Joanne Jacobs
'At lunch hour, everyone eats alone, scrolling TikTok'
But, Mom, everyone else has a smartphone. Parents are trying to say "no" to smartphones for elementary and middle schoolers, but it's...
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Joanne Jacobs
- May 24
- 2 min
Surgeon General: Social media is hazardous for your kids' health
Social media is endangering the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents, warns Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in a 19-page...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 20
- 2 min
Study links early smartphone use with poor mental health
At what age did you get your first smartphone or tablet? The younger the age of getting the first smartphone, the worse the mental...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 12
- 2 min
Cellphone bans spread: 'This has got to stop'
Schools across the country are banning cell phones in hopes of reducing distractions and refocusing students on academics, writes Donna...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 12
- 2 min
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...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 5
- 2 min
TikTok sets limits for teens as mental health worries grow
Social media is a major cause of the mental illness epidemic in teen girls, argues social psychologist Jon Haidt. Fifty-seven percent of...
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
- Feb 12
- 2 min
Don't risk freedom, privacy to protect kids from social media
In their zeal to protect children from social media, Utah legislators are debating legislation that would usurp parents' rights and...
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 23, 2022
- 1 min
AI is learning to censor social media, and your taxes are paying for it
President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan includes half a million dollars for research in technology to detect and remove...
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...
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