Rather than telling young people not to sext, we should encourage them to think about sexting as part of a broader negotiation of intimate relationships.
Teen sexting has been on the rise over the last decade as smartphones have become more available; meanwhile teen sex has declined.
(Shutterstock)
Teen sexting is on the rise. Boys and girls are equally likely to share sexually explicit imagery but girls report feeling more pressure to sext and more judgement about how they do it.
Tyra Hemans, a 19-year-old senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, holds signs honoring slain teachers and friends.
Zachary Fagenson/Reuters
While parents are growing more concerned about their children’s easy access to porn, they often don’t realize just how ‘hardcore’ and violent it has become and how early their kids are seeing it.
Just because everyone else is doing it…
Shane Pope
Adolescents have important developmental work to do. Despite what worried grownups think, taking needless risks isn’t the goal for teens. Being risky is part of exploring and learning about the world.
Engaging with your teen’s online world will make it easier to have difficult conversations about some of the risks and ways to manage them.
Shutterstock
Parents should ask their teens to show them how they use social media and how it works so they can have conversations about what the risks are and how to reduce them.
According to a new analysis, the number of US teens who felt “useless” and “joyless” grew 33 percent between 2010 and 2015, and there was a 23 percent increase in suicide attempts.
The amount of time teens have spent working and participating in extracurricular activities has held steady in recent years. There has, however, been one big change in their lives: smartphones.
How does technology affect family relationships?
Syda Productions/Shutterstock.com
Willow Bay, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
New research shows that families in Japan and the US struggle in very similar ways with how technology is affecting their lives, their relationships and each other.
In the past, kids couldn’t wait to get their driver’s licenses. Now? Not so much.
Jenn Huls
Teenagers aren’t just lazy. Their sleep hormones aren’t calibrated to let them get up and go until later in the morning – which has academic and health consequences when school starts too early.
Parents play an important role in when their teenage children start drinking and their drinking patterns as they grow.
from www.shutterstock.com
Teenagers pick up cues about drinking from you and your family. Here’s how you can help them develop a healthier relationship with alcohol.
Setting a low age floor for legal access to cannabis could improve drug-use prevention, education, health and safety for youth, research suggests.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang)
Nancy Berglas, University of California, San Francisco and Jillian Eversole, University of California, San Francisco
Understanding where teens learn about sex and how that influences them can help us find ways to encourage healthy sexual behaviors, such as using condoms and birth control.
The 1992 class photo from Morse High School in San Diego, California.
Ewen Roberts/flickr
Evolutionary psychology could explain why the memories and friendships formed during these years seem more vivid, potent and meaningful than those from any other stage of life.
Parents and students view a memorial marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting that claimed 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Reuters/Joe Skipper
Learning about a friend’s suicide attempt appears to transform a distant idea into something very real. Should this change the way we talk about suicide?
Some parents worry their teens’ obsession with dark fiction means they’ll grow up and overthrow the government – like Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games. How real is this concern?
Professor, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development, Owerko Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary