Working as a lifeguard was a dangerous job in “Stranger Things.” A red-hot summer job market awaits teenagers, reports Paul Wiseman and Mae Anderson for AP. Employers are raising pay and perks to lure seasonal workers. Summer employment has dropped in recent years as teenagers focus on college prep, but the numbers will rise this summer predicts Drexel’s Center for Labor Markets and Policy. An estimate one-third youths 16 to 19 will be employed say researchers. That’s the hig

Photo: Natureaddict/Pixabay Auguste Meyrat is sending his children to “screen-free” schools, he writes in The Federalist. As a teacher, he’s seen the damage inflicted by obsessive smartphone use. Students “have lost the ability to focus; they can’t remember anything (except to check their smartphone every other second); they lack imagination and depend heavily on sound and visuals, and they are bored by everything.” Instead of learning about their world and participating in i

Fifty-nine percent of teens say they’ve been bullied online, reports Pew. In a 2017 survey by Ditch the Label, an anti-bullying group, more than one in five 12-to-20-year-olds said they’d been bullied on Instagram. “Instagram is many teens’ entire social infrastructure,” writes Lorenz. “At its most destructive, bullying someone on there is the digital equivalent of taping mean flyers all over someone’s school, and her home, and her friends’ homes.” Teenagers have always been

For today’s teens, “time on digital media has displaced time once spent enjoying a book or watching TV,” concludes Jean Twenge, author of iGen and a San Diego State psychology professor. “Less than 20 percent of U.S. teens report reading a book, magazine or newspaper daily for pleasure, while more than 80 percent say they use social media every day,” her new study finds. Twelfth-graders average “nearly two hours a day texting, just over two hours a day on the internet — which

Immigrant adults are taking summer jobs once done by U.S. teenagers, writes Paul Bedard in the Washington Examiner. “Immigrants — legal and illegal — are crowding out U.S.-born teenagers in the labor market,” according to  Center of Immigration Studies report by Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler. Young people who worked in high school earn more after graduation than those with no job experience, “with wage differences tending to increase over time,” the report notes. The n

IQ scores are falling, at least for Norwegian men, writes Scottie Andrew in Newsweek. For most of the 20th century, IQ scores have risen steadily in developed countries: The “Flynn effect” is attributed to better nutrition, health care and access to education. Idiocracy A Norwegian study analyzing male draftees found a steady rise for those born between 1962 and 1975 and a steady decline for those born after 1975. Researchers blamed “changes in quality of education, increased

The number of teens “hospitalized for thinking about or attempting suicide doubled in less than a decade,” according to a recent study. Anxiety and depression diagnoses are way up for teenagers. Suicide rates are rising for all age groups, reports the Centers for Disease Control. The deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have put suicide in the spotlight. What’s going on? For unhappy teens thinking about death as a solution, Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why could be glamorizing s

Forty-five percent of teens say they’re online nearly all the time, reports Pew Research Center. Ninety-five percent own or have access to a smartphone. Facebook is falling in popularity since the 2014-15 survey. While half of U.S. teens use Facebook, 85 percent use YouTube, 72 percent Instagram and 69 percent Snapchat. Teens don’t agree about the effect of social media, Pew reports. While 31 percent say it’s mostly positive, 24 percent think it’s mostly negative. Of those wh

Iceland’s teens are much less likely to get drunk, use drugs or smoke since the country focused on the problem in 1998, reports BBC News. The campaign, which includes a 10 pm curfew, parental pledges and more recreational activities, cut the rate of 15- and 16-year-olds who say they got drink in the past month from 42 percent to 5 percent. #drinking #Iceland #teenagers #Parenting #drugs

Teens aren’t getting enough sleep, concludes an analysis by Jean Twenge, a San Diego State psychology professor. In two surveys, 40 percent of adolescents reported sleeping less than seven hours a night in 2015. That’s way up from past estimates. “The more time young people reported spending online, the less sleep they got,” the report noted. “Teens who spent five hours a day online were 50 percent more likely to not sleep enough than their peers who only spent an hour online

Severe anxiety afflicts more U.S. teens than ever, writes Benoit Denizet-Lewis in the New York Times Magazine. What’s going on? Over the last decade, anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason college students seek counseling services. In its annual survey of students, the American College Health Association found a significant increase — to 62 percent in 2016 from 50 percent in 2011 — of undergraduates reporting “overwhelming anxiety” in the previous year. Su

More than four in five high schools start the day earlier than sleep researchers recommend, reports Sarah D. Sparks in Education Week. The average start time is 7:59 am, according to the 2015-16 National Teacher and Principal Survey. Fewer than 1 in 4 elementary schools, but nearly half of high schools, start the day before 8 a.m. Schools with few low-income students were the most likely to start by 8:30 a.m. or later. “The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended since