Is It Safer To Let Teens Drink Socially At Home?
Is It Safer To Let Teens Drink Socially At Home?
Expert takes on some common alcohol myths. PLUS: How fake AI nudes are ruining real teens’ lives.
SPOTLIGHT
New Thinking About Drinking
The film “Screenagers: Under the Influence” covers several different types of addiction, but viewers are often most surprised by the research about alcohol it includes. In her latest blog post, filmmaker Delaney Ruston, MD writes “While working on the documentary my film partner, Lisa, and I interviewed more than 100 parents to understand their strategies for parenting around alcohol use. There was a striking difference between parents’ answers and what the data reveals about what we should be saying and doing to help our youth make wiser decisions around alcohol.”
In the post, 3 Must Know Myths About Alcohol and Parenting, she shares a 2-minute clip from the movie that summarizes the findings.
Author Jessica Lahey addresses similar myths in her excellent book “The Addiction Inoculation,” and regularly shares her wisdom online. She has 170 90-second videos about preventing substance use in kids, including some that focus specifically on alcohol:
WELLNESS
Dietary Guidelines May Warn Against Ultraprocessed Foods
Washington Post reporter Anahad O’Connor has been writing a lot about ultra-processed foods this year, and has a new story saying that the scientific experts who shape the way we eat might start warning consumers against eating too many ultra-processed foods.
Ultra-processed foods are “industrially manufactured foods that have unusual combinations of flavors, additives, and ingredients, many of which are not found in nature. These include things like chicken nuggets, sweetened breakfast cereals, boxed mac & cheese, frozen dinners, potato chips and fast food.”
This change would encourage consumers to look beyond the nutrient label and think about where their food comes from, how it is made, and what’s done to it before it reaches their plate.
Earlier this year, O’Connor wrote an astonishing story, “Many of today’s unhealthy foods were brought to you by Big Tobacco,” about how tobacco companies effectively used marketing strategies they’d honed selling cigarettes to get people to buy more highly processed foods.
KEEP ON LEARNING
Keeping Up on Period Products
It’s not just tampons and pads anymore - there are a lot of menstrual products on the market. In the
newsletter, Emily Oster wrote a helpful roundup of the most popular options, explaining the pros and cons of each, along with taking on the question “Do I need my period?”
Preventing Bullying and Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth
The Trevor Project and the CDC teamed up for a Facebook Live discussion on bullying prevention and how to support LGBTQ+ youth, which is now available to replay.
The discussion is accompanied by a number of useful resources, including
NEWS
Young Men Seek Answers to an Age-Old Question: How to Be Hot (New York Times)
Skin-care routines, hair care, a good night’s sleep: These are not cutting-edge suggestions for how to look one’s best, at least not for anyone who has ever consulted a women’s magazine. But for the legions of TikTok users — mainly teenage boys — who turn for advice to Dillon Latham, a mop-headed 18-year-old from Virginia, these are secret pearls of wisdom. READ MORE
New documentary 'The New Drug Talk' aims to educate parents and teens on the dangers of fentanyl (NBC-TV Reno)
"Even if it's your first time using, it could be your last, that's the scary reality now." says Kyle Rochez and the beginning of "The New Drug Talk." The documentary is trying to sound the alarm to parents and young people about fentanyl and how often it's finding its way into counterfeit pills. WATCH
AI fake nudes are booming. It’s ruining real teens’ lives. (Washington Post)
“Look, Mom. What have they done to me?” Al Adib Mendiri recalled her daughter saying. She’d never posed nude. But a group of local boys had grabbed clothed photos from the social media profiles of several girls in their town and used an AI “nudifier” app to create the naked pictures, according to police. READ MORE