Monday, January 12

PARENTING

What We Don’t Understand About Young People’s Motivations
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PARENTING, VIDEO REELS

What We Don’t Understand About Young People’s Motivations

Young people are demanding change. In the last few days, young Indigenous activists and their supporters blocked parliamentarians in Victoria, B.C., from accessing the provincial legislature and led waves of protest across the country. For some young people, climate change is urgent. For others, gun violence is a crisis. From truth and reconciliation to inclusion and diversity and mental health, young people are bringing awareness to societal crises and making headlines along the way. Historically, this is really nothing new. Young people have long been leaders and catalysts of important movements. Unfortunately, these change-makers are often thought to be outside of what is considered typical of this age group. Young people are often labelled problematic, selfish or not yet ready to le...
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‘No Pretty Nannies’ Why The Debate Matters
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‘No Pretty Nannies’ Why The Debate Matters

Just weeks before announcing her pregnancy, model Chrissy Teigen joked that she wouldn’t want to tempt her husband John Legend by hiring a hot nanny. “No hot nannies, drivers, or maids…It’s an ongoing joke in my house,” she told reporters off-the-cuff during Fashion Week. “I trust John, but you never know with these men.” Even as they acknowledged the joke, celebrity news sources had a field day. People Magazine ran her comments under the semi-serious banner Chrissy Teigen’s Number 1 Rule for Parenting. Billboard, US Weekly and Extra all jumped in. Meanwhile, online commenters took Teigen seriously and either defended her (“I wouldn’t trust my husband with a pretty nanny either!”), argued that she was too gorgeous to worry or made predictions that the Legend-Teigen union wouldn’t last. ...
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Child Labor – Some Chocolate Has A Dark Side To It
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Child Labor – Some Chocolate Has A Dark Side To It

Chocolate makes for a perfect gift, a comforting snack and even a health food, thanks to its plentiful antioxidants. Rumor has it that it might even work as an aphrodisiac. It is no surprise, then, that the chocolate industry garners billions of dollars each year. However, there is also a dark side to chocolate. As a cultural anthropologist who has done years of research on food and drink in Europe and North America, I have come to understand the close relationship between culinary traditions and social inequality. In a course I teach on the anthropology of food, chocolate is among the numerous food commodities that I cover in the course as an index for understanding social class relations locally and globally, including human trafficking. Exploitative labor, especially child labor, is...
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Research Shows Cyberbullying Among Teens And School Bullying Are Often Linked
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Research Shows Cyberbullying Among Teens And School Bullying Are Often Linked

Over recent years, England has faced a concerning rise in cyberbullying compared to other countries. This issue has been compounded by an increase in digital activity among teenagers during COVID-19 lockdowns. Cyberbullying, sometimes called online harassment or abuse, refers to behaviours where a person repeatedly causes harm to others using electronic devices and technologies. The modern abundance of devices with internet access makes it easier for cyberbullies to remain anonymous and create multiple accounts with different identities, giving them the freedom to attack multiple social media users simultaneously, often without obstruction. There are numerous means of victimisation. These include making posts on social media intended to threaten or humiliate someone, publishing videos or...
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It’s Not Your Fault Your Kid Won’t Put Down The Smartphone
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PARENTING

It’s Not Your Fault Your Kid Won’t Put Down The Smartphone

Nearly three-quarters of parents are concerned that their kids’ use of mobile devices may be harmful to them or to family relationships – and that was from research done before the pandemic. But it’s not parents’ – or the kids’ – fault. Every time a parent and child try to turn off a game or put a device down, they’re not fighting each other – they’re fighting the invisible army of behavioral design specialists who make technology experiences so hard to tear yourself away from. The people who create apps and games use insights from, and experts in, an area of psychology research called “persuasive design,” whose scholars seek to understand how to create something that is next to impossible to put down. But it’s important to be careful when seeking to hook kids on something, as psycholog...
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What Teens See In Closed Online Communities
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What Teens See In Closed Online Communities

Ever since the earliest days of the internet in the 1980s, getting online has meant getting involved in a community. Initially, there were dial-up chat servers, email lists and text-based discussion groups focused on specific interests. Since the early 2000s, mass-appeal social media platforms have collected these small spaces into bigger ones, letting people find their own little corners of the internet, but only with interconnections to others. This allows social media sites to suggest new spaces users might join, whether it’s a local neighborhood discussion or a group with the same hobby, and sell specifically targeted advertising. But the small-group niche community is making a comeback with adults, and with kids and teens. When Discord was initially released in 2015, many video game...
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A New Study Finds Youth Largely Underestimate The Risks Of Contracting STIs Through Oral Sex
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PARENTING

A New Study Finds Youth Largely Underestimate The Risks Of Contracting STIs Through Oral Sex

Young people are largely unaware of the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, or STIs, through oral sex. That’s the finding of our recent study, published in Annals of Family Medicine. Research and education on oral sex are critical because it is a very common sexual practice. And many STIs are transmitted orally, including herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, HIV and human papillomavirus (HPV). Why it matters The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 85% of sexually active people ages 18 to 44 have engaged in oral sex at least once. A separate survey found that 41% of adolescents ages 15 to 19 reported having oral sex. Historically, research on reducing STI transmission among young people has focused primarily on heterosexual vaginal intercourse rathe...
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Should You Worry? Your Teenager Is Vaping E-Cigarettes
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Should You Worry? Your Teenager Is Vaping E-Cigarettes

Lynn T. Kozlowski, University at Buffalo E-cigarettes and other vaping products are on track to out-sell cigarettes by the end of 2023. And more and more young people are trying e-cigarettes. So what do you need to know about them? Are they less harmful than using cigarettes or other burned tobacco products? Mike Mozart, CC BY What are e-cigarettes? First, they are not burned tobacco products. Most often, they contain nicotine solutions that are heated to make a vapor (hence the terms vape or vaping), and they’re usually powered by batteries. Some look like cigarettes and others can resemble flashlights. The first e-cigarettes were not produced by cigarette companies, but the cigarette companies have gotten into the business. E-cigarette and vaping products are available in specialty st...
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Here’s The Evolutionary Explanation Of Why Cat And Dog ‘Moms’ And ‘Dads’ Really Are Parenting Their Pets
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PARENTING

Here’s The Evolutionary Explanation Of Why Cat And Dog ‘Moms’ And ‘Dads’ Really Are Parenting Their Pets

Shelly Volsche, Boise State University A pup out for a stroll, without paws touching the ground. Shelly Volsche, CC BY-ND Have you noticed more cats riding in strollers lately? Or bumper stickers that read, “I love my granddogs”? You’re not imagining it. More people are investing serious time, money and attention in their pets. It looks an awful lot like parenting, but of pets, not people. Can this kind of caregiving toward animals really be considered parenting? Or is something else going on here? I’m an anthropologist who studies human-animal interactions, a field known as anthrozoology. I want to better understand the behavior of pet parenting by people from the perspective of evolutionary science. After all, cultural norms and evolutionary biology both suggest people should focus on...
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Should Juveniles Be Sentenced To Life?
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Should Juveniles Be Sentenced To Life?

America as I understand it is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles; that is those under the age of eighteen to life imprisonment without parole. This was challenged in court about ten years ago with the Supreme court stating it is unconstitutional to sentence minors to life without the possibility of parole. Teenagers are basically the same worldwide. They have the same kind of social, physical, and emotional issues to deal with, but their environment can make or break them. It is this environment which can be the determining factor in where they end up. If they are given the right encouragement and the right tools they can do amazing stuff which sets their life on the right track, however, stuff happens which see their hopes and dreams derailed. Teenagers all around th...
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