Joanne Jacobs
Digital danger: Screen time is stealing childhood
Screen time is very bad for kids, argues Michel Desmurget, a French neuroscientist, in Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for...
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Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 11
- 2 min
Anxious teens: Are they working too hard in school?
Dropping SAT/ACT requirements at elite colleges could make ambitious teenagers even more anxious, writes Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. ...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 4
- 2 min
Young, liberal and depressed: Doomers are not OK
Liberals are the most depressed among the growing number of sad teenagers, writes Matthew Yglesias on Slow Boring. Teenage girls are...
Joanne Jacobs
- Feb 18
- 1 min
Sad girls: Social isolation predates Covid
Fifty-seven percent of teenage girls felt "persistently sad or hopeless" in 2021, reports the Centers for Disease Control. That's double...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jan 28
- 2 min
Happy days: Connect, care about others, cope
Happy people are kind to others and to themselves, says Laurie Santos. The Yale psychology professor is offering a free, six-week course,...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jan 9
- 1 min
Move it and lose the blues
Exercise and sports -- at least one hour three times a week -- are a natural anti-depressant for teenagers, according to an analysis of...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jan 9
- 1 min
Why parents fear social media
Parents' concerns about their teenagers' social media use focuses on access to explicit sexual content and time wasting, writes Risa...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jan 9
- 2 min
Seattle schools sue TikTok and others for kids' mental-health crisis
Seattle Public Schools is suing social media companies, reports Julie Calhoun on King 5 News. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and...
Joanne Jacobs
- Dec 29, 2022
- 1 min
Fighting fears
Zidaan Kapoor, a math-loving 15-year-old, coped with his anxiety about severe food allergies by creating a "fight fears" app for other...
Joanne Jacobs
- Dec 4, 2022
- 2 min
Home alone
Americans are socializing a lot less, staying home alone a lot more, writes economist Bryce Ward in the Washington Post. That's true for...
Joanne Jacobs
- Nov 27, 2022
- 2 min
Future jobs: Compete with robots or design them?
Throughout my newspaper career, I asked young people about their career goals. There was a time when the high achievers wanted to be...
Joanne Jacobs
- Nov 25, 2022
- 1 min
Child's play is learning
Playing -- especially child-directed play outside with friends -- is how kids learn, writes Jackie Mader on the Hechinger Report. Playing...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 26, 2022
- 1 min
Topless teens
More transgender and gender-neutral teenagers are having "top surgery" -- double mastectomies -- to make their bodies conform with their...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 22, 2022
- 3 min
Most boys should start school a year later than girls
Boys should start school a year later than girls, argues Richard V. Reeves in The Atlantic. Boys are slower to mature and benefit from...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 11, 2022
- 2 min
Fear not
Every night when I put my daughter to bed, I would say, "There are no wolves or bears in Palo Alto. They live a long way away." How old...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 10, 2022
- 1 min
'My future is bright,' teens believe
Young people are optimistic about their futures, reports ACT. More than 80 percent of those surveyed believe their lives will turn out...
Joanne Jacobs
- Aug 5, 2022
- 2 min
Get kids off social media
"Social media is no place for kids," writes Yuval Levin in a New York Times op-ed. He advocates raising the age requirement for social...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 9, 2022
- 1 min
It’s a hot summer job market for youth
Working as a lifeguard was a dangerous job in “Stranger Things.” A red-hot summer job market awaits teenagers, reports Paul Wiseman and...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 1, 2022
- 2 min
When does adulthood start?
Here's any idea that will infuriate everyone but might do some good: Let's make 21 the official age of adulthood in America. No buying...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 26, 2022
- 1 min
Young males in trouble
We are failing our young men, argues podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey. That’s the one commonality in the vast majority of mass shootings....
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