Boosting teenagers’ ability to cope with online risks, rather than trying to stop them from using the Internet, is a more effective strategy for keeping them safe, says a new study. More resilient teens were less likely to suffer negative effects even if they were frequently online, said the study.
Haiyan Jia, post-doctoral scholar in information sciences and technology. “Internet exposure does not necessarily lead to negative effects, which means it’s okay to go online. “But the key seems to be learning how to cope with the stress of the experience and knowing how to reduce the chances of being exposed to online risk,” said lead researcher Haiyan Jia from the Penn State University.
Previous research has advocated limiting online use as a way to minimise risks of privacy violations and traumatic online experiences, such as becoming the victim of cyber-bullying and viewing unwanted sexual materials.
However, with online technologies becoming more ubiquitous and a greater part of teens’ social and educational lives, abstinence may actually be less reliable and more harmful, the new study said.
“Not allowing teens to use the internet has its own risks. As much as there are negatives associated with online use, there are also a lot of benefits to using online technologies,” said co-researcher Pamela Wisniewski.
“Parents should be aware that restricting online use completely could hurt their children educationally and socially,” she added. Teenagers who are exposed to minimal risks can, over time, develop coping strategies and be more resilient as new, more risky situations arise. “For example, let’s say a teenage girl is surfing online and one of her online friends asks for a photo,” said Jia. “If a teen doesn’t know how to deal with this, she might just succumb to the pressure and send the photo, and then suffer all kinds of stress and anxiety as a result.
“But if she builds up her resilience, she knows how to deal with the situation, she knows how to say no and prevent exposing herself to this risk,” Jia explained. The study was presented at the Computer Human Interaction conference in Seoul, South Korea. — IANS
Teenagers act more mature when mothers are present
Teenagers are less likely to indulge in risky behaviour such as jumping a traffic signal when moms are around, finds a study. In the study, 14-year-old subjects completed a simulated driving task while researchers tracked blood flow in their brains. “In one trial, the teenage driver was alone. In another, the teen’s mother was present and watching,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Eva Telzer who led the research.
Telzer and her colleagues observed that teenagers driving alone found risky decisions rewarding. Blood flow to the ventral striatum, a “reward centre” in the brain, increased significantly when teen drivers chose to ignore a yellow stoplight and drove through the intersection anyway.
Previous research has demonstrated that the ventral striatum is more sensitive to rewards in adolescence than during any other developmental period, Telzer said. “Peers significantly increase risk-taking among teenagers. I wanted to know whether we could reduce risk-taking by bringing a parent into the car,” Telzer said.
The mother’s presence blunted the thrill of running the yellow light, the team found. “When mom is there, the heightened ventral striatum activation during risky decisions goes away. Being risky, it appears, is no longer rewarding in the presence of mom,” Telzer noted.
Not surprisingly, teenagers stepped on the brakes significantly more often at yellow lights when their moms were present than when they were alone. Another brain region, the prefrontal cortex, kicked into gear when teenagers put on the brakes — but only when their mom was watching, the researchers found.
“A parent’s presence is actually changing the way the adolescent is reasoning and thinking about risk — and this increases their safe behaviour,” she concluded. The study appeared in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. — IANS
Chew gum to keep your head clear
Want to get rid of a nagging thought or the pesky lyrics you heard a week ago? Well, chew gum, advises a new study. The phenomenon where you just cannot get out of your head a catchy song for days or even weeks is known as an earworm or brainworm. The effect has been studied before, but its cause, and how to get rid of it, is not known.
Now researchers say they have an answer — chewing gum after hearing a catchy song will help you think about it less often. “Interfering with our own ‘inner speech’ through a more sophisticated version of the gum-chewing approach may work more widely,” said lead researcher Phil Beaman from University of Reading.
In the study, 98 volunteers were played the ‘catchy tunes’ Play Hard by David Guetta and Payphone by Maroon 5. Over the next three minutes, they were then asked to hit a key every time they thought of the songs - while chewing gum, not chewing gum or tapping their finger, the Daily Mail reported. While chewing gum, volunteers reported thinking of the song less often than when they were not chewing gum, or when they were told to tap their finger instead. And chewing gum also reduced the amount they ‘heard’ the song in their minds by a third. The study is the first to examine the effects of chewing gum on earworms, and it suggests it could also be used to stop other unwanted or intrusive thoughts.
“However more research is needed to see whether this will help counter symptoms of obsessive-compulsive and similar disorders,” Beaman said.
In a previous study by University of Reading in 2009, it was found that almost any song can become an earworm. – IANS
