Free Republic

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned children should be banned from social media until they are 18 to avoid a 'distorted' sense of self in their developmental years. Murthy expressed that 13 is far too young for kids to be on sites, such as TikTok and Instagram. His warning came following the release of a study that suggested teenagers on social media will likely become 'hypersensitive' to criticism as adults. 'I believe 13 is too early,' Murthy told CNN Newsroom. 'And I think that it's a time, early adolescence, where kids are developing their identity, their sense of self...And the skewed...

The sad case of lost lives in Uvalde belongs in the category of suicide among American adolescents. The shooter went out in blaze of something only the insane would see as glory. He was insane, of course. Tens of thousands are going out from the same causes. They are lost with no pathway to the future. They kill themselves far too often and take others with them, perhaps by violence, as in Uvalde; but sometimes by despair on the part of their parents, siblings and friends. It is worth noting that many of the other disturbing patterns that are saddening...

Professor Susan Sawyer, director of the center for adolescent health at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, calls the dynamic “semi-dependency.” "Although many adult legal privileges start at age 18, the adoption of adult roles and responsibilities generally occurs later," she said. ... "The ages of 10-24 years are a better fit with the development of adolescents nowadays,” she said.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending over $100,000 studying disgust, hypothesizing that all bullying behavior begins with feelings of revulsion.Researchers at Columbia University want to see if they can “successfully regulate” disgust emotions in teens in order to stop bullying.“Whether it’s being the victim, being the perpetrator, or having to watch this upsetting cycle of peer rejection and victimization, few adolescents are unaffected by bullying’s harmful impact,” a grant for the project states. “This effect can last long past adolescence, as both being the bully and being the victim are linked to the development of both short- and...

An older generation complaining that an emerging one will be the death of civilization as we know it is a cliche and constant as the North Star. However, based on some rather troubling data regarding today’s millennials, it could turn out to be true this time. In his first inaugural address as governor of California 47 years ago, Ronald Reagan warned us that “freedom is a fragile thing, and is never more than one generation away from extinction.” He also reminded us that freedom “is not ours by inheritance but must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation,...

Barack Obama stands apart from other modern American Presidents in many ways. In addition to the obvious bi-racial background, he is the only President to win the Nobel Peace Prize in his first term, and the only one ever designated Advertising Age’s Marketer of the Year. Beyond such specific achievements is his ineffable appeal, the widespread view that he is the coolest President ever. This supernal coolness is not new. In his autobiography, Dreams From My Father, the President wrote that in his teenage years “I tried my best to be cool at all times” (p. 82). However, leaving aside...

Usually, denizens of that epicenter of arrested adolescence—academia—can’t notice that trend in society at large, or even in their own back yards, or campuses. Gary Cross is an exception to the rule. “For some time, we’ve been seeing a curious trend: Young adults are attempting to delay adulthood, while preteen children are hurrying—or being hurried—into the roles and attitudes of young adults,” Cross writes in The Chronicle Review. “It’s no accident that child psychologists have extended their definition of adolescence into the 20s or that primary-school kids are pushed into beauty pageants where they are dressed like Miss America.” “As...

Legally, you’re an adult once you turn 18. By society’s standards, you come of age at more like 21. But as most of us come to realise, you’re not really a proper grown-up for at least 10 years after that. In case you’re not quite sure whether you’ve reached total independence, here are some signs real adulthood has yet to sink in… 1. You’ve been working full-time for six years but you’re still waiting for the summer holidays to happen 2. You sometimes eat cereal for lunch… 3. …and sandwiches for dinner 4. Your ultimate career goal is to get...

To: Those of You Born 1930 - 1979 At the end is a quote of the month attributed to Jay Leno.. If you don't read anything else, Please read what he Said. TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's! First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints. We had...

The teenagers who speak in this video belong to http://www.im2moro.org. These young people realize that if they don't stand up and speak out for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness today, they will be living in a very different America tomorrow.

GAINESVILLE, Florida, April 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The American College of Pediatricians has cautioned educators about the management of students experiencing same-sex attraction or exhibiting symptoms of gender confusion, saying that a pro-homosexuality attitude could disrupt a natural uncertainty in youth for the worse.“As pediatricians, our primary interest is in the health and well-being of children and youth,” Dr. Den Trumbull, Vice President of the College explains. “We are increasingly concerned that in too many instances, misinformation or incorrect assumptions are guiding well-intentioned educators to adopt policies that are actually harmful to those youth dealing with sexual confusion.”These concerns are...

Age Studies, Part One Bethany Stotts, January 12, 2010 Since its inception Accuracy in Academia has catalogued the inner politics of a series of Humanities disciplines, including women’s studies, queer studies, fat studies, labor studies, and others. This article will introduce a lesser-known Humanities field: age studies. A recent panel at the 2009 Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention offers clues as to what literary scholars consider the norm in this discipline: “Temporal Drag” in Ghost World Lecturing on the “ghostlike” period of adolescence post-high school graduation, University of Sussex professor Pamela Thurschwell reflected on the difference between Daniel Clowe’s profanity-laced...

Amidst speculation about her sexuality, American pop singer Kelly Clarkson has revealed she thinks “its hot” to be hit on by girls. But Clarkson, 27, also revealed that even if she is cool with girls hitting on her, she is not interested in having a relationship with a same sex person. “Those (lesbian rumours) are not helping me on the dating front! I prefer the boys. I’m extremely flattered when I do get hit on by girls and I think it’s hot but I’m not into it. I like boys,” Fox News quoted her as telling Sydney station 2Day FM’s...

A new study connects young adults' use of video games to poorer relationships with friends and family – and the student co-author expresses disappointment at his own findings. Brigham Young University undergrad Alex Jensen and his faculty mentor, Laura Walker, publish their results Jan. 23 in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. The research is based on information collected from 813 college students around the country. As the amount of time playing video games went up, the quality of relationships with peers and parents went down. "It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play...

When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity. This was easy to do, because kids only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity. We graded them from A to E. A tables were full of football players and cheerleaders and so on. E tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the language of the time we called "retards." We sat at a D table, as low as you could get without looking physically different. We were not being...

"Thrill up my leg"? Forget about it. Chris Matthews's famous description of the excitement he gets from Barack is nothing compared to the tumescent terms in which MSNBC senior campaign correspondent Tucker Carlson has depicted the intensity of the MSM's love affair with Obama. Tucker appeared on today's Morning Joe. TUCKER CARLSON: It's gonna be such a great election; it has been so far. JOE SCARBOROUGH: Especially when you have the media loving one candidate as much as they love Barack Obama. CARLSON: But it's more than love. I mean, it's the kind of love that anyone who's been a...

LONDON: Childhood is the golden era in one's life. But, a new study has found that it now effectively ends at the age of 11 with parents increasingly succumbing to "pester pressure" from their kids. Researchers in Britain have found that children are forcing their parents to authorise freedoms that belie their years in contrast with the traditional upbringings experienced by their moms and dads. According to the study, more and more teenagers are being allowed to drink alcohol, stay out late, sleep over at their boyfriend's or girlfriend's house and have sex, The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday. Little...

Today’s single young men hang out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood. It’s 1965 and you’re a 26-year-old white guy. You have a factory job, or maybe you work for an insurance broker. Either way, you’re married, probably have been for a few years now; you met your wife in high school, where she was in your sister’s class. You’ve already got one kid, with another on the way. For now, you’re renting an apartment in your parents’ two-family house, but you’re saving up for a three-bedroom ranch house in the next town. Yup, you’re an adult! Now...

Peter Pan Nation by: Malcolm A. Kline, December 11, 2007 If it seems that America’s establishment figures have been getting increasingly immature as the years go by, you are not imagining things. Gifted writer Diana West catalogues this trend to a fare-thee-well in her admirable book, The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. “More than a syllabus is at stake; more than the ethnic makeup of college students is at issue; more than the feminization of the hard sciences is under consideration,” she writes. “Looking back, it becomes clear that there was a...

Blame the '60s for America's perpetual adolescence? Nah, blame the '20s. In the 1990s, most people who played video games were teenagers. Now the average gamester age is nearly 30. Cultural products aimed at tots and preteens capture the attention of adults. "SpongeBob SquarePants," intended for the 6-to-11 age group, draws almost 19 million viewers from the 18-to-49 crowd. Some famous museums, uncomfortable with their adult role as guardians of historical memory, have gone adolescent, staging exhibits on motorcycles, hip-hop and "Star Wars" movies. Many college courses, even on major campuses, make rainy-day activities at summer camp seem profound. Such...