A surprising number of teenagers — nearly 15 percent — think they’re going to die young, leading many to drug use, suicide attempts and other unsafe behavior, new research suggests.
The researchers analyzed data from a nationally representative survey of kids in grades 7 to 12 who were interviewed three times between 1995 and 2002. Of 20,594 teens interviewed in the first round, 14.7 percent said they thought they had a good chance of dying before age 35. Subsequent interviews found these fatalistic kids engaged in more risky behavior than more optimistic kids.
The study suggests some kids overestimate their risks for harm; however, it also provides evidence that some kids may have good reason for being fatalistic.
Native Americans, blacks and low-income teens — kids who are disproportionately exposed to violence and hardship — were much more likely than whites to believe they’d die young.
Read the msnbc news about this subject here.
Social networking sites teached us new meanings for words like `friends`. These sites can increase your circle of friends, but they also increase your exposure to people with less-friendly intentions.
Talk with your teen to think about keeping some control over the info they post. They should consider restricting the access to their personal info to a select group of people, like, real friends from school, sports team, or family.
Queensland police have urged parents to be extra vigiliant about their children’s online activities after a Brisbane man was convicted for using the internet to procure a child for sexual purposes.
The 34-year-old man, from Runcorn on Brisbane’s southside, was this week sentenced to five years in jail, the highest penalty to be handed down in Australia for this type of crime.
Read the rest of the news on ABC News
Over 65 percent of parents,according to a Trend Micro survey, believe their kids are safe while using the Internet and 60 percent are not concerned about kids coming into contact with cyber threats such as spam and viruses, or inappropriate content such as nudity and gambling through Internet-related devices like game consoles aside from the computer.
Despite such parental confidence in Internet safety, this generation of tech-savvy kids who grew up in front of computers are faced with more online dangers than ever before. According to statistics published by Pediatrics magazine last year, 40 percent of kids between the ages of 10-17 have seen Internet pornography in the past year; two thirds of those exposures were unwanted.
According to the Internet Security Task Force, over 30 percent of teenagers state that visiting social networking sites is one of the top two activities they do while online. But social networking can pose dangers - phishing, a scam that sends a user to a fake Web site designed to steal personal data and information, is on the rise.
(The press release)
If you missed it at The Oprah Winfrey Show, read Danielle`s worst nightmare, the tragic story about how social networking sites destroyed her and her daughter`s life.
Click HERE to read it!
Read also her advices on what every parent should know:
1. It can happen to anyone.
2. Learn the technology.
3. Don’t let your children be naïve.
“Talk to your children,” Danielle says. “Tell them about what happened to me and my child. That’s powerful.”
Text messaging has spawned an era of uninterrupted contact among friends, especially young people. Students often tap out silent conversations beneath their desks, even though most Washington area public schools forbid them to use cellphones on campus during school hours.
In the school where your child is learning cellphones are allowed in classes? Did they set rules for using mobile phones? Do you think teachers should be more involved? Do you monitor how your child uses his mobile phone?
About two-thirds of mothers of teens in the United States are just as, or more, concerned about their teenagers’ online safety, such as from threatening emails or solicitation by online sexual predators, as they are about drunk driving (62 per cent) and experimenting with drugs (65 per cent). Continue reading ‘Mothers Rate Cyber Dangers as High as Drunk Driving or Experimenting With Drugs’
44 % of parents said they worry about their teens’ safety when surfing unsupervised, and about 24% are more worried about what their children do online than what they do when they are outside the house. (Harris Interactive-McAfee 10/2008)
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This is the average for the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company. It`s almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier. The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects.
But the phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.
Are your teens texting too much? What measures did you take?
