Teens

Recommendations

Sharing – Online grooming: What it is, how it happens, and how to defend children
ByMikeM December 6, 2024December 12, 2024 Reading Time: 1 minute

I’m sharing this resource from Thorn because parents need it. It can be difficult to tell the difference between someone grooming a teenager and someone just trying to be friends with a teen, and we can’t expect anyone always to know the difference.

However, we can communicate openly with teens about what they are doing online. We can also stay involved with kids and their online experiences so that there are more eyes on what is happening and a safe place to turn if something seems off about what someone is asking them to do.

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Sharing – Are We or Are We Not in a Youth Mental Health Crisis?
ByMikeM September 3, 2024September 2, 2024 Reading Time: 2 minutes

Is it a crisis that has teens struggling with mental health more recently, or is it some combination of cultural factors and more willingness to talk about mental health?

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Sharing – Teens feel less emotional support than their parents think they do, new report shows
ByMikeM July 22, 2024July 22, 2024 Reading Time: 1 minute

I can’t help but wonder how many of those teens who feel like they have no one to talk to about their emotions have parents who don’t think their teen has emotional struggles because, surely, they would talk to their “supportive” parents.

Don’t assume your kids are fine because they haven’t talked to you about struggling. They may be in that gap.

Read More Sharing – Teens feel less emotional support than their parents think they do, new report shows
In the News

Taylor Swift, Deepfake Porn and the Law
ByMikeM February 15, 2024February 14, 2024 Reading Time: 3 minutes

As the article explains, there is no federal law against this in the US. There are some state laws, but they’re not very effective. The problem is that we’ve always treated sexual abuse materials as criminal because, as the saying goes, behind every photo is a child being abused. With deepfakes, though, the abuse isn’t happening. So when a teen girl is the subject of deepfake porn, she was never sexually assaulted, so there’s no crime.

There’s a lot of harm, though. In the case of a celebrity, it might be reputational harm. In the case of teenagers, that fake can turn into blackmail, bullying, and all the mental health issues that go along with that. (The same is true of adults, but we know how vulnerable teens are to this and how this too often ends.)

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The Positive Impacts of Social Media
ByMikeM January 8, 2024January 7, 2024 Reading Time: 2 minutes

This is the world we live in. Not one where teens would be fine if only they didn’t have social media, but one where teens take to social media to get information about mental health and other issues that they can’t talk to anyone else about. Getting rid of social media for minors will leave a void similar to the one I had growing up, where no one I knew talked about abuse or mental health issues, so I assumed I was the only one dealing with it.

That’s not a better world. I think a world where minors can access information provided by advocates who educate themselves about the facts and share their own lived experiences is invaluable. That’s what following these accounts can provide.

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In the News

I Need You To Go Read This Collection of Research about Teens and Social Media
ByMikeM January 6, 2024January 11, 2024 Reading Time: 2 minutes

More importantly, for those of us trying to advocate for mental health, we need to realize that there is no simple answer. Turning off all of social media is not going to cure the mental health crisis. It won’t change everything that is going on in all of our lives and across the world. Pretending that we’d all have much better mental health if we just killed off Instagram or TikTik isn’t going to make the county’s mental health problems go away.

So why aren’t we discussing the harder problems that have some proven research to show the negative effects on children’s lives? School shootings, violence, racism, oppression of LGTBQ and minorities, poverty, lack of access to mental health care, etc.

Read More I Need You To Go Read This Collection of Research about Teens and Social Media

Teens

Sharing – Are We or Are We Not in a Youth Mental Health Crisis?

Sharing – Teens feel less emotional support than their parents think they do, new report shows

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