Adolescence Quiz 5

Correlation Between Adversity and Technology Experience

In general, the adolescents who encounter more adversity in their offline lives seem most likely to experience the negative effects of using smartphones and other digital devices.

A review of 36 studies published between 2002 and 2017

Indicates that teens use digital communication to enhance relationships by sharing intimacy, displaying affection and arranging meet-ups and activities

2015 Internet Access Survey

-92% of adolescents aged 10-15 from economically disadvantaged homes had access to the Internet, compared with 97% of other teens of the same age. -And 65% of those from disadvantaged homes owned a mobile device, compared with 69% of their peers.

Hamilton Scale

-A scale to measure depression -It runs from 0 (where you are dancing in ecstasy) to 59 (where you are suicidal).

How long did the study last?

10 Years (tracking adolescents' mental health and use of smartphones)

True or False: Chemical imbalance causes depression

False

Struggling in Real Life Versus Virtual

-Adolescents struggling in their offline lives are more likely to have negative online experiences. ---Ex: already-vulnerable young people are more likely to receive negative feedback on social media, experience difficulties regulating their use of the Internet and spend more time 'lurking' — passively viewing others online, rather than actively engaging with them

Increase in Technology and Growing Up

-Alongside this increase in the use of digital technology, young people are taking more time to move between childhood and adulthood. -Since the 1960s, young people have been delaying social-role transitions such as marriage, childbearing and taking full-time employment

Anxiety Vs. Depression

-Anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason college students seek counseling services -Anxiety at a... --62% increase in 2016 from 50% in 2011

Dr. Felitti's Past Treatment Method: Why it Failed

-As Felitti spoke to the 183 people in the program, he found 55 percent had been sexually abused. -It turned out many of these women had been making themselves obese for an unconscious reason: to protect themselves from the attention of men, who they believed would hurt them. -What we had perceived as the problem ― major obesity ― was in fact, very frequently, the solution to problems that the rest of us knew nothing about.

UCLA Questions: Freshmen Questionare

-Asked if they "felt overwhelmed by all I had to do" --1985, 18% said yes --2010, 29% --2016, 41%

Dr. Felitti's Past Treatment Method

-Before, he had severely obese patents as a last resort -He had an idea: What if these severely overweight people simply stopped eating, and lived off the fat stores they'd built up in their bodies - with monitored nutrition supplements - until they were down to a normal weight? -It worked...but... the people who did best were often thrown into a brutal depression, or panic, or rage. Some of them became suicidal. Without their bulk, they felt unbelievably vulnerable. They often fled the program, gorged on fast food, and put their weight back on very fast.

2017 petition published in The Guardian: What is it and Signatures

-Called for policies based on evidence, not fear, and was signed by more than 80 scientists (myself included). It offered some pushback against a predominantly one-sided conversation in the media. More crucial is informed and evidence-based dialogue between educators, health professionals, parents, researchers and adolescents.

Dr. Felitti's New Research: Results

-Childhood trauma caused the risk of adult depression to explode. -If you had seven categories of traumatic event as a child, you were 3,100 percent more likely to attempt to commit suicide as an adult, and more than 4,000 percent more likely to be an injecting drug user.

Suicide

-Doubling of hospital admissions for suicidal teenagers -Highest rates occurring soon after they return to school each fall

Technology and Survey's

-Experimental rigour demands common research protocols, such as standardized questionnaires for assessing online usage and experiences across multiple contexts. --Ex:The Global Kids Online research toolkit is an excellent example. -Such protocols need to be made available in a way that would allow investigators to update them continually, to capture adolescents' evolving digital habits and environments.

Facebook Funding (and best uses for it)

-Facebook pledged $1 million in research funds to help better understand the "relationship between media technologies, youth development and well-being". -The best use of such funding could be the development of tools, screening algorithms and outreach strategies for the most vulnerable adolescents. --For instance, machine learning and clinical expertise could be leveraged to build classifiers that predict current and future mental-health problems, and such screening algorithms could be used alongside 'just-in-time' interventions.

Hamilton Scale: Efforts to Decrease Numbers

-Improving your sleep patterns gives you a movement on the Hamilton Scale of around 6 points. -Chemical antidepressants give you an improvement, on average, of 1.8 points

Young (11-19) People's Success Today

-In the United States, a record 84% of students graduated from high school in 2016. -Pregnancy, violence, alcohol abuse and smoking have all declined in teenagers in the past 20 years. -Similar trends have been observed in other countries

Who Owns Smartphones Statistics

-In the United States, ownership of mobile phones begins early. -Surveyed 2,100 children attending public schools in North Carolina in 2015. -In that sample, which is likely to be representative of US adolescents, 48% of 11-year-olds told us they owned a mobile phone. Among 14-year-olds, it was 85%

Problems With the Hamilton Scale

-It has a real effect - but it's modest. -Of course, the fact it's an average means some people get a bigger boost. -But for huge numbers of people it's not enough to lift us out of depression.

Author Says Is Important To Study

-It is crucial to investigate thoroughly whether and how the online experiences of adolescents worsen existing inequalities. -We must also invest in evidence-based ways to ensure that online experiences are positive for all young people.

Doctor Discussion After Revealing Trauma

-Just being able to discuss the trauma led to a huge fall in future illnesses ― there was a 35-percent reduction in their need for medical care over the following year. -For the people who were referred to more extensive help, there was a fall of more than 50 percent. -The act of releasing your shame is - in itself - healing.

What Places Are Key to Ensuring that Young People, Including the most Vulnerable, have Equal Opportunities Online.

-Leading professional organizations, such as the European Association for Research on Adolescence, the World Economic Forum and the Society for Research in Child Development -Partnerships between local governments, technology companies and educational institutions

Technology and Tips For Protecting Children

-Maintenance of supportive parent-child relationships that encourage disclosure -Parental involvement in the activities of their children -The avoidance of overly restrictive or coercive monitoring **All will help to support adolescents and keep them safe online, just as they do offline.

The Easiness of Collecting Data

-Mobile devices are hugely enabling when conducting research and randomized control trials focused on behavior and mental health in young people. -Mental states can be gleaned directly from reported information, or indirectly — from data on sleep patterns collected by a wearable device, from entries on Facebook or Twitter, or even from how people text.

Who does Anxiety Affect

-Nearly 1/3 of both adolescents and adults -Anxiety is seen as less serious

The Best Partnerships

-Neuroscientists, psychologists and paediatricians need to join forces with those working on human-computer interactions. -The Jacobs Foundation 2015 conference on Technologies for Research and Intervention with Children and Youth, at Marbach Castle in Germany, concentrated on building these types of interdisciplinary partnership. -Many more such opportunities are needed.

UK Study on Adolescents Results

-One of the largest studies so far looked at more than 120,000 UK adolescents in 2017. -It found no association between mental well-being and "moderate" use of digital technology, and reported measurable, "albeit small" negative associations for people who had "high levels" of engagement

A 2009 longitudinal study of more than 1,300 children and teens

-Showed that children aged 6-12 who had higher-quality social relationships (defined according to caregivers' descriptions of the children's relationships with friends, caregivers, siblings and teachers) became more-frequent users of e-mail, chats or instant messaging as adolescents aged 12-18. -Their offline friendships as adolescents were also more cohesive, as judged by their own descriptions

The 2014 study of 3,500 children aged 9-16 from 7 countries in Europe

-Showed that parents in wealthier homes are more likely to "actively mediate" what their child does online. -This might be by talking about it, suggesting ways to use the Internet more safely, or joining in and playing computer games, viewing videos or posting alongside their children

People's views on smartphones

-Smartphones have destroyed a generation -Smartphones might be making adolescents lonely and depressed.

Technology Safety Protocol

-Social-media sites offer basic protections for adolescent users by providing information to caregivers. -But most safety protocols rely on parental advocacy and active mediation and management of online activities, which might leave the most vulnerable young people unprotected.

US teens aged 13-18 from families whose total income is less than US$35,000 per year

-Spend, on average, around 4 hours a day watching television and online videos. -That's around twice as much time as that spent by their peers from households that have incomes of more than $100,000 per year **In total, low-income teens spend about three hours more each day engaging with screens

Anxious Thoughts

-Teaches them to analyze and learn to talk back to their thoughts -Write down 3 negative thoughts and then come up with a strong and powerful response afterwords. Acting them out.

2015 North Carolina survey

-Teens from low-income families were more likely than more-affluent peers to report that their experiences on social media resulted in offline physical fights, face-to-face confrontations, or them getting into trouble at school (see 'Social-media spillover'). -Adolescents who have a history of victimization are more likely to be bullied, solicited and victimized online -Those with behavioral problems, such as difficulties concentrating in class, or a propensity to get into fights, tend to experience more problems on days when they use digital technology more heavily

Mental Health Problems Among Adolescents

-There is also some evidence for an increase in mental-health problems among adolescents. -The percentage of US girls aged 12-17 reporting depressive episodes increased by more than 4 percentage points between 2005 and 2014, to 17.3%. -The proportion of boys doing so in 2014 was 5.7%, a rise of 1.2 percentage points since 20055. -Since 1999, the US suicide rate has also increased for every age group, with the most marked rise among adolescent girls -Similar trends among young girls have been observed elsewhere

Causes of Depression and Anxiety

-They are mostly being caused by events in our lives. -If you find your work meaningless and you feel you have no control over it, you are far more likely to become depressed. -If you are lonely and feel that you can't rely on the people around you to support you, you are far more likely to become depressed. -If you think life is all about buying things and climbing up the ladder, you are far more likely to become depressed. -If you think your future will be insecure, you are far more likely to become depressed **We have to try to solve our depression and anxiety crises in a very different way (alongside chemical anti-depressants).

Recent University Studies on Mental Health and Digital Use (Overall)

-They have probed for correlations between people's mental health and their use of digital technologies. -These have generated a mix of positive, negative and null findings, all with minuscule effect sizes.

Dr. Felitti's New Research

-This insight led Felitti to launch a massive program of research, funded by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. -He wanted to discover how all kinds of childhood trauma affect us as adults. -He administered a simple questionnaire to 17,000 ordinary patients in San Diego, who were were coming just for general health care - anything from a headache to a broken leg. -It asked if any of 10 bad things had happened to you as a kid, like being neglected, or emotionally abused. -Then it asked if you had any of 10 psychological problems, like obesity or depression or addiction. He wanted to see what the matchup was.

Transition Period

-This is when young people first begin to have regular access to mobile devices and social media. -This is a great period to study!

Moutain Valley

-Treatment facility for acutely anxious teenagers -Costs $910 a day and offers some need-based assistence -Usually last resort after therapy and meds -Inc helping with social anxiety, separation anxiety, PTSD, OCD

The nine major causes of depression and anxiety

-Two are biological -Seven are out in here in the world ** The causes are all quite different, and they play out to different degrees in the lives of depressed and anxious people

Depression and Anxiety: In the 1990s and early 2000s

-US surveys showed that adolescents who reported spending more time online were more likely to also report symptoms of depression and anxiety -But back then, a fraction of adolescents were online — only 14% of the US adult population had access to the Internet in 1995 — and most spent time playing games or talking to strangers in chat rooms. -Today, more than 90% of US adolescents are online daily, and much of their time is spent connecting with friends and family whom they share their offline lives with.

Other Stats on Phones (Use and European Ownership)

-US teens aged 13-18 engage with screen media (from watching television or online videos to reading online and using social media) for more than 6.5 hours each day; mobile devices account for almost half this time -Ownership and usage is also high elsewhere: in a 2014 survey of 9- to 16-year-olds in 7 European countries, 46% owned smartphones

How to Treat Anxiety and Depression

-We need to stop seeing depression and anxiety as an irrational pathology, or a weird misfiring of brain chemicals. -To deal with depression, you need to deal with its underlying causes. Realizing your shame is only the start.

The Writer's Theory on Depression

-When you're a child, you have very little power to change your environment. You can't move away, or force somebody to stop hurting you. -2 Choices: You can admit to yourself that you are powerless or you can tell yourself it's your fault. -Those who are "at fault" change themselves to protect themselves

Doctor's Explanation of Depression (1990's)

-Your brain isn't working right. It isn't producing the necessary chemicals. -You need to take drugs, and they will fix your broken brain

Experimental studies, in which subjects play computer games in the lab, have shown that virtual communication (texting a peer they didn't previously know, say)

Can help adolescents to 'bounce back' after social rejection — such as being excluded from a game with multiple players.

Digital Divide

Conventionally referred to differential access to new technologies. That gap still exists, but is shrinking in many countries

Ratio of kids who use the Internet

One in three Internet users worldwide is a child, and the explosion of algorithmically selected content in particular raises legitimate concerns about responsibility and agency.

Most Emotionally Distressed

Privileged Youth

Failure to Look at Technology Use

These can blind parents, educators and others to the potential benefits of new technologies for this age group, or, worse, cause the real determinants of mental health and other problems to be missed.

What Could Be The Issue With Smartphones?

What online activities might be doing is reflecting and even worsening existing vulnerabilities.