About a week ago I told you about the press coverage surrounding parents making their way to Facebook and wondering what that means for a social network that had previously been meant exclusively for college students.  Well older teens aren’t too impressed by the idea of being friended by their mom and as a result many are calling fro the site to be closed to older adults. 

Of course opening the site up to high school students, middle school students and also to parents makes good business sense for Facebook because it means more traffic.  In fact, it meant 89% more traffic in one year.  But what this also means is that young adults that used to see Facebook as the coolest place to hang out on the web, now have begun to view it as a place overrun with 14 year olds and parents (the very people high school and college students are trying to avoid.)  So what will happen?  Well, no one exactly knows, but I’m guessing an alternative site will pop up on the web in the next year and all the college kids will flock there.  In the meantime, teens are just going to have to find a way to share Facebook with parents and younger siblings. For more click here.

According to this MSNBC article, parents and other adults are now flocking to facebook to both monitor what the youngsters are up to and also to share. This can be troublesome for teens and college students because until recently the internet and other forms of technology were “parent free zones”.  In the search for autonomy young people seek out independence from mom and dad and in the past that meant hanging out with friends in a parking lot or at the mall but today it can be as simple as texting friends or spending time in a virtual space like on Myspace and Facebook.   However, as mom and dad start requesting to be your friend on Facebook and begin texting you using acronyms like LOL,  it’s might be time to look for an other place to escape to.  This is what I think will likely happen.  Teens have already begun to abandon Myspace, soon they will begin to leave Facebook and they will slowly move their virtual residence to some other underground social site that adults haven’t caught on to yet.  

In essence that’s how it always works.  Whether it is a website, a band, a sport, or a fashion trend, things cease to be cool once they become common. When parents start becoming active on Facebook, that’s a big red flag to teens that it’s time to get out. When I was a teen I lived to be cool.  I would say that I spent at least an hour a day trying to figure out what was cool. This involved google searching fashion trends, trolling message boards for the next awesome indie rock band that hasn’t even recorded an album yet, and staying up to date on the happenings of every major prime time TV show.  I couldn’t stand to be out of the loop!  

This was because being in the know and involved in something underground and exclusive made me feel special.  This made me cool.  But what wasn’t cool was when everyone caught onto a trend.  When the indie rock band you love is seen on MTV and when the fashion trend you’re convinced you started becomes commonplace, it’s time to look for something new that will make you special. This is how the teen mind works.  So when parents find their way to Facebook, it might seem like time for many teens to look elsewhere for their virtual needs.  Who knows where they will go, but once adults figure it out they’ll likely go there too and the whole cycle will repeat itself.  

  In my browsing of the web today I found a great film made by Child Net International  that addresses the issue of cyberbullying. The film follows a teen boy as he finds himself the target of bullying.  It’s something all parents should watch in order to gain a better understanding of how these things happen and what effect it has on teens.  I think it’s easy for adults to sometimes brush off the idea of cyberbullying because it was never a part of their adolescence.  I mean it does make sense that being bullied through text message or online chat would seem less threatening than getting physically beat up for your lunch money.  However, the issue with cyberbullying is that it’s impossible to escape from because you never know where it will show up.  It’s not as easy as avoiding a certain group of kids while at school or walking a different way home. Cyberbullying allows you to be harassed through instant messaging, threatened through e-mail and humiliated on myspace.  It is everywhere and with the far reach of the internet, a humiliating photo could be e-mailed to everyone in your school or posted on myspace for the whole world to see.  For teens, this can create the feeling that their world is over and they can’t handle it.  That’s why we’ve seen so many tragic cases of suicide related to cyberbullying cases.  To find out more about cyberbullying and for some tips on how to prevent and address it you can visit articles here and here. Also, you can watch the film below or HERE. 

 

 

Apparently Facebook.com is in for a bit of a makeover.  A couple years ago we read stories about employers who were doing a little research into their prospective new employees lives by Googling their names and checking Facebook profiles.  These employers were able to look past the young professional with a sparkling resume and right into their personal life, which often included embarrassing photos from drunken college parties.  This was also an issue for High School students who lost athletic scholarships once it was discovered through Myspace profile pages that they too were documenting their engagement in some risky activities. Well, today Facebook is seeing that many of their users are growing up and entering the job market and as a result they need a professional look and feel to their Facebook profiles that can impress employers.  But at the same time, what about the young users who are just getting into the social networking craze? They don’t want to grow up and they don’t want their Facebook to either.  Well, this is the problem Billionaire 20 something Facebook  creator Mark  Zuckerberg and his Facebook team have tackle as they figure out how to keep the users who are growing up while still attracting teens.  Read the article here….

Libraries adding video games. The American Library Association has announced a new project funded with a $1 million grant from the Verizon Foundation, the charitable branch of Verizon Communications. The project will place video gaming systems like XBOX 360’s and Wii’s in public libraries and will then will be studied to see how video gaming affects the literacy skills of young people. This is an interesting way for libraries to adapt to the changing interests of today’s youth in order to remain relevant. Read the full story here…

Summer camps place cell phones, electronics on hold. In our ultra-connected world, young campers are learning to be without their Ipod’s, cell phones, and video games. Read the full story…

Movie Studios Agree To Help Discourage Teen Smoking. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says teenagers are twice as likely to pick up the habit if they see cigarette smoking in movies, on television, or in cigarette ads. Also, tobacco companies use menthol flavor to get young people to smoke, says a new study to be published in the American Journal of Public Health. To combat this glamorization of smoking motion picture studios will be placing commercials discouraging smoking on DVD copies of films that depict characters smoking. Read the full story…

Gossip girl goes too far again. As an inappropriate follow-up to April’s edgy marketing of WB’s Gossip GIrl series (picture at left), the network has once again pushed the envelope. The series seems to be capitalizing on the criticism it has received from parent groups that have taken issue with the series’ sex and drug riddled plots involving teens. Click here to see the current marketing images…

VA School may “Go Green” and implement a 4-day school week. Read the story here...

Teens listening to more FM Radio. After a 2007 study suggested that most teens are listneing to less radio than they had in the past, a new study has stated that teens report increasing radio listening this year. While the reason for this is unknown I would speculate that young people find it easier to flip on a radio rather than constantly be flipping through songs on an Ipod. Additionally, in our connected world, listening to the radio creates a greater feeling of being linked with the outside world than an MP3 player. Read the story here…

Textbooks going electronic. With McGraw-Hill reporting that they will be offering 95% of their textbooks in electronic versions, Amazon is looking to capitalize with their new e-reader Kindle. Imagine a world where a college student can have all of their textbooks easily accessible in a device the size of a notebook. No more lugging around heavy backpacks! It reminds me of the moment I bought my first Ipod and realized I could hold my entire music collection in the palm of my hand. The one drawback is that I guess it would be hard to sell your used textbooks. Read the full story…

“Playground for pedophiles”. A new teen dating site called MyLOL.net is receiving criticism that it will become a “playground for pedophiles”. With

19,000 worldwide members (150 of which are males over 40) the site has become the top teen dating site on the net. Read the full story here. / View video here.

In This User-Generated World, Teen Girls Prefer Expert Content. Even though this is a generation that loves to create content, teen girls seem to still prefer to receive information from experts found in magazines rather than from friends’ blogs. Read the full story…

TheStar.com:  Can subcultures still thrive in the glare of the digital age?

The underground, and especially the subcultures that inhabit it, have been much debated and examined since British academic Dick Hebdige published Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), a groundbreaking examination of the symbols and rituals of the punk subculture in London. Almost a decade after Subculture, in an essay reflecting on youth culture, Hebdige wrote: “Subculture forms up in the space between surveillance and the evasion of surveillance, it translates the fact of being under scrutiny into the pleasure of being watched. It is a hiding in the light.” Read the full story… 

Family meals turn teenaged girls away from drugs, alcohol 

Adolescent girls who sit down for frequent meals with their families are half as likely to smoke, drink and use marijuana as those who share family meals less often, according to a new study. “Part of it is just parents being more in touch with their kids, being able to see earlier on if their kids are veering down a path that might not be filled with healthy choices,” says Marla Eisenberg, lead author of the paper and a professor of pediatrics in the University of Minnesota’s medical school. Read the full story…

MediaPost: Overexposed: Kids See Too Many Alcohol Ads On Cable

Alcohol TV commercials are on the rise—and more young people are being exposed to them, especially on cable programs. Georgetown University’s Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) says 12- to-20-year-olds witnessed nearly a 40% rise in alcohol messaging from 2001 to 2007. The group says exposure levels to these ads by young people are the highest since the group begin monitoring ads in 2001. But there is some progress—especially from one self-regulating approach from alcohol trade associations. Where 30% or more of a TV show’s audience is made up of underage drinkers—under age 21—the group notes that the percentage of alcohol product ads on these programs has been trimmed to 6.3% in 2007 from 11% in 2003. The main problem is cable TV. Read the full story…

New York Post: RETAILER SEES RED OVER RISQUE AD ‘SPEED DRESSING’ 

New York ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi is trying to contain the damage after a major client, JC Penney, took the firm to task over a fake viral ad that makes light of teen sex. The ad, called “Speed Dressing,” shows two teens practicing taking their clothes off - and then putting them back on quickly - in anticipation of eventually hooking up in the basement while mom is upstairs. The spot displays Penney’s logo and campaign slogan, “Every Day Matters.” Penney officials claim they became aware of the ad, which never aired on television, only after it popped up on YouTube and a slew of other Web sites over the weekend. Read the full story…

Red Herring: Report: Apple Killed Music Industry 

Apple’s iPod is partly to blame for the collapse of the music industry, according to a report Friday from researcher eMarketer. The Mac maker helped set the tone for a “rat’s nest of restrictions and incompatibilities” that have stalled the growth of digital music, according to Paul Verna, the author of the report. Revenue in the music industry continues to decline in part because of consumer confusion, the report said. A big part of the reason is music fans are asked to sort out the explosion of incompatible formats, players, restrictions, and retailers. That lack of simplicity  has slowed sales. Apple has been a “double-edged sword” for the industry, the report said. Its closed system works well for iPod users, “but leaves many frustrated consumers outside of that system.” Read the full story…

CNET: Kid Rock’s surprising take on illegal downloading 

Kid Rock’s sarcastic “just do it” YouTube rant on illegal downloading is funny and makes the point—illegal downloading is stealing. With a smile on his face Rock says, “I’m rich,” so sure it’s OK to steal my music. Oh, and while you’re at it, “Steal everything.” Steal an iPod, Steve Jobs is a billionaire, he’ll never miss it. Get yourself a Toyota, “They’re foreign” and the gas too, “You know how much money the oil companies make?” Rock shrugs it all off, “They’re not going to miss $30 or $40 worth of gas.”  Read the full story and watch the video… 

MSNBC: Religious Americans: My faith isn’t the only way 

America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most Americans don’t feel their religion is the only way to eternal life — even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise.  The findings, released Monday in a survey of 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don’t know fundamental teachings of their own faiths.  Among the more startling numbers in the survey, conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: 57 percent of evangelical church attendees said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life, in conflict with traditional evangelical teaching.  Read the full story…

AP: Little `Barbie Brat’ bullies become concern 

Recess was Allie Long’s favorite part of the day until the second grade, when some of her friends on the playground pressured her to join their whisper campaign against a classmate. Allie shrugged. She didn’t want to hear their rumor or help spread it around. In an instant, her best friends since kindergarten became her tormenters. “They started taunting and teasing her,” said Allie’s mom, Trudy Ludwig. “She was on this play structure and they blocked all of the exits and wouldn’t let her off. They started moving closer to her. Allie just freaked out. One of the girls realized it was getting out of hand and got a teacher to help.” Bullying among adolescents has captured the attention of researchers, educators and parents alarmed by a parade of mean girls and cyber-bullies caught in mid-punch on viral video. But such aggression may not just happen in a whirl of adolescent hormones, some in the growing anti-bully movement argue. Read the full story…

Advertising Age: Hey, Buddy, Can I Bum a Snus Off You? 

Faced with rising taxes for cigarettes — in New York the price of a pack hit $9 — and ever-tightening smoking bans in places such as Los Angeles, where a bill threatens to force smokers out of all outdoor eating areas, Big Tobacco is trying a new approach to keep America’s dwindling 45 million smokers in the fold. The solution: snus (they are always curiously plural), a pinch of steam-cured tobacco nestled in a tiny tea-bag-like pouch. Snus don’t need to be spit out like traditional fermented dipping tobacco; they simply remain under your upper lip until you’ve gotten your nicotine fix.  Read the full story…

Advertising Age: In Google We Trust

The most reputable company in America: Google, which toppled Microsoft from the top perch in the 2007 Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient study released today — and sent it tumbling all the way down to No. 10. But what should be even more eye-opening to the companies rounding out the top 10 — which include Johnson & Johnson and General Mills — and the rest of the list is that Google’s victory shows that a company that spends nothing on advertising can still be the most positively perceived by consumers.  Read the full story…

Texting ‘addiction’ costing teens, parents

When the cell bill arrived, complete with a $300 payment notice, Travis Ramsay was in a state of disbelief. Travis Ramsay ran up a $300 mobile phone bill, mainly because of texting charges. “I was pretty mad,” the 13-year-old said. “I walked outside and punched the wall as hard as I could.” He was mad because even though the bill was his father’s name, Travis Ramsay had to pay it. After all, it was his text messaging that padded the amount due. Ramsay said when he started texting his friends, some who at times were standing right by him, and he didn’t realize the cost. Plus, he said, it was fun. Read the full story…

Emaxhealth: Strong Student Connection To School Community Key To Preventing Violence

In a report issued by McLean Hospital, the United States Secret Service and the United States Department of Education, researchers note that creating a positive school climate in which students believe the school staff genuinely wants to hear from them about threats or possible attacks is critical to preventing future Columbine-like school violence. The 15-page report “Prior Knowledge of Potential School-Based Violence: Information Students Learn May Prevent a Targeted Attack,” available at www.secretservice.gov , outlines the results of multiple interviews of bystanders to violent school attacks to determine how students with prior knowledge of school violence made decisions regarding what steps, if any, to take after learning the information. Read the full story…

New York Times: Starving Themselves, Cocktail in Hand

Manorexia. Orthorexia. Diabulimia. Binge Eating Disorder. All are dangerous variations on the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia, and have become buzzwords that are popping up on Web sites and blogs, on television and in newspaper articles. As celebrity magazines chronicle the glamorous and the suffering, therapists and a growing number of researchers are trying to treat and understand the conditions. The latest entry in the lexicon of food-related ills is drunkorexia, shorthand for a disturbing blend of behaviors: self-imposed starvation or bingeing and purging, combined with alcohol abuse.  Read the full story…

The National Post: Exposed G-string tied to today’s social values.

For hippies, it was the androgynous tunic; for modern teens, it is the exposed G-string. “There’s always a link between style and social values,” said Mariette Julien, a professor at L’Universite du Quebec a Montreal who presented a paper on the topic of teen dress at the country’s largest annual gathering of academics last week. “People aren’t conscious of the symbolism in their style of dress, but it remains very present.” Read the full story…

Other Headlines:

 

• Possible Gossip GIrl Spinoff
• Gen Y Fears Wrinkles: Cosmeceutical Sales To Hit $21 Billion
• Beloved Characters as Reimagined for the 21st Century
• Disney Revs Up Tween Star Machine
• Thai School gets bathrooms for transvestite students
• Why GTA IV Was the Beginning of the End
• Teen Choice Awards 2008 Nominations
• Sears teams with MTV to lure teens
• Facebook overtakes MySpace worldwide
• Disney’s “Camp Rock” racks up ratings
  
  

Health Alert: Teen teeth whitening

The desire for whiter, brighter teeth is trickling down to teens and even younger. Kids across the country are bleaching their pearly whites, often without their parents knowledge. But there are some things you can do to help them avoid tooth trouble. Girls and boys alike, from elementary to high school, are white hot about bleaching their teeth.
Dr. David Carroll, a dentist, said, “Kids are under a lot of pressure, as adults are, to look and to feel to look good, to have white teeth.” Read the full story…

NBC10.com: Experts Say Teen Drivers Want Parents’ Help

New research was made public on Tuesday about teenage drivers and what parents could do to keep their kids safe.
The information comes just a day after a 16-year-old driver, who had his junior license for just six days, lost control of his SUV, killing himself and a 16-year-old passenger. Dr. Dennis Durbin from Children’s Hospital, has analyzed how and why new drivers wind up injured or in fatal accidents. “Literally overnight, teens go from their lowest to their highest lifetime risk of getting in a fatal crash the day they get their license,” he said. “They get that license and I think a lot of people think that’s a license that shows that they can drive. But it’s really not — it just showed that they passed a test that allows them to get on the road.”  Read the full story…

Metroactive: Generation Debt. 

He was your typical college kid who was persuaded to sign up for his first credit card, right there on the San Jose State campus. It didn’t take long for Rance Bobo to max out that card when he bought a bike. After that, he signed up for a few more cards, using them to buy clothes and stuff for school. The debt started catching up to him, so he decided to take out student loans to pay it off and help make ends meet. By the time Bobo left college, he was $20,000 in the hole. That didn’t stop him from taking out another 20 grand for a car loan. More than a decade later, Bobo, now 30, is still chipping away at his $30,000 tab. Even if he is saddled with debt, with no end in sight, Bobo’s not losing any sleep over it. He finds it hard to save money, often tempted to spend it on nice clothes and the latest technology. He describes his penchant for living beyond his means as a mark of his generation, one made up of folks who will drop $4 on a coffee drink without a second thought, and pride themselves on having the latest gadget in hand. Read the full story…

Through a Teacher’s Eyes: Schools, culture sending the wrong message on teen pregnancy. 

“Carol get hooked up” was the subject of an email I received this morning from “urbangiftcardonus@….” Associating it with Urban Outfitters in Cambridge, I opened it. I should have known better. It was a “gift” card offer from FabFlyGear.com, selling clothing by Sean “Diddy” Combs, 50 Cent, Jay-Z, and Eminem. Frankly, if my mind were not on writing this column in response to the Gloucester High School pregnancy debacle, I would have simply put it in the trash. However, since I have visited Urban Outfitters from time to time, mostly out of curiosity, I decided there might be something on sale there that could help me shape an argument to explain what needs to be done if we are to save nearly an entire generation of youngsters from dissolution. Read the full column…

Business Week: What Do Teens Want? 

Nearly 59,000 captive teens might seem like every parent’s worst nightmare. But for Helsinki (Finland)-based Sulake, such a group provided a pain-free way to gain valuable insight into what “kids these days” really care about. Pain-free because Sulake runs Habbo, the nine-year-old virtual world that as of early June had some 100 million avatars, 9.5 million of them active on the site each month. And because Sulake could use the world as a platform to question the teens—virtually. Habbo’s second Global Youth Survey features the results of a two-month-long poll conducted at the end of last year, which surveyed 58,486 teens in 31 countries. The findings were recently published in a 255-page report targeted at companies looking to market to the lucrative demographic. Read the full story…

Teens and cell cams: Striking a pose? 

Many families preserve history through photos. Often, a trip to grandma’s would seem incomplete without a trip down memory lane via the big book of pictures.  These days, electronic media dominates everything from the way we listen to music, communicate and save images. Almost every cell phone has a built-in camera, which has some parents concerned – for good reason.  According to a recent report by the Associated Press, more and more teens are taking inappropriate photos of themselves, often wearing little or no clothing, and sending them to prospective boyfriends or girlfriends. More worrisome, these photos, once on the Internet, are accessible to practically anyone.  Read the full story…

Hollywood Urged To To Rid Child Movies Of Smoking 

It’s been one year since the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) pledged to make the movies that children see smokefree. But nothing has been done to put that pledge into practice. “One year later, we are still waiting for Hollywood to do the right thing,” state Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D., said today. “The MPAA must act now to protect children from the harmful influence of movie stars smoking gratuitously on film. We cannot sacrifice the health of another generation through indifference and inaction.” Read the full story…

Study: Teens dropping rags, radio for web, games, and TV 

A new study reminds us of a trend we’d rather not think too much about: teens and “tweens” are reading less, instead spending more time surfing the web, playing games, and watching TV. More teens than ever sharing—and restricting—content online. The Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report is conducted twice a year (spring and fall), with the most recent study carried out in March 2008 (the results were just published). This time around, 1,182 teens (ages 13 to 17) and tweens (ages 8 to 12) were interviewed in-person, and the results confirm a continuing three-year trend of kids putting down the magazines and books, and picking up the mouse, controller, and remote. Read the full story…

Reuters UK: Cellfire aiming coupons at teens 

Mobile coupon provider Cellfire is looking to expand its advertising customer base to include teen retailers and consumer product makers, its chief executive said on Wednesday. Cellfire users receive coupons and discounts on their cell phones from such companies as Hardee’s, Domino’s Pizza Inc, McDonald’s Corp, 1-800-Flowers.com Inc and Peet’s Coffee & Tea Inc. Speaking at the Reuters Consumer and Retail Summit, CEO Brent Dusing said retailers and others who market to teenagers are looking for new ways to reach customers. “If you want to reach them (teenagers) with a promotion, it’s very difficult to reach them in the paper world, of course, because your customer demographics are not reading the newspaper. They’re not checking the mail at home, and they’re probably not going to online coupon sites,” he said. “But they are on the phone, all the time.” Read the full story…

USA Today: Lack of vitamin D rampant in infants, teens 

Giving your children all they need to grow big and strong may not be as simple as a gummy vitamin and three square meals. They still may be susceptible to an epidemic that’s starting to gain the notice of pediatricians and bone doctors across the country: vitamin D deficiency. Mike Stone joined a growing legion of children diagnosed with the condition when an X-ray of his 14-year-old bones revealed a skeleton so thin it appeared clear on film. Read the full story…

Information Week: Today’s Teens: Breakin’ The Law, Breakin’ The Law

Kids these days, I tell ya. Turns out most teenagers could care less about the law when it comes to driving and cell phone use. In fact, a recent study shows that in North Carolina, teen use of cell phones while driving has increased since laws preventing it were enacted. How is it they are failing to get the message? Read the full story…

 
CBS News: Self-Cutting Linked To Risky Teen Sex 

Teens who are frequent self-cutters are also more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors and have a greater HIV risk than teens receiving psychiatric treatment who have cut just a few times, new research suggests. The findings identify habitual cutting behavior as an important risk factor for sexual risk, even in already high-risk teens, researcher Larry K. Brown, M.D., tells WebMD. In 2005, Brown and colleagues from the Bradley Hasbro Children’s Research Center in Providence, R.I., first reported the link between self-cutting and sexual risk taking in a study involving close to 300 teens undergoing intensive psychiatric treatment. Read the full story…

Minneapolis Star Tribune: Dads create clean Christian version of MySpace

About a year ago, Randall Brown started looking for a safe place for kids to hang out. Online, that is. He found out the hard way that MySpace isn’t just for finding friends, networking or listening to cool bands. Companies have hacked into MySpace and spam-slammed it with porn ads and other advertisements. He also looked at Facebook. Although that site has had better luck filtering out porn and ads, there are still teens being teens, posting comments, graphics and applications that might be offensive.  Read the full story…

Wall Street Journal: What the Dating Rules You Set For Your Kids Say About You.

Researchers have known for a while that closeness to parents is linked to less risky sexual behavior by teenagers.  Now, they’re turning their microscopes on the dating rules parents set, with some surprising results: The limits you place on your teenager’s dating may say more about your own love life than your teen’s needs. Also, parents’ satisfaction with their own life roles shapes the kind of rules they set.
Read the full story… 

PC Magazine: Keep Your Kids Safe on MySpace. 

As the parent of a teen, I’m coming to the slow and somewhat unpleasant realization that I may have misjudged MySpace. I’m not saying that I have any higher opinion of the social-networking environment than before, but I’m not so sure it’s going anywhere anytime soon. How could something that’s so perfect a reflection of the teenage psyche ever disappear?  The teen mind, as best as I can discern from the teens I know (and vague recollections of my own teenage years), is an ever-shifting miasma of emotion, pain, euphoria, sexual interest, and a measurement of one’s social status. That’s also a pitch-perfect description of most MySpace pages. They’re confused, muddled, and urgent. If you could shake the contents of a teenage mind out onto a page, I imagine that these pages are exactly what you’d find.

Read the full story… 

Science Daily:  Warning For Teens: Teeth And Jewelry Don’t Mix 

Skin piercings might be the rage among teens, but researchers from Tel Aviv University have found good reasons to think twice about piercing one’s tongue or lip.  Dr. Liran Levin, a dentist from the Department of Oral Rehabilitation, School of Dental Medicine at Tel Aviv University has found that about 15 to 20 percent of teens with oral piercings are at high risk for both tooth fractures and gum disease. Resulting tooth fractures as well as periodontal problems, he says, can lead to anterior (front) tooth loss later in life.

Read the full story… 

L.A. Times: ‘The Baby Borrowers’ 

From “Kids Say the Darndest Things” to “Supernanny” and “Living Lohan,” the antics of other people’s children, and by extension, the flaws of other people’s parenting, offer seemingly limitless entertainment value.  So “The Baby Borrowers,” which premieres tonight on NBC, seems somewhat inevitable. Based on a British show of similar construct, it installs five teenage couples who think they’re ready for marriage and children in a suburban cul-de-sac and hands them a succession of people to care for — infants, toddlers, tweens, teens and finally, aged parental types, with their pillboxes and physical limitations. (Not to worry, the real parents are just a few houses away, monitoring via video and able to intervene if they feel things get out of hand.)
Read the full review… 

Newsday.com: Summer season can be dangerous, deadly for teenagers 

With school ending, students ease into the lazy-hazy rhythms of summer. But it’s also a time of heightened danger that can end in the glaring lights of hospital emergency rooms - or worse. Over the weekend, a Port Jefferson teen was shot to death. In Oyster Bay Cove, an 18-year-old girl was struck and killed by a car. And in Seaford, a mother and father found their teenage daughter dead at a friend’s home after she failed to come home from a party. Teenagers face increased perils this time of year, many experts say. 
Read the full story… 

Mass. Teens make pregnancy pact.

A pact made by a group of teens to get pregnant and raise their babies together is at least partly behind a sudden spike in pregnancies at Gloucester High School, school officials said.

Principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine in a story published Wednesday that the girls confessed to making the pact after the school began investigating a rise in pregnancies that has left 17 girls at the school carrying a child. Normally, there are about four pregnancies a year at the school. Sullivan told Time that nearly half of the expecting students, none over 16, were involved. Sullivan said students were coming to the school clinic multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and “seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were.”  Read the full story…

Va. charity probed for helping teen get abortion.

Authorities are investigating whether a Catholic charity violated state and federal law by helping a 16-year-old illegal immigrant who was in the organization’s care get an abortion.  Workers with Commonwealth Catholic Charities helped the girl travel to and from the procedure in January and signed a consent form for the abortion, Joanne Nattrass, the charity’s executive director, said in a statement Thursday. She declined further comment.  Four of the Richmond-based charity’s workers were fired, according to a letter by David Siegel, head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ refugee resettlement program.  Read the full story… 

WIRED.com: Brit Teens ‘Pool Crash’ Using Google Earth

Tech savvy British teens have found an innovative — and illegal —  way to beat summer heat using Google Earth.  Teens scour through the aerial photographs available in the satellite imaging program to locate houses with pools. Once a target has been identified, the revelers use social networking sites like Bebo and Facebook to coordinate illicit pool parties when homeowners are away, according to U.K tech publication The Register.    Read the full story on Wired.com… 

Ohio Mom Convicted Of Letting Teens Drink Gets Out Of Jail.

A Warren County woman sent to jail for allowing teens to drink in her home is now out on appeal.  Mary Ellen Hause, of Clearcreek Township, was a substitute teacher’s aid in Springboro, Ohio. A school resource officer reviewing students’ Facebook Internet accounts came across a photo of three students holding open containers of alcohol, NewsChannel5’s sister station WCPO reported.Hause was also in the picture.A judge sentenced her to 30 days in jail, but she is out after serving two weeks while her attorney appeals the sentence.Sgt. Don Wilson said he was shocked when he noticed the adult in the picture was Hause, because of her role as a substitute in the district.”You’ve got an adult posing with the kids and all of them had open containers,” said Wilson. “And the second thing that bothered me, was she did work for a school and had exposure around kids a lot.”  Read the full story… 

Study finds that social networking sites are educational. 

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have released a study that says social networks like MySpace and Facebook offer educational benefits. The study found that low-income students are just as technologically savvy as their peers, going against what previous research has indicated. The majority (94%) of students use the Internet, 82 percent go online at home and 77 percent have a profile on a social networking site. As for the educational benefits, the students listed technology skills first, followed by creativity and being open to new views and communication skills.  Read the full story…

Canadian study says Facebook violates privacy.

The university’s Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) is asking the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to investigate what it considers to be Facebook’s violations of Canadian privacy law.

Facebook’s policies – from sign-up requirements and advertising policies to third party applications and mobile access – represent 22 privacy violations, according to CIPPIC.

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Wall Street Journal: A film with underage fans faces marketing chalenges.