All-Time Weekly High In December

From a total viewing perspective, streaming was the clear outlier during the week of Christmas, as Americans watched a total of 183 billion minutes – an all-time high –  across the growing range of over-the-top platforms. Read the article here.

Following Unprecedented Pandemic Growth, US Mobile Gaming Continues Upward Climb

Mobile app gaming has managed to hold on to its pandemic-driven success and then some, reversing our previous predictions that time spent gaming with mobile apps would decline in the US after 2020. Read the report here.

Green Message Bubbles On Apple Devices Are Turning Teens Away From Android

It turns out, having that prestigious blue texting bubble is enough for teenagers to stay away from non-Apple devices. Read the article here.

Pro Sports Leagues Are Chasing Gen Z Where It Plays

Peer Pressure To Use iMessage?

Has peer pressure and bullying given an edge to iMessage users? Read the article here.

iPhone Tool For Parents Makes Teens Consider Consequences Of Sexting

A December iPhone update gives parents a new tool to protect children online. Read the article here.

TikTok Made Them Famous. Figuring Out What’s Next Is Tough

TikTok Content May Be Promoting An Unhealthy Standard Of Living For Adolescents

Eating disorders among teenagers have been linked more recently to TikTok, as users post content daily consisting of what they eat in a day or the methods they use to lose weight, especially within the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Read the article here.

10 Tricky Ways Porn Will Target Your Kids In 2022

The porn industry is powerful, but kids can learn skills to reject pornography and defend themselves against it. Read the article here.

The E-Sports Generation – Step Aside, Lebron And Dak, And Make Room For Banjo And Kazooie

Billie Eilish Says Porn Fixation Starting At Age 11 ‘Destroyed’ Her Brain

The “Bad Guy” singer said violent sex videos warped her perspective on healthy relationships. Read the article here.

What Teen Girls Wish Parents Knew About Instagram

What do teen girls wish grown-ups (particularly their parents) really knew about Instagram? And what advice do they have for kids just starting out on the app? Read the article here.

Parents Of The Social Media Generation Are Not OK

Parents who did not spend their childhoods with social media apps are now struggling to understand and navigate the potential harms that social media can have on their kids’ mental health as they grow up. Read the article here.

Loading… New Games

Teens Don’t Need ‘Finstas’ Anymore

Slang for fake Instagram accounts, finstas were the first place teens would post photos they didn’t want to share on main. Read the article here.

Instagram Unveils New Teen Safety Tools Ahead Of Senate Hearing

Instagram is rolling out a new set of safety features aimed at its youngest users and their parents, a day before the photo-sharing app’s head testifies to Congress about the platform’s potential risks to kids and teens. Read the article here.

Instagram Makes It Easy For Teens To Find Drugs, Report Finds

Fake accounts for minors were able to connect with drug dealers. Read the article here.

What’s One Of The Most Dangerous Toys For Kids? The Internet

Ff we adults are seemingly powerless in the face of such digital temptation, where does that leave our kids? Read the article here.

How TikTok Reads Your Mind

A New York Times columnist obtained an internal company document that offers a new level of detail about how the algorithm works. Read the article here.

For Teens Who Are Glued To Social Media, This 4-Step Plan Can Help

A Look At Gen Z’s Preferred Social Platforms

The social networks with the most monthly Gen Z users are Snapchat (42.0 million), TikTok (37.3 million), and Instagram (33.3 million). Read the article here.

The Gaming Business: A Look At The eSports Playing Field

Esports is set to grow into a $1.62 billion industry by 2024. Read the article here.

Sharing Nudes Doubled Among Pre-Teens In 2020

Twice as many children between the ages of 9 and 12 reported sending nudes or other Self-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material (SG-CSAM) in 2020 than in 2019. Read the research here.

The Dangerous Experiment On Teen Girls

The Question We’ve Stopped Asking About Teenagers And Social Media

Should they be using these services at all? Read the article here.

Making YouTube Safer: Quick 2-Step Setup Of Supervised Accounts

Defend Young Minds provides some tips on making YouTube safer. Read the article here.

Missing Teen, 16, Found After Using TikTok Hand Sign Alerting She Was In Danger

Authorities were able to find a missing 16-year-old girl after she caught the attention of a driver by using hand gestures popularized on the social media platform TikTok. Read the article here.

Joining Social Media Before Age 11 Is Associated With Problematic Digital Behaviors

A new study published in Computers in Human Behavior found that using Instagram or Snapchat before age 11 was significantly related to more problematic digital behaviors compared to those who joined these platforms when they were older. Read the article here.

E-Violence Increases Through Early Adolescence But Declines As Teens Become Adults

Electronic dating violence—including electronic harassment, coercion and monitoring—starts increasing in preadolescence but curves as teens reach young adulthood, according to a new University of Michigan study. Read the article here.

Apps Offer Teens Some One-And-Done Settings To Stay Safer Online. Here’s A Crash Course

E-mail Is Useful, But Texting Is Transforming College Campuses

New research shows that texting is the best method of communication to reach college students. So what stops more schools from using it? Read the article here.

Facebook Wants To Attract Young People, But Gen Z Teens Say It’s A ‘Boomer Social Network’ Made For ‘Old People’

Back in 2012, 94% of teens had a Facebook account, a Pew Research survey of 12- to 17-year-olds found. Almost 10 years later, only 27% of adolescents say they’re on the platform, according to a 2021 survey of 10,000 teenagers conducted by Piper Sandler. Read the article here.

Teen Depression Linked To Problematic Internet Use

Researchers have uncovered a link between depression and problematic internet use (PIU) among teens. Read the article here.

More U.S. Children Consume YouTube Videos Than Any Other Type Of Media

YouTube videos are the most popular medium among US children online, with 85% of those surveyed watching that content recently. Read the article here.

As Kids Turned To Screens During Pandemic, Their Mental Health Suffered

Researchers discovered that kids who exercised more and used technology less during the pandemic had better mental health outcomes. Read the article here.

Google Lets Kids Request Removal Of Self-Images In Search

Google introduced a tool Wednesday to give minors more control of self-images that appear in search queries, allowing those under 18 to request removal. Read the article here.

Parents: Your Teens Don’t Need A Smartphone

1 In 3 Young Children Are Already Using Social Media Apps – Without Parental Supervision

A new study finds a third of children between seven and nine years-old are already using social media apps. Read the article here.

Instagram Struggles With Fears Of Losing Its ‘Pipeline’: Young Users

The app, hailed as Facebook’s growth engine, has privately wrestled with retaining and engaging teenagers, according to internal documents. Read the article here.

4 In 5 College Students Have Trouble Concentrating After Switching To Remote Learning

Now, a new study reveals the switch to remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic has made earning a college degree even harder. Read the article here.

Children Under 10 Are Using Social Media. Parents Can Help Them Stay Safe Online

Teen Girls Are Developing Tics. Doctors Say TikTok Could Be A Factor

‘It Spreads Like A Disease’: How Pro-Eating-Disorder Videos Reach Teens On TikTok

More Than 1 In 3 Teens Say Snapchat Is Their Favorite Social Media App, Only 2% Cite Facebook

Snapchat is the favorite social media platform among teenagers in the United States and is still growing in popularity, while Facebook’s usage is minimal among teens. Read the article here.

Most US Parents Give Their Children Several Hours Of Screen Time Each Day

The majority of US parents (51%) reported giving their children 3 hours or more of daily screen time for anything other than homework. Read the article here.

The New Social Scene

‘She Opens The App And Gets Bombarded’: Parents On Instagram, Teens And Eating Disorders

Parent Alert! Sexual Content On Roblox Plus 3 Safety Tips

Roblox is popular with kids all over the world. It currently hosts 142 million users and it’s been estimated that half of kids in the U.S. under 16 have played Roblox. Sadly it’s easy for predators and bad actors to infect the Roblox platform with sexual content. Read the article here.

Facebook Knows Instagram Is Harming Teens. But Is Anything Going To Change?

In Facebook’s own internal research, one-third of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. Read the article here.

Instagram Promoted Pages Glorifying Eating Disorders To Teen Accounts

Proof that Instagram is not only failing to crack down on accounts promoting extreme dieting and eating disorders, but actively promotes those accounts, comes as Instagram and its parent company Facebook are facing intense scrutiny over the impact they have on young people’s mental health. Read the article here.

Certain Teens May Be At Higher Risk For Online Threats

The researchers also found that two years after Internet usage was monitored on the laptops, the participants who had viewed more pornography were more likely to be engaging in risky sexual behaviors. Additionally, those who had spent more time on social media were more likely to experience cyberbullying two years later. Read the article here.

Ever Heard Of The Blackout Challenge? How Social Media Is Changing Peer Pressure And What To Do About It

Today, peer pressure is at an all-time high, and it’s a different ballgame. Read the blog post from Tim Elmore of Growing Leaders here.

Worried About Your Teen On Social Media? Here’s How To Help

For kids, developing a healthier relationship with Instagram and other platforms can be tricky. Read the article here.

TikTok Tops 1 Billion Users As Social Media App’s Growth Surges

More than one billion people around the world now use TikTok, according to an announcement Monday from the app. Read the article here.

Facebook Says Instagram Is Not ‘Toxic For Teens,’ Despite WSJ Report

The claims are in response to a damning Wall Street Journal story that prompted a Senate hearing. Read the article here.

TikTok’s Latest Craze: Stealing Stuff From School

Students are taking things like soap dispensers, fire alarms and bathroom mirrors. TikTok and educators are trying to stop it, but it’s gone viral. Read the article here.

I Grew Up ‘Under A Rock’: My Parents Banned Social Media Until I Was 17. I’m Glad They Did.

I didn’t know at the time what a blessing it was to enjoy a childhood free of the constraints, anxiety and sadness social media often brings. Read the article here.

China Moves To Limit Social Media, Gaming As Teens Get More Addicted And Mental Health Is Impacted

Teens spent significantly more time on their phones and online gaming due to the pandemic. Read the article here.

An Illicit Snapchat Video Was Shared By Students. It Led To The Arrest Of 3 Teens

Three Florida Keys teenage boys were arrested after a video showing two of them engaging in sexual acts with a 12-year-old girl was shared by students, police said. Read the article here.

Teens Lying About Age Online Face Unique Danger, Expert Says

The internet can be a dangerous avenue for everyone, but children and teens are especially vulnerable, no matter their smart device or location. Read the article here.