Jennifer Aubrey, University of Missouri, Columbia

Guys who check out the sexy female models in so-called lad magazines such as Maxim have more body-image problems than their pals, a new study finds.

While it is fairly well-known that women feel worse about their bodies after viewing other females in Cosmopolitan or Glamour, guys apparently take the same knock after perusing the lingerie-clad women spread across the pages of Maxim, FHM and Stuff.

The researchers say that by looking at idealized, sexualized women, guys feel less-than because they start thinking they need to measure up on the attractiveness scale to snag such a mate.

"Men make the inference that in order to be sexual and romantic with women of the similar caliber they see in Maxim magazine, they also need to be attractive," said lead researcher Jennifer Aubrey of the Department of Communications at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Girls and young women who devote much time to the Internet, get too little sleep or regularly drink alcohol are more likely than their peers to put on excess weight, a new study suggests.The researchers, who followed more than 5,000 girls between 14 and 21 years old for 1 year, found that the more spare time girls spent on the Internet, the more their body mass index (BMI) increased.

Similar patterns were seen when the researchers looked at alcohol consumption and sleep. In the latter case, lack of sleep was linked to greater gains in BMI — a measure of weight in relation to height.

The findings, reported in The Journal of Pediatrics, add to evidence implicating each of these three habits in promoting weight gain.

The effect of each may be small, but over time the pounds can add up, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Catherine S. Berkey of Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The study involved 5,036 girls and young women who were surveyed regarding the number of recreational hours per week they spent on the Internet, which ranged from 1 to 5 hours, to 16-plus hours, as well as how long they typically slept each night (anywhere from 5 hours or less, to 9 hours or more) and how much alcohol they usually drank (ranging from none to two or more drinks per week).

In general, the researchers found, as Internet use climbed, so did BMI, particularly among girls younger than 18 years old.

The children surveyed often rationalized their downloading by saying that everyone does it. Many also pointed to downloads made by their own parents as an implicit form of authorizationRead the full Brief, 08/11/2007

Depending on the circumstances, these harassing or "cyberbullying" behaviors may be truly threatening, merely annoying or relatively benign. But several patterns are clear: girls are more likely than boys to be targets; and teens who share their identities and thoughts online are more likely to be targets than those who lead less active online lives.Read the full Brief, 06/27/2007

Four out of five parents that use parental control software don't turn it on, despite being concerned about their children's online safety, says McAfee.

Research by the security firm revealed a further 52 percent of parents admitted they never changed the security settings on their parental controls software while 20 percent admitted to being unsure as to whether they level of security. Nearly two thirds of parents also said they hadn't raised the subject of online security with their children.

McAfee highlighted that just under half of parents claim to monitor their children's online activities, however 30 percent said they left their children alone in their bedroom to surf the web. The survey also highlighted that 26 percent of all five to seven year olds have a computer in their bedroom and 17 percent of them are allowed to browse the web.

Meanwhile 46 percent of parent's said they were unaware their children had any social networking profiles on sites such as Facebook.

When it comes to maintaining the family PC, the task tends to fall to dads, with 88 percent of men saying they were responsible for installing and monitoring security software on their home PC. The survey showed that twice as many Dad's compared to Mum's actively seek out information on the latest online threats and 13 percent of mum's claimed their kids were more internet savvy than they were.

Much has been made about violent video games and how they impact children over the past decade and legislatures and activist groups alike have tried to find ways to stop them from getting in the hands of minors. And with the help of retailers, most laws have tried to make it impossible for those under the age of 17 to buy an M-rated game. But according to a recent Nielsen survey, 17 percent of Grand Theft Auto IV buyers were underage.

Nielsen found that of the 6,000 respondents, 17 percent of all buyers were younger than 17 -- the children were aged between 6 and 17 -- and of those younger buyers, 61 percent bought the game themselves, while 39 percent had a relative or friend buy it for them. In those cases where someone else bought the game for the kids, 80 percent were the child's parent or guardian and 10 percent said their older siblings bought the game for them.

Dateline NBC

All of Dateline’s predator investigations have been predicated on the idea that teenagers are willing, and sometimes eager, to share very personal information online. What are kids really up to on the computer? They may not always want to tell you, but they told Dateline in a new nationwide survey. In a survey conducted by The Intelligence Group, Dateline questioned 500 teenagers across the country, ages 14 to 18, about their computer habits.

When asked if they chat online to people they’ve never met before, an overwhelming majority said “yes,” whether it’s “all the time,” “sometimes,” or “not very often.” When asked if someone they’ve met online has wanted to meet them in person, 58 percent said “yes.” And 29 percent said they’ve had a “scary” experience online.

When asked if they talk about personal information on the Internet— things like aname, a picture, an address, a birthday, about half the teens said “yes.” We also asked if they did things online they would not want their parents to know about. Again, about half said “yes.”

More than 90 percent told us that they were responsible when they used the computer… but said that they thought friends, classmates, and other teens were not behaving responsibly online.

Below are the results: Question 1: Have you ever met someone online via e-mail, instant messenger, chat room, etc.?
MALE /FEMALE /14-18 /19-24
Yes 71% 76% 66% 66%
No 29% 24% 34% 34%

Question 2:How often would you say you talk to people via the Internet that you don\'t know, but have met online?

MALE FEMALE 14-18 YEARS OLD 19-24 YEARS OLD
All the time 24% 32% 15% 23%
Very Often 18% 19% 17% 19%
Sometimes 26% 26% 26% 28%
Not very often 26% 21% 33% 26%
Not at all 6% 3% 10% 4%

Question 3: Has anyone you have met online ever asked to meet you in person?
Total MALE FEMALE 14-18 19-24
Yes 63% 65% 62% 58% 68%
No 37% 35% 38% 42% 32%

Question 4: Have you ever had a scary online experience, or an online experience that has made you feel uncomfortable in any way?

MALE FEMALE 14-18 19-24
Yes 29% 35% 29% 35%
No 71% 65% 71% 65%

Question 5:You mentioned that you had an online experience that made you uncomfortable. Did you tell anyone about it?
MALE FEMALE 14-18 19-24
Yes 61% 61% 63% 60%
No 39% 39% 38% 40%

Question 6: Have you ever done anything online that you would not want your parents to know about?

MALE FEMALE 14-18 19-24
Yes 59% 40% 49% 50%
No 41% 60% 51% 50%

Question 7: Do you talk about yourself or personal things online?

MALE FEMALE 14-18 19-24
Yes 58% 44% 47% 55%
No 42% 56% 53% 45%

Question 8: Do you think your parents know what you\'re really doing when you\'re on the computer?
MALE FEMALE 14-18 19-24
Yes 46% 60% 55% 51%
No 54% 40% 45% 49%

Question 9: Do you think your parents would mind if they knew what you were really doing on the computer?
MALE FEMALE 14-18 19-24
Yes 46% 50% 54% 42%
No 54% 50% 46% 58%

Question 10:Do you think you use the computer responsibly?
TOTAL MALE FEMALE 14-18 19-24
Yes 92% 90% 94% 91% 93%
No 8% 10% 6% 9% 7%

Question 11: Would you say that most people your age use the computer responsibly?
TOTAL MALE FEMALE 14-18 19-24 Yes 39% 42% 36% 30% 47%
No 61% 58% 64% 70% 53%

© 2006 MSNBC Interactive METHODOLGY

This survey, by The Intelligence Group, was conducted online in January of 2006. The total sample is of 500 teens, and a margin of error is 4.4 percent. The Intelligence Group is a leading trend forecasting and market research firm. Read the full Brief, 04/28/2006

Yet most digital-age parents aren\'t media-haters despite a recent flurry of stories about sexual predators lurking on social networking sites like MySpace.com and clips of teenage buffoonery circulating on video-sharing sites, according to a national survey released today by San Francisco-based Common Sense Media.

Read the full Brief, 06/07/2006

Jaana Juvonen, University of California--Los Angeles

Nearly three in four teenagers say they were bullied online at least once during a recent 12-month period, and only one in 10 reported such cyber-bullying to parents or other adults, according to a new study by UCLA psychologists.

Of those who were bullied online, 85 percent also have been bullied at school, the psychologists found. The probability of getting bullied online was substantially higher for those who have been the victims of school bullying.

"Bullying affects millions of students and is not limited to school grounds," said lead study author Jaana Juvonen, a professor of psychology and chair of UCLA's developmental psychology program. "Bullying on the Internet looks similar to what kids do face-to-face in school. The Internet is not functioning as a separate environment but is connected with the social lives of kids in school. Our findings suggest that especially among heavy users of the Internet, cyber-bullying is a common experience, and the forms of online and in-school bullying are more alike than different."
 
The research is based on an anonymous Web-based survey of 1,454 participants between the ages of 12 and 17, who were recruited through a nationally popular teen website from August through October 2005. The psychologists' findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of School Health.

Forty-one percent of the teenagers surveyed reported between one and three online bullying incidents over the course of a year, 13 percent reported four to six incidents and 19 percent reported seven or more incidents, Juvonen said.

*42% of parents don\'t review the content of their teen(s) are reading and/or writing in chat rooms or instant messages;

*Parents are not familiar with the most common IM shorthand/lingo, i.e.,

*57% of parents don\'t know LOL (laughing out loud)

*68% don\'t now BRB (be right back)

*92% were unaware that A/S/L means age/sex/location

*95% of weren\'t familiar with POS (parents over shoulder)and P911 (parent alert);

*28% of parents don\'t know if their teens are speaking with strangers online;

*30% of parents let their teens use computers in private areas of the home (e.g. bedroom, office).

--Cynopsis: Kids 05/24/05Read the full Brief, 05/24/2005

According to a new national poll commissioned by Cable in the Classroom and conducted by Harris Interactive®, 71 percent of parents also think a major portion of the responsibility for ensuring children’s safety on the Internet falls to schools. The poll was released today at the PTA Back-to-School Media Briefing held at the New York City Public Library.

“Parents want to take primary responsibility for guiding their kids’ use of the Internet,” said Douglas Levin, senior director of education policy for Cable in the Classroom. “Yet, as the Internet continues to change and evolve, most parents don’t feel very knowledgeable about how to ensure children’s Internet safety and are looking for schools to help.”Read the full Brief, 08/10/2006

Nearly half - 46 percent - of US "tweens" (those age 8-12) use a cell phone, and safety is the primary reason that parents cite for their childrens' having a mobile phone, according to Nielsen's newly launched Mobile Kids Insights survey.

The survey also estimates that US tweens - a population segment of 20 million - get their own cell phone between age 10 and 11, on average.
Some 55 percent of tweens who own a cell phone send text messages and 21 percent download ringtones, according to the study.

Robert Hart, Intuitive Media; Professor Karen Pine,  University of Hertfordshire School of Psychology, United Kingdom

The Learning in the Family report which looked at how families are involved in children’s learning, was funded by Becta, commissioned by Intuitive Media Research Services and co-authored by Robert Hart of Intuitive Media and Professor Karen Pine, at the University’s School of Psychology. They conducted two online surveys with a sample of 4,606 children aged six to fourteen, going into more depth with a further 2,535 children and then interviewed twelve families.

The aim was to assess how parents engage with children learning new technology and how parents could better support their children’s learning.

The survey found that 94 percent of the girls said that they used a computer or laptop compared with only 88 per cent of the boys. It also found that 50 per cent of children chose their mothers to help them to use new technologies, versus 22 per cent, which chose their fathers.

 
Another key finding was that 40 percent of children surveyed wanted to see an improvement in parental involvement and many of the parents interviewed said that they would like to learn more through online courses, through the television or through their local school or college.

IN a world with grocery store television screens, digitally delivered movie libraries and cellphone video clips, the average American is exposed to 61 minutes of TV ads and promotions a day.

Some people may think that amount seems excessive. But “people don’t seem to be getting up and running away,” said Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer at Turner Broadcasting.

Tracy L.M. Kennedy, University of Toronto; Aaron Smith, Research Specialist, Pew Internet Project; Amy Tracy Wells, Research Fellow, Pew Internet Project; Barry Wellman, University of Toronto

The internet and cell phones have become central components of modern family life. Among all household types, the traditional nuclear family has the highest rate of technology usage and ownership.

A national survey has found that households with a married couple and minor children are more likely than other household types -- such as single adults, homes with unrelated adults, or couples without children to have cell phones and use the internet.

The survey shows that these high rates of technology ownership affect family life. In particular, cell phones allow family members to stay more regularly in touch even when they are not physically together. Moreover, many members of married-with-children households view material online together.

CHICAGO — They think it's pointless, narcissistic. Some don't even know what it is.

Even so, more young adults and teens — normally at the cutting edge of technology — are finally coming around to Twitter, using it for class or work, monitoring the minutiae of celebrities' lives.

It's not always love at first tweet, though. Many of them are doing it grudgingly, perhaps because a friend pressures them or a teacher or boss makes them try the 140-character microblogging site.

 A small U.S. and German study has found that text messaging may help children fight off obesity by taking advantage of the fact that many youngsters are glued to their cell phones.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina and Germany's University of Heidelberg found text messaging could be used to reduce children's chances of becoming overweight or obese later in life by helping them monitor and modify their behavior.

The study, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, involved 58 children aged 5 to 13 and their parents who took part in group education sessions to encourage them to increase physical activity, decrease time spent watching television, and cut back on sugar-sweetened drinks.

The participants were divided into three groups -- one that reported self-monitoring via text messaging, another group with a paper monitoring diary, and a no-monitoring control group.

The study found that children in the text messaging group were far more likely to stick to their goals -- 43 percent -- than those with a paper diary -- 19 percent.

Sydney Jones, Research Assistant; Susanna Fox, Associate Director

More teens play online games than visit social networking sites. Also, the number of teens using email has dropped significantly over the past four years.

The new report, Generations Online in 2009, found that despite the commonly held perception that teens live on sites like MySpace and Facebook, 78 percent of teens 12-17 play online games while just 65 percent use social networking sites. Those numbers diverge for the Generation Y found Pew, as just half of adults 18-32 play online games while 67 percent of them are on social networking sites.

Despite the fact that nearly a third of teens are not social networkers, these sites, along with text messaging and instant messaging are quickly shoving aside email as a preferred form of Web communication for this group. Pew’s research found that 73 percent of teens 12-17 use email—still as sizable number--but down considerably from the 89 percent figure recorded in 2005.

Four out of five parents that use parental control software don't turn it on, despite being concerned about their children's online safety, says McAfee.

Research by the security firm revealed a further 52 percent of parents admitted they never changed the security settings on their parental controls software while 20 percent admitted to being unsure as to whether they level of security. Nearly two thirds of parents also said they hadn't raised the subject of online security with their children.

McAfee highlighted that just under half of parents claim to monitor their children's online activities, however 30 percent said they left their children alone in their bedroom to surf the web. The survey also highlighted that 26 percent of all five to seven year olds have a computer in their bedroom and 17 percent of them are allowed to browse the web.

Meanwhile 46 percent of parent's said they were unaware their children had any social networking profiles on sites such as Facebook.

When it comes to maintaining the family PC, the task tends to fall to dads, with 88 percent of men saying they were responsible for installing and monitoring security software on their home PC. The survey showed that twice as many Dad's compared to Mum's actively seek out information on the latest online threats and 13 percent of mum's claimed their kids were more internet savvy than they were.

Much has been made about violent video games and how they impact children over the past decade and legislatures and activist groups alike have tried to find ways to stop them from getting in the hands of minors. And with the help of retailers, most laws have tried to make it impossible for those under the age of 17 to buy an M-rated game. But according to a recent Nielsen survey, 17 percent of Grand Theft Auto IV buyers were underage.

Nielsen found that of the 6,000 respondents, 17 percent of all buyers were younger than 17 -- the children were aged between 6 and 17 -- and of those younger buyers, 61 percent bought the game themselves, while 39 percent had a relative or friend buy it for them. In those cases where someone else bought the game for the kids, 80 percent were the child's parent or guardian and 10 percent said their older siblings bought the game for them.

 Henry Jenkins, Ravi Purushotma, Katherine Clinton, Margaret Weigel, and Alice J. Robison

A central goal of this report is to shift the focus of the conversation about the digital divide from questions of technological access to those of opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills needed for full involvement. Schools as institutions have been slow to react to the emergence of this new participatory culture; the greatest opportunity for change is currently found in afterschool programs and informal learning communities.

Schools and afterschool programs must devote more attention to fostering what we call the new media literacies: a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape. Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement.The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking.These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom.

Common Sense Media, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center

In a new, nationally representative poll from Common Sense Media and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (JGCC), American parents agreed by a wide margin that digital media skills are important to kids’ success in the 21st century, but they also expressed skepticism about whether digital media could contribute to the development of skills like communicating, working with others, and establishing civic responsibility.

Three out of four parents in the survey (75 percent) agreed that knowing how to use digital media is as beneficial for kids as traditional skills like reading and math, and 83 percent of parents said that digital media gives their children the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century.

But parents expressed skepticism about the value of many digital media platforms, particularly when it came to whether digital media could teach kids how to communicate and collaborate, skills that are essential in a 21st-century workforce. For example:

• 67 percent of parents said they did not think the Web helped teach their kids how to communicate.
• 87 percent of parents said they did not believe the Web helped their kids learn how to work with others.
• Three out of four parents do not believe the Web can teach kids to be responsible in their communities.

Carrie James, Katie Davis, Andrea Flores, John M. Francis, Lindsay Pettingill, Margaret Rundle, and Howard Gardner
Project Zero
Harvard Graduate School of Education

The new digital media are a frontier rich with opportunities and risks, particularly for young people. Through digital technologies, young people are participating in a range of activities, including social networking, blogging, vlogging, gaming, instant messaging, downloading music and other content, uploading and sharing their own creations, and collaborating with others in various ways. In this paper, we explore the ethical fault lines that are raised by such digital pursuits. We argue that five key issues are at stake in the new media, including identity, privacy, ownership and authorship, credibility, and participation. Drawing on evidence from informant interviews, emerging scholarship on new media, and theoretical insights from psychology, sociology, political science, and cultural studies, we explore the ways in which youth may be redefining identity, privacy, ownership, credibility, & participation as they engage with the new digital media. For each issue, we describe and compare offline and online understandings and then explore the particular ethical promises and perils that surface online.

Mizuko Ito, Heather Horst, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Patricia G. Lange, C.J. Pascoe, and Laura Robinson with Sonja Baumer, Rachel Cody, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Martínez, Dan Perkel, Christo Sims, and Lisa Tripp

Digital media and online communication have become pervasive in the lives of youth in the United States. Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies had barely registered in the lives of U.S. children and teens. Today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid reconfigured contexts for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

We are wary of claims that a digital generation is overthrowing culture and knowledge as we know it and that its members are engaging in new media in ways radically different from those of older generations. At the same time, we also believe that this generation is at a unique historical moment tied to longer-term and systemic changes in sociability and culture. While the pace of technological change may seem dizzying, the underlying practices of sociability, learning, play, and self-expression are undergoing a slower evolution, growing out of resilient social and cultural structures that youth inhabit in diverse ways in their everyday lives. We sought to place both the commonalities and diversity of youth new media practice in the context of this broader social and cultural ecology.

According to AdMob, there are many similarities between iPhone and iPod touch users in the US, especially in the demographic makeup of each group in areas such as age and household income. iPhone users are generally older. 69% of iPod touch users are between 13-24 years of age, while this same age segment represents just 26% of iPhone users. 31% of iPhone users are 35-49 years old, while only 12% of iPod touch users fall in this age segment. In total, 74% of iPhone users are over the age of 25, compared to 31% of iPod touch users.

To shed light on how different generations are “consuming” media — and what their future media preferences are likely to be — Deloitte LLP's Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) practice commissioned an extensive survey on the evolving role of media in America. This State of the Media Democracy survey offers a generational reality check on the usage of current media platforms/devices and what the future may hold.

Millennials are leading the way, embracing new technologies, games, entertainment platforms, user-generated content and communication tools — creating a “trickle up” effect where the older generations are learning from them. The survey found that despite their eagerness to embrace new media, Millennials have an affinity for “traditional” media, such as print publications and television. Almost six in 10 survey respondents (58 percent) said they use magazines to find out about what's "cool and hip," such as clothes, cars and music. Perhaps more important, almost three-quarters (71 percent) enjoy reading print magazines even though they know they could find most of the same information online.

Beverly Plester, Clare Wood, Puja Joshi

Text speak (or, rather, TXT SP3EAK) not only doesn't harm literacy in children, researchers have found, but its use is actually positively correlated with their language and reading skills. ... children who use "textisms" on mobile phones tend to have a better grasp of (normal) word reading, vocabulary, and phonological awareness, even when controlled for age, memory, and how long they have owned a phone.

Researchers ... studied the texting behavior of 88 British children between the ages of 10 and 12 and how it related to their school literacy skills. They gave the kids 10 different scenarios and asked them to write text messages to describe each situation; their textisms were split into categories (shortenings, contractions, acronyms, symbols, non-conventional spellings, etc.) and analyzed for their use of language as it compared to their school performance.

"As expected, we found associations between textism use and phonological awareness," wrote the researchers in their report. "What is most important, the extent of the children's textism use was able to predict significant variance in their word reading ability[...] This suggests that children's use of textisms is not only positively associated with word reading ability, but that it may be contributing to reading development in a way that goes beyond simple phonologically based explanations."

Jaana Juvonen, University of California--Los Angeles

Nearly three in four teenagers say they were bullied online at least once during a recent 12-month period, and only one in 10 reported such cyber-bullying to parents or other adults, according to a new study by UCLA psychologists.

Of those who were bullied online, 85 percent also have been bullied at school, the psychologists found. The probability of getting bullied online was substantially higher for those who have been the victims of school bullying.

"Bullying affects millions of students and is not limited to school grounds," said lead study author Jaana Juvonen, a professor of psychology and chair of UCLA's developmental psychology program. "Bullying on the Internet looks similar to what kids do face-to-face in school. The Internet is not functioning as a separate environment but is connected with the social lives of kids in school. Our findings suggest that especially among heavy users of the Internet, cyber-bullying is a common experience, and the forms of online and in-school bullying are more alike than different."
 
The research is based on an anonymous Web-based survey of 1,454 participants between the ages of 12 and 17, who were recruited through a nationally popular teen website from August through October 2005. The psychologists' findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of School Health.

Forty-one percent of the teenagers surveyed reported between one and three online bullying incidents over the course of a year, 13 percent reported four to six incidents and 19 percent reported seven or more incidents, Juvonen said.

Megan A. Moreno, Dimitri A. Christakis, et al.

Scientists at Seattle Children's Research Institute and the University of Washington randomly selected 500 MySpace profiles belonging to self-described 18-year-olds in the U.S. to determine what sort of information the average teen was sharing online. Their conclusion? The kids are not alright. Well, half of them anyways. Nearly 54% of the selected profiles revealed details about risky sexual lifestyles, drug addictions and violent encounters with peers.

Some 8 million US kids and teens spent time in virtual worlds on a regular basis last year, according to eMarketer, which expects that figure to grow to 15 million by 2013. The market research firm estimates that 37% of kids 3-11 play in virtual worlds at least once a month, and 54% will by 2013. According to conference organizer Virtual Worlds Management, as of this past January, there were 112 virtual worlds aimed at people under 18, with another 81 in development.

A new survey of Washington students shows most are making good choices about their health. Still, far too many regularly use alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and engage in risky behavior.

The Healthy Youth Survey focuses on health risk behaviors. The anonymous voluntary survey is taken every two years by more than 210,000 public school kids around the state in grades six, eight, 10, and 12. I

Some specific findings of the survey include:

- Among 8th-graders, 41 percent who drink alcohol say they get it from home, and about 24 percent say their parents haven't talked with them about alcohol and its risks.
- Seven percent of 8th and 10th-graders gambled at least once a month in the past year.
- Fewer students in grades 6, 8, and 12 say they enjoy being at school than in 2006. About one in five 8th-graders report skipping school in the past month.
- About 8 percent of 8th and 10th-graders have been a member of a gang during the past year.
- Among 6th-graders who sometimes feel sad or hopeless, about one in four say they do not have or are not sure if they have an adult in their life to talk to when they feel sad.
 - About 9 percent of 10th-graders report they tried to commit suicide in the past year, which is a similar rate to recent years.
- Only about 70 percent of 10th-graders say they always wear a seat belt -- similar to 2006.

Amanda Lenhart, Pew and Internet Life Project

According to a study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 35 percent of US adults who use the Internet have a profile on at least one social network such as Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter. This is a significant increase over just eight percent in 2005, but still a far cry from the 65 percent of US teens aged 17 and younger who use social networks. While adult social network usage doubled in a year to reach 16 percent in 2006, it took another two years to double again around December 2008.

Robert Hart, Intuitive Media; Professor Karen Pine,  University of Hertfordshire School of Psychology, United Kingdom

The Learning in the Family report which looked at how families are involved in children’s learning, was funded by Becta, commissioned by Intuitive Media Research Services and co-authored by Robert Hart of Intuitive Media and Professor Karen Pine, at the University’s School of Psychology. They conducted two online surveys with a sample of 4,606 children aged six to fourteen, going into more depth with a further 2,535 children and then interviewed twelve families.

The aim was to assess how parents engage with children learning new technology and how parents could better support their children’s learning.

The survey found that 94 percent of the girls said that they used a computer or laptop compared with only 88 per cent of the boys. It also found that 50 per cent of children chose their mothers to help them to use new technologies, versus 22 per cent, which chose their fathers.

 
Another key finding was that 40 percent of children surveyed wanted to see an improvement in parental involvement and many of the parents interviewed said that they would like to learn more through online courses, through the television or through their local school or college.

IN a world with grocery store television screens, digitally delivered movie libraries and cellphone video clips, the average American is exposed to 61 minutes of TV ads and promotions a day.

Some people may think that amount seems excessive. But “people don’t seem to be getting up and running away,” said Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer at Turner Broadcasting.

Supports studies finding relationship between high video game play and ADD

AMES, Iowa – Parents have long lectured their children about the mind-numbing effects of playing video games all day. And a new Iowa State University study has found that high volume action video game players -- those who play around 40 hours per week -- actually had more difficulty keeping focused on tasks requiring longer, more proactive attention than those who played video games less than a couple of hours a week.

The study, published online last week in the latest issue of the professional journal Psychophysiology, also supports research published within the last year establishing a positive association between being addicted to playing video games and having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

Tracy L.M. Kennedy, University of Toronto; Aaron Smith, Research Specialist, Pew Internet Project; Amy Tracy Wells, Research Fellow, Pew Internet Project; Barry Wellman, University of Toronto

The internet and cell phones have become central components of modern family life. Among all household types, the traditional nuclear family has the highest rate of technology usage and ownership.

A national survey has found that households with a married couple and minor children are more likely than other household types -- such as single adults, homes with unrelated adults, or couples without children to have cell phones and use the internet.

The survey shows that these high rates of technology ownership affect family life. In particular, cell phones allow family members to stay more regularly in touch even when they are not physically together. Moreover, many members of married-with-children households view material online together.

CHICAGO — They think it's pointless, narcissistic. Some don't even know what it is.

Even so, more young adults and teens — normally at the cutting edge of technology — are finally coming around to Twitter, using it for class or work, monitoring the minutiae of celebrities' lives.

It's not always love at first tweet, though. Many of them are doing it grudgingly, perhaps because a friend pressures them or a teacher or boss makes them try the 140-character microblogging site.

The results highlight that this is a generation of teens eager to share their thoughts, experiences, and creations with the wider Internet population.

Some key findings of the study include:

* 33% of online teens share their own creative content online, such as artwork, photos, stories or videos

* 32% say that they have created or worked on web pages or blogs for others, including friends or school assignments

* 22% report keeping their own personal webpage

* 19% of online teens keep a blog, and 38% of online teens read blogs

* 19% of internet-using teens say they remix content they find online into their own artistic creations.

Teens are often much more enthusiastic authors and readers of blogs than their adult counterparts. Teen bloggers, led by older girls, are a major part of this tech-savvy cohort. "For American teens, blogs are about self-expression, building relationships, and carving out a presence online," said Amanda Lenhart, co-author of the report entitled, "Teen Content Creators and Consumers."

51% of online teens report downloading music, compared to just 18% of adults who report similar behavior. Mary Madden, a Research Specialist at the Project and co-author of the report, said "At a time when social norms around digital content don\'t always appear to conform with the letter of the law, many teens are aware of the restrictions on copyrighted material, but believe it\'s still permissible to share some content for free." 75% agree with the statement that, "Music downloading and file-sharing is so easy to do, it\'s unrealistic to expect people not to do it."

Read the full Brief, 12/22/2005

Among those who blog, 69 percent say they’ve shared drawings, stories, photos or videos online, while only 24 percent of non-blogging teens do the same. Similarly, 58 percent of blogging teens have created their own web page, compared with 14 percent of online teens without blogs. The report also said that 51 percent of online teens say they’ve downloaded music compared to just 18 percent of online adults surveyed at the end of 2004.

-Cynopsis:Kids! 11/3/05Read the full Brief, 11/03/2005

Sydney Jones, Research Assistant; Susanna Fox, Associate Director

More teens play online games than visit social networking sites. Also, the number of teens using email has dropped significantly over the past four years.

The new report, Generations Online in 2009, found that despite the commonly held perception that teens live on sites like MySpace and Facebook, 78 percent of teens 12-17 play online games while just 65 percent use social networking sites. Those numbers diverge for the Generation Y found Pew, as just half of adults 18-32 play online games while 67 percent of them are on social networking sites.

Despite the fact that nearly a third of teens are not social networkers, these sites, along with text messaging and instant messaging are quickly shoving aside email as a preferred form of Web communication for this group. Pew’s research found that 73 percent of teens 12-17 use email—still as sizable number--but down considerably from the 89 percent figure recorded in 2005.

Four out of five parents that use parental control software don't turn it on, despite being concerned about their children's online safety, says McAfee.

Research by the security firm revealed a further 52 percent of parents admitted they never changed the security settings on their parental controls software while 20 percent admitted to being unsure as to whether they level of security. Nearly two thirds of parents also said they hadn't raised the subject of online security with their children.

McAfee highlighted that just under half of parents claim to monitor their children's online activities, however 30 percent said they left their children alone in their bedroom to surf the web. The survey also highlighted that 26 percent of all five to seven year olds have a computer in their bedroom and 17 percent of them are allowed to browse the web.

Meanwhile 46 percent of parent's said they were unaware their children had any social networking profiles on sites such as Facebook.

When it comes to maintaining the family PC, the task tends to fall to dads, with 88 percent of men saying they were responsible for installing and monitoring security software on their home PC. The survey showed that twice as many Dad's compared to Mum's actively seek out information on the latest online threats and 13 percent of mum's claimed their kids were more internet savvy than they were.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop released a report yesterday that specifies how increased national investment in research-based digital games can play a cost-effective and transformative role. The report Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children’s Learning and Health provides recommendations for the media industry, government, philanthropy and academia to harness the appeal of digital games to improve children’s health and learning.

Mizuko Ito, Heather Horst, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Patricia G. Lange, C.J. Pascoe, and Laura Robinson with Sonja Baumer, Rachel Cody, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Martínez, Dan Perkel, Christo Sims, and Lisa Tripp

Digital media and online communication have become pervasive in the lives of youth in the United States. Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies had barely registered in the lives of U.S. children and teens. Today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid reconfigured contexts for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

We are wary of claims that a digital generation is overthrowing culture and knowledge as we know it and that its members are engaging in new media in ways radically different from those of older generations. At the same time, we also believe that this generation is at a unique historical moment tied to longer-term and systemic changes in sociability and culture. While the pace of technological change may seem dizzying, the underlying practices of sociability, learning, play, and self-expression are undergoing a slower evolution, growing out of resilient social and cultural structures that youth inhabit in diverse ways in their everyday lives. We sought to place both the commonalities and diversity of youth new media practice in the context of this broader social and cultural ecology.

To shed light on how different generations are “consuming” media — and what their future media preferences are likely to be — Deloitte LLP's Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) practice commissioned an extensive survey on the evolving role of media in America. This State of the Media Democracy survey offers a generational reality check on the usage of current media platforms/devices and what the future may hold.

Millennials are leading the way, embracing new technologies, games, entertainment platforms, user-generated content and communication tools — creating a “trickle up” effect where the older generations are learning from them. The survey found that despite their eagerness to embrace new media, Millennials have an affinity for “traditional” media, such as print publications and television. Almost six in 10 survey respondents (58 percent) said they use magazines to find out about what's "cool and hip," such as clothes, cars and music. Perhaps more important, almost three-quarters (71 percent) enjoy reading print magazines even though they know they could find most of the same information online.

Jaana Juvonen, University of California--Los Angeles

Nearly three in four teenagers say they were bullied online at least once during a recent 12-month period, and only one in 10 reported such cyber-bullying to parents or other adults, according to a new study by UCLA psychologists.

Of those who were bullied online, 85 percent also have been bullied at school, the psychologists found. The probability of getting bullied online was substantially higher for those who have been the victims of school bullying.

"Bullying affects millions of students and is not limited to school grounds," said lead study author Jaana Juvonen, a professor of psychology and chair of UCLA's developmental psychology program. "Bullying on the Internet looks similar to what kids do face-to-face in school. The Internet is not functioning as a separate environment but is connected with the social lives of kids in school. Our findings suggest that especially among heavy users of the Internet, cyber-bullying is a common experience, and the forms of online and in-school bullying are more alike than different."
 
The research is based on an anonymous Web-based survey of 1,454 participants between the ages of 12 and 17, who were recruited through a nationally popular teen website from August through October 2005. The psychologists' findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of School Health.

Forty-one percent of the teenagers surveyed reported between one and three online bullying incidents over the course of a year, 13 percent reported four to six incidents and 19 percent reported seven or more incidents, Juvonen said.

Some 8 million US kids and teens spent time in virtual worlds on a regular basis last year, according to eMarketer, which expects that figure to grow to 15 million by 2013. The market research firm estimates that 37% of kids 3-11 play in virtual worlds at least once a month, and 54% will by 2013. According to conference organizer Virtual Worlds Management, as of this past January, there were 112 virtual worlds aimed at people under 18, with another 81 in development.

Megan A. Moreno, Dimitri A. Christakis, et al.

Scientists at Seattle Children's Research Institute and the University of Washington randomly selected 500 MySpace profiles belonging to self-described 18-year-olds in the U.S. to determine what sort of information the average teen was sharing online. Their conclusion? The kids are not alright. Well, half of them anyways. Nearly 54% of the selected profiles revealed details about risky sexual lifestyles, drug addictions and violent encounters with peers.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of teens with profiles (63%) believe that a motivated person could eventually identify them from the information they publicly provide on their profiles.

A new report, based on a survey and a series of focus groups conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project examine how teens, particularly those with profiles online, make decisions about disclosing or shielding personal information.

Some 55% of online teens have profiles and most of them restrict access to their profile in some way. Of those with profiles, 66% say their profile is not visible to all internet users. Of those whose profile can be accessed by anyone online, nearly half (46%) say they give at least some false information. Teens post fake information to protect themselves and also to be playful or silly.Read the full Brief, 04/19/2007

British children's brain development is being threatened by their failure to work with their hands in school and at home, said a report released on Monday.

With woodwork, metalwork, craft, music or car mechanic classes dropped by many schools and children wanting to play computer games at home, the UK is becoming a "software instead of a screwdriver society," said the report, commissioned by the Ruskin Mill Educational Trust.

"Working with one's own hands in a real-world 3-D environment is imperative for full cognitive and intellectual development," said the report's author Dr. Aric Sigman.

"Research is showing that increasing time spent in the virtual world of computers is displacing hands-on play and hands-on learning.

"That allows young people to experience how the world works in practice, to gain an understanding of materials and processes and to make informed judgments about abstract concepts."

The report cited examples of 11-year-olds with deficits in certain areas of their cognitive development and a decline in the ability of young engineers and apprentices to conceptualize straightforward mechanical problems.

"The findings of this report clearly point to strengthening the role of '3-D' learning and crafts in educational policy-making today," said Sigman.

"The implications for the economy are significant and will actually improve the workforce's ability to use computers in research, design and development.

"But parents too have a responsibility to ensure their children have more of a 'hands-on' upbringing."

Sigman also warned class-obsessed Britons needed to drop their snobbish attitude to hands-on vocational training within schools.

"Working with your hands is considered declasse and the sciences are often seen as 'trade,"' said Dr. Sigman.

"Research is showing that increasing time spent in the virtual world of computers is displacing hands-on play and hands-on learning.

"That allows young people to experience how the world works in practice, to gain an understanding of materials and processes and to make informed judgments about abstract concepts."

The report cited examples of 11-year-olds with deficits in certain areas of their cognitive development and a decline in the ability of young engineers and apprentices to conceptualize straightforward mechanical problems. 
 

Amanda Lenhart, Pew and Internet Life Project

According to a study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 35 percent of US adults who use the Internet have a profile on at least one social network such as Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter. This is a significant increase over just eight percent in 2005, but still a far cry from the 65 percent of US teens aged 17 and younger who use social networks. While adult social network usage doubled in a year to reach 16 percent in 2006, it took another two years to double again around December 2008.

 Janna Quitney Anderson, Elon University; Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project

A survey of experts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, and the
structure of the Internet itself improves. They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

Tracy L.M. Kennedy, University of Toronto; Aaron Smith, Research Specialist, Pew Internet Project; Amy Tracy Wells, Research Fellow, Pew Internet Project; Barry Wellman, University of Toronto

The internet and cell phones have become central components of modern family life. Among all household types, the traditional nuclear family has the highest rate of technology usage and ownership.

A national survey has found that households with a married couple and minor children are more likely than other household types -- such as single adults, homes with unrelated adults, or couples without children to have cell phones and use the internet.

The survey shows that these high rates of technology ownership affect family life. In particular, cell phones allow family members to stay more regularly in touch even when they are not physically together. Moreover, many members of married-with-children households view material online together.

CHICAGO — They think it's pointless, narcissistic. Some don't even know what it is.

Even so, more young adults and teens — normally at the cutting edge of technology — are finally coming around to Twitter, using it for class or work, monitoring the minutiae of celebrities' lives.

It's not always love at first tweet, though. Many of them are doing it grudgingly, perhaps because a friend pressures them or a teacher or boss makes them try the 140-character microblogging site.

 A small U.S. and German study has found that text messaging may help children fight off obesity by taking advantage of the fact that many youngsters are glued to their cell phones.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina and Germany's University of Heidelberg found text messaging could be used to reduce children's chances of becoming overweight or obese later in life by helping them monitor and modify their behavior.

The study, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, involved 58 children aged 5 to 13 and their parents who took part in group education sessions to encourage them to increase physical activity, decrease time spent watching television, and cut back on sugar-sweetened drinks.

The participants were divided into three groups -- one that reported self-monitoring via text messaging, another group with a paper monitoring diary, and a no-monitoring control group.

The study found that children in the text messaging group were far more likely to stick to their goals -- 43 percent -- than those with a paper diary -- 19 percent.

Sydney Jones, Research Assistant; Susanna Fox, Associate Director

More teens play online games than visit social networking sites. Also, the number of teens using email has dropped significantly over the past four years.

The new report, Generations Online in 2009, found that despite the commonly held perception that teens live on sites like MySpace and Facebook, 78 percent of teens 12-17 play online games while just 65 percent use social networking sites. Those numbers diverge for the Generation Y found Pew, as just half of adults 18-32 play online games while 67 percent of them are on social networking sites.

Despite the fact that nearly a third of teens are not social networkers, these sites, along with text messaging and instant messaging are quickly shoving aside email as a preferred form of Web communication for this group. Pew’s research found that 73 percent of teens 12-17 use email—still as sizable number--but down considerably from the 89 percent figure recorded in 2005.

According to AdMob, there are many similarities between iPhone and iPod touch users in the US, especially in the demographic makeup of each group in areas such as age and household income. iPhone users are generally older. 69% of iPod touch users are between 13-24 years of age, while this same age segment represents just 26% of iPhone users. 31% of iPhone users are 35-49 years old, while only 12% of iPod touch users fall in this age segment. In total, 74% of iPhone users are over the age of 25, compared to 31% of iPod touch users.

The teen obsession with yakking, text messaging and ring tone swapping on their cell phones might mean more than a whopping phone bill. For the most crazed, it\'s a sign of unhappiness and anxiety, according to a new medical study.

A survey of 575 high school students found that the top third of users -- students who used their phones more than 90 times a day -- frequently did so because they were unhappy or bored. They scored significantly higher on tests measuring depression and anxiety compared with students who used their phones a more sedate 70 times daily.

The study, presented Tuesday at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Toronto, is among the first to explore the emotional significance of teens\' cell phone habits as the device becomes more entrenched in today\'s youth culture.

Read the full Brief, 05/24/2006

Beverly Plester, Clare Wood, Puja Joshi

Text speak (or, rather, TXT SP3EAK) not only doesn't harm literacy in children, researchers have found, but its use is actually positively correlated with their language and reading skills. ... children who use "textisms" on mobile phones tend to have a better grasp of (normal) word reading, vocabulary, and phonological awareness, even when controlled for age, memory, and how long they have owned a phone.

Researchers ... studied the texting behavior of 88 British children between the ages of 10 and 12 and how it related to their school literacy skills. They gave the kids 10 different scenarios and asked them to write text messages to describe each situation; their textisms were split into categories (shortenings, contractions, acronyms, symbols, non-conventional spellings, etc.) and analyzed for their use of language as it compared to their school performance.

"As expected, we found associations between textism use and phonological awareness," wrote the researchers in their report. "What is most important, the extent of the children's textism use was able to predict significant variance in their word reading ability[...] This suggests that children's use of textisms is not only positively associated with word reading ability, but that it may be contributing to reading development in a way that goes beyond simple phonologically based explanations."

Nearly one-half of teen mobile phone users in the US said they would be at least somewhat interested in accepting mobile ads, as long as they got something in return, according to a September 2008 study conducted by Harris Interactive for mobile trade group CTIA.

Harris surveyed mobile users ages 13 to 19, and found that more than one-half of respondents were not interested in mobile ads, even in exchange for some type of incentive. Incentives are likely to be part of many mobile ad campaigns, because a majority of users are opposed to mobile marketing in general.

To shed light on how different generations are “consuming” media — and what their future media preferences are likely to be — Deloitte LLP's Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) practice commissioned an extensive survey on the evolving role of media in America. This State of the Media Democracy survey offers a generational reality check on the usage of current media platforms/devices and what the future may hold.

Millennials are leading the way, embracing new technologies, games, entertainment platforms, user-generated content and communication tools — creating a “trickle up” effect where the older generations are learning from them. The survey found that despite their eagerness to embrace new media, Millennials have an affinity for “traditional” media, such as print publications and television. Almost six in 10 survey respondents (58 percent) said they use magazines to find out about what's "cool and hip," such as clothes, cars and music. Perhaps more important, almost three-quarters (71 percent) enjoy reading print magazines even though they know they could find most of the same information online.

Less than one-fifth of people aged 13-17 use e-mail as their primary communication method with friends, compared with nearly 40% of adults aged 25-54. At the same time, more than one-third of online teens rely primarily on instant messaging to communicate with friends while just 11% of adults aged 25-34 favor this method. Read the full Brief, 11/06/2006

The University of Glasgow study, co-written by psychology researcher Markus Bindemann, found children ages 6 to 8 respond to the image of a television as alcoholics do to pictures of an alcoholic drink.

In a series of experiments conducted in primary schools, most youngsters looked at a picture of a blank television screen as soon as it flashed up on a computer next to a smiling face, The Times of London reported. Read the full Brief, 11/07/2006

Nearly half - 46 percent - of US "tweens" (those age 8-12) use a cell phone, and safety is the primary reason that parents cite for their childrens' having a mobile phone, according to Nielsen's newly launched Mobile Kids Insights survey.

The survey also estimates that US tweens - a population segment of 20 million - get their own cell phone between age 10 and 11, on average.
Some 55 percent of tweens who own a cell phone send text messages and 21 percent download ringtones, according to the study.

Mizuko Ito, Heather Horst, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Patricia G. Lange, C.J. Pascoe, and Laura Robinson with Sonja Baumer, Rachel Cody, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Martínez, Dan Perkel, Christo Sims, and Lisa Tripp

Digital media and online communication have become pervasive in the lives of youth in the United States. Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies had barely registered in the lives of U.S. children and teens. Today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid reconfigured contexts for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

We are wary of claims that a digital generation is overthrowing culture and knowledge as we know it and that its members are engaging in new media in ways radically different from those of older generations. At the same time, we also believe that this generation is at a unique historical moment tied to longer-term and systemic changes in sociability and culture. While the pace of technological change may seem dizzying, the underlying practices of sociability, learning, play, and self-expression are undergoing a slower evolution, growing out of resilient social and cultural structures that youth inhabit in diverse ways in their everyday lives. We sought to place both the commonalities and diversity of youth new media practice in the context of this broader social and cultural ecology.

To shed light on how different generations are “consuming” media — and what their future media preferences are likely to be — Deloitte LLP's Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) practice commissioned an extensive survey on the evolving role of media in America. This State of the Media Democracy survey offers a generational reality check on the usage of current media platforms/devices and what the future may hold.

Millennials are leading the way, embracing new technologies, games, entertainment platforms, user-generated content and communication tools — creating a “trickle up” effect where the older generations are learning from them. The survey found that despite their eagerness to embrace new media, Millennials have an affinity for “traditional” media, such as print publications and television. Almost six in 10 survey respondents (58 percent) said they use magazines to find out about what's "cool and hip," such as clothes, cars and music. Perhaps more important, almost three-quarters (71 percent) enjoy reading print magazines even though they know they could find most of the same information online.

Dr. Michele L. Ybarra, Internet Solutions, Santa Ana, Ca.

Young people exposed to violent media are more likely to lash out violently themselves, new research published in Pediatrics shows.

"Our findings add to the growing evidence that violence in the media is related to aggressive behavior, including seriously violent behavior among youths," Dr. Michele L. Ybarra of Internet Solutions for Kids in Santa Ana, California and her colleagues report. "Reduction in youths' exposure to violent media should be viewed as an important aspect of violence prevention."

Many studies have examined exposure to violent media and violent behavior among young people, Ybarra and her team note in their report. In fact, they point out, the American Academy of Pediatrics calls media violence "the single most easily remediable contributing factor" to youth violence.

The researchers examined the relationship between media violence and "seriously violent behavior," defined as shooting or stabbing someone, robbing someone, or committing aggravated assault or sexual assault, in a survey of 1,588 young people 10 to 15 years old. The average age was 13 years old and 48 percent were girls.

Five percent of those surveyed reported having engaged in some type of seriously violent behavior over the past year, while 38 percent said they had visited at least one type of violent Web site. With each additional type of violent Web site a study participant reported viewing, the likelihood of violent behavior increased by 50 percent.

At the same time, children whose parents read to them, take them on outings and just generally pay attention to them are less likely to become bullies, said the report.

Bullying can now be added "to the list of potential negative consequences of excessive television viewing along with obesity, inattention and other types of aggression," said Frederick Zimmerman who led the research.

"Our findings suggest some steps that can be taken with children to potentially help prevent bullying. Maximizing cognitive stimulation and limiting television watching in the early years of development might reduce children\'s subsequent risk of becoming bullies," he added.

Previous research had indicated that emotional support from parents helps young children develop empathy, self-regulation and social skills, making them less likely to be bullies, said the report published in the April issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Researchers have also found that early gaps in learning and understanding may make children less competent in dealing with their peers and that violence on television leads to aggressive behavior, it added.

The Washington study reached its conclusions by looking at data from a study of 1,266 four-year-olds whose bullying -- based on assessments from their mothers -- was tracked at ages 6 through 11. Overall, about 13 percent the children turned out to be bullies.

The study also took into account the stimulation the children received as measured by outings, reading, playing and what role the parents played in teaching the children.

Whether the child ate meals with both parents, whether parents talked to the child while working were also measured, along with the average number of hours of television viewed.

--Reuters, April 5, 2005 Read the full Brief, 04/06/2005

Jennifer R. Linder, Douglas A. Gentile, Iowa State University

This study had two goals: first, to examine the validity of the television rating system for assessing aggression in programs popular among girls; second, to evaluate the importance of inclusion of non-physical forms of aggression in the ratings system by examining associations between television aggression exposure and behavior. Ninety-nine fifth grade girls listed their favorite programs; 76 programs were coded for total, rewarded, and justified indirect, verbal, and physical aggression. Teachers reported participants' aggressive and prosocial behaviors. Results indicated that the age-based ratings do not reflect the amount of total indirect and verbal aggression in programs, and there were higher levels of physical aggression and justified verbal aggression in children's programs than in programs for general audiences, contrary to hypotheses. The industry violent content ratings identified programs with higher mean levels of physical aggression, but did not distinguish programs that contained violence from those that did not. Exposure to televised physical aggression, verbal aggression, and rewarded indirect aggression was associated with higher child aggression and decreased prosocial behavior. Implications for the validity of the industry ratings are discussed.

Jennifer Aubrey, University of Missouri, Columbia

Guys who check out the sexy female models in so-called lad magazines such as Maxim have more body-image problems than their pals, a new study finds.

While it is fairly well-known that women feel worse about their bodies after viewing other females in Cosmopolitan or Glamour, guys apparently take the same knock after perusing the lingerie-clad women spread across the pages of Maxim, FHM and Stuff.

The researchers say that by looking at idealized, sexualized women, guys feel less-than because they start thinking they need to measure up on the attractiveness scale to snag such a mate.

"Men make the inference that in order to be sexual and romantic with women of the similar caliber they see in Maxim magazine, they also need to be attractive," said lead researcher Jennifer Aubrey of the Department of Communications at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

PURPOSE: To investigate the possibility that the mass media (television, movies, music, and magazines) serve as a kind of super peer for girls who enter puberty sooner than their age-mates. Multiple studies have demonstrated significant associations between earlier pubertal timing and earlier transition to first sex. Does puberty also stimulate interest in sexual media content that is seen as giving permission to engage in sexual behavior?

METHODS: White and African-American female adolescents (n = 471; average age 13.7 years) recruited from public middle schools in central North Carolina completed two self-administered surveys in their homes about their pubertal status, interest in and exposure to various media, and perceptions of sexual media content.

RESULTS: Earlier maturing girls reported more interest than later maturing girls in seeing sexual content in movies, television, and magazines, and in listening to sexual content in music, regardless of age or race. Earlier maturing girls were also more likely to be listening to music and reading magazines with sexual content, more likely to see R-rated movies, and to interpret the messages they saw in the media as approving of teens having sexual intercourse.

CONCLUSIONS: The mass media may be serving as a kind of sexual super peer, especially for earlier maturing girls. Given the lack of sexual health messages in most media adolescents attend to, these findings give cause for concern. The media should be encouraged to provide more sexually healthy content, and youth service providers and physicians should be aware that earlier maturing girls may be interested in sexual information.Read the full Brief, 05/10/2005

The study found that the more time adolescents spend listening to music with sexually degrading lyrics, the more likely they are to initiate intercourse and other sexual activities. This holds true for boys and girls as well as for whites and nonwhites, even after accounting for a wide range of other personal and social factors associated with adolescent sexual behavior.

Researchers found that only sexually degrading lyrics – many quite graphic and containing numerous obscenities – are related to changes in adolescents\' sexual behavior. These lyrics depict men as sexually insatiable, women as sexual objects, and sexual intercourse as inconsequential. Other songs about sex do not appear to influence youth the same way.

“These portrayals objectify and degrade women in ways that are clear, but they do the same to men by depicting them as sex-driven studs,” said Steven Martino, a RAND psychologist who led the study. “Musicians who use this type of sexual imagery are communicating something very specific about what sexual roles are appropriate, and teen listeners may act on these messages.” Read the full Brief, 08/07/2006

MONDAY, Feb. 5 (HealthDay News) -- More than 40 percent of teens and preteens surveyed say they\'ve recently come across nudity and pornography on the Internet, and most say they weren\'t looking for it, according to a study released today.

Those numbers were highest among older boys: Nearly four in 10 males aged 16-17 said they\'d gone to adult sites on purpose within the past year, compared to just eight percent of girls at the same age.

Still, filtering software seemed to lower the risk that kids would see something inappropriate, and only a small percentage of the children reported being disturbed by what they saw.

"Sometimes it\'s possible for people to overreact" to children\'s exposure to pornography, said study lead author Janis Wolak, a research assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire. "It\'s important to give youth credit. Most kids have a lot of common sense."

Wolak and colleagues launched a three-month telephone survey of 1,422 kids aged 10-17 in March 2005. All the children surveyed were Internet users, and all were interviewed with the consent of their parents.

The findings are published in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Forty-two percent of the kids surveyed said they\'d encountered online pornography -- defined broadly as pictures of naked people or sexual activity -- over the past year. Of those, two-thirds -- about 34 percent of all those interviewed -- said their exposure to the material was unwanted.

By contrast, just 25 percent of all kids interviewed in a 1999-2000 survey said they\'d had unwanted exposure to online pornography.

Read the abstract from PediatricsRead the full Brief, 02/05/2007

WASHINGTON, DC—A report of the American Psychological Association (APA) released today found evidence that the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls’ self-image and healthy development.

To complete the report, the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls studied published research on the content and effects of virtually every form of media, including television, music videos, music lyrics, magazines, movies, video games and the Internet. They also examined recent advertising campaigns and merchandising of products aimed toward girls.

Sexualization was defined by the task force as occurring when a person’s value comes only from her/his sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics, and when a person is sexually objectified, e.g., made into a thing for another’s sexual use.

Examples of the sexualization of girls in all forms of media including visual media and other forms of media such as music lyrics abound. And, according to the report, have likely increased in number as “new media” have been created and access to media has become omnipresent. The influence and attitudes of parents, siblings, and friends can also add to the pressures of sexualization. Read the full Brief, 02/20/2007

Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine set up two groups each of 14 boys and five girls. In one group all the kids "had a chronic pattern of violent behavior and had been diagnosed with disruptive behavior disorder," while the other group, a control group, was comprised of kids with "no history of behavioral problems." Members of each group had been exposed to different amounts of violence in media in their day-to-day lives over the past year. It was determined that 58% of the aggressive group had high exposure vs. 42% of the non-aggressive control group. The researchers defined violence in media exposure as "the average amount of time per week that the adolescents watched television or played video games depicting human injury". The researchers observed the brain activity of the kids in both groups while they took part in a concentration test and found that the brain activity of non-aggressive kids who were exposed to high levels of violence in media showed similar patterns in the part of the brain that is associated with self-control and attention, as those kids with diagnosed aggression disorders. The results also found that all of the aggressive kids showed reduced brain activity in the self-control/attention area, whether or not they were exposed to a high level of violence in media.

On the flip side those non-aggressive kids showed more brain activity in the self-control/attention area during the concentration test. Researchers say that there needs to be more studies in order to assess if it was indeed the exposure to violence that caused the results. The report appears in the May/June issue of the Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography. Read the full Brief, 06/13/2005

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, researchers at Michigan State University are able to observe which areas of the brain are stimulated when a subject plays violent video games. Thirteen male volunteers between the ages of 18-26 were observed while they played the mature-rated first-person-shooter video game Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror.

After monitoring the brain activity of the subjects during game play, researchers concluded, "There is a causal link between playing the first-person shooting game in our experiment and brain-activity pattern that are considered as characteristic for aggressive cognitions and affects," said Rene Weber, assistant professor of communication and telecommunication at MSU and a researcher on the project. "There is a neurological link and there is a short-term causal relationship.

"Violent video games frequently have been criticized for enhancing aggressive reactions such as aggressive cognitions, aggressive affects or aggressive behavior. On a neurobiological level we have shown the link exists."

The entire report of the research will appear in the January 2006 edition of Media Psychology. Read the full Brief, 11/01/2005

But flics rated PG-13 may not be suitable for youngsters of any age, suggests a new study.

"Violence permeated nearly 90 percent of the films in this study," says Theresa Webb, a researcher in the department of epidemiology and the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences unit.

"And while the explanations and causes of youth violence are very complex, the evidence is clear that media depictions of violence contribute to the teaching of violence."

This is especially true where the average young person accesses different kinds of visual media for as long as eight hours a day, says Webb.

Borrowing from late communications theorist George Gerbner, happy violence is "cool, swift, and painless," but, "PG-13 films don’t consider the consequences of violent acts, such as injury, death, and the shattered lives of the people involved," says the study.Read the full Brief, 06/11/2007

TUESDAY, Nov. 28 (HealthDay News) -- A study of adolescents finds that violent video games stir up the brain\'s emotional-response center while reducing activity in regions linked to self-control.

"This is the first time that it has been demonstrated that violent video games can affect brain physiology and the way the brain functions," said lead researcher Dr. Vincent Mathews, professor of radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine.

"After playing a violent video game, these adolescents had an increased activity in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal," Mathews said. "At the same time, they had decreases in activity in parts of the brain which are involved in self-control," he added.

The findings were to be presented Tuesday in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

Much has been made about violent video games and how they impact children over the past decade and legislatures and activist groups alike have tried to find ways to stop them from getting in the hands of minors. And with the help of retailers, most laws have tried to make it impossible for those under the age of 17 to buy an M-rated game. But according to a recent Nielsen survey, 17 percent of Grand Theft Auto IV buyers were underage.

Nielsen found that of the 6,000 respondents, 17 percent of all buyers were younger than 17 -- the children were aged between 6 and 17 -- and of those younger buyers, 61 percent bought the game themselves, while 39 percent had a relative or friend buy it for them. In those cases where someone else bought the game for the kids, 80 percent were the child's parent or guardian and 10 percent said their older siblings bought the game for them.

• Almost all young teens play video games. Just six percent of the sample had not played any electronic games in the previous six months.

• Most 7th and 8th graders (ages 12 to 14) regularly play violent video games. Two-thirds of boys and more than one in four girls reported playing at least one M-rated game "a lot in the past six months."

• A third of boys and one in ten girls play video or computer games almost every day.

• Many children are playing video games to manage their feelings, including anger and stress. Children who play violent games are more likely to play to get their anger out. They are also more likely to play games with strangers on the Internet.

Patrick M. Markey, Kelly Scherera, Department of Psychology, Villanova University

A new study suggests that games that feature motion-controlled violent actions, like the Wii version of Manhunt 2 (above), don't affect players any differently than traditional violent games.

The study was conducted by Dr. Patrick Markey at Villanova University, and examined participants with varying levels of psychoticism, gauging their "hostility and aggressive thoughts" while playing Manhunt 2 or Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008.

The 118 participants (68 female and 50 male college students) completed a measure of psychoticism before and immediately after playing one of the two games, with either motion controls or standard controls.

Published in Computers in Human Behavior, the study concludes that the use of motion controls did not exacerbate any of the perceived negative effects (aggression, hostility, etc.) that could result from playing violent video games. Swinging a Wiimote or mashing a button generated the same results.

Brian A. Primack, MD, EdM, MS, Erika L. Douglas, MS, Michael J. Fine, MD, MSc, and Madeline A. Dalton, PhD

In an article published in the April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers found that teenagers who preferred popular songs with degrading sexual references were more likely to engage in intercourse or in pre-coital activities.

Writing in the article, Brian A. Primack, MD, EdM, MS, Center for Research on Health Care at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, states, "This study demonstrates that, among this sample of young adolescents, high exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex in popular music was independently associated with higher levels of sexual behavior. In fact, exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex was one of the strongest associations with sexual activity...These results provide further support for the need for additional research and educational intervention in this area."

Surveys were completed by 711 ninth-grade students at three large urban high schools. These participants were exposed to over 14 hours each week of lyrics describing degrading sex. About one third had previously been sexually active. Compared to those with the least exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex, those with the most exposure were more than twice as likely to have had sexual intercourse. The relationship between exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex and sexual experience held equally for both young men and women.

Similarly, among those who had not had sexual intercourse, those in the highest third of exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex were nearly twice as likely to have progressed along a noncoital sexual continuum compared to those in the lowest third. Finally, the relationships between exposure to lyrics describing non-degrading sex and sexual outcomes were not significant.

Can video games make kids more violent? A new study employing state-of-the-art brain-scanning technology says that the answer may be yes.

Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine say that brain scans of kids who played a violent video game showed an increase in emotional arousal – and a corresponding decrease of activity in brain areas involved in self-control, inhibition and attention.

Does this mean that your teenager will feel an uncontrollable urge to go on a shooting rampage after playing “Call of Duty?”

Vince Mathews, the principal investigator on the study, hesitates to make that leap. But he says he does think that the study should encourage parents to look more closely at the types of games their kids are playing.

“Based on our results, I think parents should be aware of the relationship between violent video-game playing and brain function.”

The Federal Communications Commission report, released Wednesday, promises to kick off a fierce fight on Capitol Hill, one that, like the ongoing battle over indecency, could end up in the Supreme Court.

Citing university and government studies, the FCC concluded that violent programming was harmful to children and said Congress could craft limits that wouldn\'t violate First Amendment rights.

Specifically, the report said, lawmakers have the authority to give the agency the power to restrict when broadcasters can air excessive gore and mayhem. Read the full Brief, 04/26/2007

“Self-regulation, long a critical underpinning of U.S. advertising, is weakened if industry markets products in ways inconsistent with their ratings and parental advisories,” said FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras. “This latest FTC report shows improvement, but also indicates that the entertainment industry has more work to do.”

The report includes results from the FTC’s latest mystery shop where unaccompanied children, ages 13-16, were sent into retailers to make a purchase. The undercover shop found significant improvement by video-game retailers, particularly in national retail chains, but little or no improvement by movie theaters, or DVD and music retailers.Read the full Brief, 04/12/2007

Children who watch a lot of television are more prone to push other kids around, according to the research. Conversely, four-year-olds whose parents tend to read to them, eat meals with them and go on outings together are significantly less likely to become bullies in grade school.

The study followed 1,266 four-year-olds through ages six to 11.

An increase of 3.9 hours of TV per day led to a 25 percent increase in the probability of becoming a bully. And who decides which kids are the roughnecks? Their mothers. About 13 percent of the little ones were so labeled by mom.Read the full Brief, 06/05/2007

Megan A. Moreno, Dimitri A. Christakis, et al.

Scientists at Seattle Children's Research Institute and the University of Washington randomly selected 500 MySpace profiles belonging to self-described 18-year-olds in the U.S. to determine what sort of information the average teen was sharing online. Their conclusion? The kids are not alright. Well, half of them anyways. Nearly 54% of the selected profiles revealed details about risky sexual lifestyles, drug addictions and violent encounters with peers.

Brad Bushman, University of Michigan; Elly Konijn, VU University Amsterdam

The lure of something off-limits only increases demand, a new study says.

In the study, researchers tested 310 Dutch children ranging in age from 7 to 17. Participants read fictitious game descriptions and rated how much or how little they wanted to play each game. In every group, the more objectionable the content, the more kids clamored for the controller—"forbidden fruit," the researchers called the games. The findings are published in the March issue of Pediatrics.

While research has found that ratings increase the attraction to raunchy TV shows and movies, the hypothesis had never been tested with video games ... They suggest that youth should not be allowed to buy their own games, that parents and physicians be aware of risk factors (such as a drop in grades) and that policy-makers rethink the classifications (such as M, appropriate for those 17 and older), which will only make the games "unspeakably desirable."

Film ratings for violence generated by the Motion Picture Association of America are all but meaningless, according to a study released by the School of Public Health at the University of California at Los Angeles.

"The movie industry\'s rating system and its prose explanations frequently hide more offensive elements behind euphemistic and innocuous terminology," said Theresa Webb, a researcher with the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center within the school. "This makes informed parental choice extremely difficult."

The study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found violence in unlikely places, identifying nearly 100 violent acts, for example, in the 1994 film "The Jungle Book," which was rated PG.

"There have been a lot of these studies criticizing the ratings system, yet the system is still very popular," MPAA spokesman John Feehery said yesterday. "We urge filmgoers to use our ratings in conjunction with other sources to determine if a film is suitable."

The voluntary rating system went into effect in 1968, provided by the California-based MPAA and the National Association of Theater Owners. Both maintain that ratings are intended only as guidelines.

The system was revised in 1990 to include descriptive content after being criticized by the Federal Trade Commission and others in recent years as "too lenient" and "misleading." The rating systems now includes G (general audiences), PG (parental guidance suggested; some material may not be suitable for children), PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned; material may be inappropriate for children under 13), R (restricted for those under 17) and NC-17 (no one 17 and under admitted).

Indeed, ratings language is not particularly specific. For example, in PG-rated films, "horror and violence do not exceed moderate levels," according to MPAA guidelines. The UCLA study categorized such language as "vague."

The study\'s research team pored over 98 movies released in 1994 as a representative basis for the analysis, which correlated the degree of violence in each film with its official MPAA rating.

The results? UCLA\'s criteria found that all but three of the films contained at least one incident of bodily harm and that violence was often used as a humorous plot device. A quarter of the violence was classified as "lethal" by researchers.

The three films with the most bodily violence were "Timecop," an R-rated action film, with 110 violent acts; "The Jungle Book," a PG-rated retelling of the classic Rudyard Kipling tale, with 97 violent acts; and "True Lies, an R-rated action movie, with 91 violent acts.

On average, the UCLA study found that among those films flagged by the MPAA for violence rather than language or sexuality, R-rated films contained 62 violent acts, PG-13 averaged 55 acts and PG averaged 56.

The MPAA ratings system provided "little meaningful guidance related to violent content" for parents and filmgoers in general, the analysis stated, adding that MPAA ratings also failed to predict the frequency of violence in each film.

"Parent and other organizations have been calling for meaningful content rather than age-centered ratings for years, and now there is scientific evidence to support that argument," said Lucille Jenkins, director of the study.

Producers themselves are joining the fray. The Walt Disney Internet Group, for example, sponsors a movie review site (www.movies.com) meant to help filmgoers make "informed entertainment decisions." Other sites review movies on Christian-based values.

President Bush recently signed the Family Movie Act into law, which approves new filtering technology that allows parents to skip or mute sections of movies shown at home that contain violence, nudity or questionable language.

The UCLA study is published in the current Pediatrics, a journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

By Jennifer Harper, May 3, 2005 Read the full Brief, 05/03/2005

IN a world with grocery store television screens, digitally delivered movie libraries and cellphone video clips, the average American is exposed to 61 minutes of TV ads and promotions a day.

Some people may think that amount seems excessive. But “people don’t seem to be getting up and running away,” said Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer at Turner Broadcasting.

-Media Life. Read the full Brief, 03/01/2004

The report found that in 2003 and 2004 Hispanic youth 12-20 had exposure to 20% more alcohol ads per capita in English-language magazines versus their non-Hispanic counterparts. Hispanic youth in cities including NY, San Francisco, San Antonio and San Jose were more likely to hear alcohol ads on the radio than youth in those cities in general; specific brands advertised on the radio in these cities are Beck\'s Beer, Coors Beer and Budweiser.

CAMY also found that alcohol ads in 2003 & 2004 ran during 14 of the 15 most popular TV shows among Hispanic\'s 12-20. Though the report does not indicate if alcohol ads were national or local it did point to specific TV shows including Bernie Mac, Fear Factor, Don Francisco Presenta, Cristina and The Simpsons. CAMY is funded by grants from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to Georgetown University.

-Cynopsis: Kids! 10/28/05 Read the full Brief, 10/28/2005

Packaged Facts projects the kids market will experience substantial growth during the next four years, reaching $21.4 billion in disposable income by 2010. Concurrently, families spend more than $115 billion on kids in key consumer areas, such as food, clothing, personal-care items, entertainment, and reading materials. Almost half of this total, $58.3 billion, is devoted to food expenditures. By Packaged Facts estimates, annual expenditures by families on consumer goods for kids will reach approximately $143 billion by 2010.

Marketing to this big-money demographic can be tricky, however, as each age group has distinct tastes, buying habits, and levels of influence over purchasing decisions—not to mention additional influences, such as race, education level of parents, and household income. Then there are the wider-ranging kid issues that have focused anew the spotlight on the potential business and societal risks related to kid marketing. Read the full Brief, 05/26/2006

Nearly one-half of teen mobile phone users in the US said they would be at least somewhat interested in accepting mobile ads, as long as they got something in return, according to a September 2008 study conducted by Harris Interactive for mobile trade group CTIA.

Harris surveyed mobile users ages 13 to 19, and found that more than one-half of respondents were not interested in mobile ads, even in exchange for some type of incentive. Incentives are likely to be part of many mobile ad campaigns, because a majority of users are opposed to mobile marketing in general.

According to the report, in 2004, children ages two to 11 saw:

• 25,600 total television ads (18,300 were paid ads. Most of the remaining 7,300 were promotions for other television programming; some were public service announcements.)

• 10,700 minutes of televisions ads

• Ads averaging 25 seconds in length

• 2-1/4 hours of ad-supported television a day, or 16 hours per week (Ad-supported television accounted for only 70 percent of their television viewing.)

• Over 50 percent of the ads between 4 p.m. and midnight and less than 5 percent of the ads during Saturday morning between 8 a.m. and noon.

According to the report, promotions for television programming account for 28 percent of all TV ads viewed, while food ads account for 22 percent. Other top categories included screen and audio entertainment and games, toys and hobbies. Children get approximately half of their food advertising and about one-third of their total television advertising exposure from programs in which children are at least 50 percent of the audience.Read the full Brief, 06/01/2007