Check out the latest additions to Teen Health & Wellness!

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Scientific American: Resource Articles

Teen Health & Wellness has partnered with Scientific American magazine to offer reviewed content about important research, health, technology, science, the environment, and society. These high-interest articles have been reviewed and selected by Rosen’s team of editors and provide additional and unique content regarding Teen Health & Wellness topics to further support health and science inquiry and instruction.

New Articles

• Artificial Intelligence discusses chatbots, image generators, large language models, and other recent developments in the world of artificial intelligence, or “AI,” which allows digital technology to learn and adapt by simulating human decision-making and behaviors.


• Social Media Anxiety addresses information overload, FOMO (fear of missing out), self-esteem, and other mental health consequences of excessive use of social media.

Notable Article Updates

• Academic anxiety can affect even the most prepared students, and the pressure is more potentially intense for student athletes, whose time, attention, and focus are further divided by their participation in extracurricular sports. We’ve updated our Academic Anxiety, Overscheduling and Stress, Peer Pressure, and Time Management articles to address the specific needs of teen athletes, with tips on and strategies for balancing the demands of homework, tests, and projects with practices, games, and workouts. With the right approach, and good, clear communication with teachers and coaches, being a student athlete doesn’t need to be like having two full-time jobs.


• We’ve updated our article on Ovarian Cancer to bring the news that in October 2024, researchers at the University of Oxford secured funding to create the world’s first vaccine designed to prevent ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death among females in the United States, so this is big news. If their research proves successful, the next step will be to initiate clinical trials. The ultimate goal is to offer women a vaccine that could help prevent ovarian cancer before it occurs.


• Dyslexia and its related disabilities are far more common than many people assume. The International Dyslexia Association estimates that in 2024, one in five students, or 15–20 percent of the population, has a language-based learning disability. We’ve updated our article on Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia to highlight the often undetected nature of this disability, and we feature seven different personal stories from students facing the challenges that come with it.


• One person died and twenty-seven people were hospitalized during an E. coli outbreak in October, linked to fresh onions served on McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and other items. We don’t update our E. Coli article with every new development in this or other outbreaks of the foodborne illness, but our article does post a link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s own list of outbreaks.


• Young people are getting wise to the dangers of tobacco. As we note in our article on Tobacco and Nicotine, teen smoking and the use of other tobacco products in the U.S. have dropped to the lowest levels seen in 25 years, according to an October report from the CDC. The report highlights a 20 percent decrease in tobacco use among middle and high school students from 2023 to 2024. This includes traditional cigarettes, e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and hookahs. The number of youth using at least one tobacco product fell from 2.8 million to 2.25 million, marking a significant decline.


• Even if you don’t know what “nomophobia” is, you’ve likely felt it. It’s short for “no-mobile-phone phobia”—the anxiety people get when they are away from their phone, lose their phone, lose cell coverage, or run out of battery life. Psychologists consider it a real anxiety disorder that can make it harder for people to disconnect from their over-stimulating digital lives. This fall, the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels to be added to social media apps to inform users about the risks of excessive social media use, similar to health warnings on cigarettes and alcohol. We’ve updated our article on Social Media Anxiety to reflect this latest news.


• Hurricane Helene is just the latest natural disaster to take hundreds of people’s lives and disrupt thousands of others. Our Natural Disasters article not only adds Helene to our ever-growing list of hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, tsunamis, and other traumatic events, but gives young people advice on preparedness, evacuation plans, and coping skills when disaster strikes, as well as resources they can contact to help them through a crisis.


• For some happy news, we’ve added Yale psychologist Dr. Laurie Santos’s The Happiness Lab podcast to our list of resources in our Self-Esteem and Confidence, Stress, Depression and Mood Disorders, and Mindfulness articles to remind young (and not-so-young) people how to be happy. The podcast is based on the psychology course she teaches at Yale—the most popular class in the university’s 300-year history—and takes you through the latest scientific research and share some surprising and inspiring stories that will change the way you think about happiness.


• With school back in session, teens’ stress levels can rise and their sleep habits decline. As we note in our updated article on Sleep and Sleep Deprivation, teens already know about the importance of a good night’s sleep. In a 2024 survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, three-quarters of teens reported that their emotional well-being was negatively affected by a lack of sleep. By contrast, among teens who got a good night’s sleep, 80 percent of them reported being free of any significant depressive symptoms.


• We’ve updated our Behind the Wheel article to reflect the latest evidence that a good night’s sleep also has an effect on staying alive while driving. The same National Sleep Foundation survey estimated that more than 400,000 American teens drove drowsy at least once per week. According to the latest data from the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration, drowsy driving was responsible for 693 deaths in 2022.


• High blood pressure (or hypertension) is often called ”the silent killer“ because it so easily goes undetected. High levels of sodium found in restaurant foods, packaged foods, and processed foods are among the primary causes of hypertension. We’ve updated our Blood Pressure article with the Food and Drug Administration’s latest guidance recommending that Americans reduce their sodium intake by 20 percent over a three-year period.


• Body mass index (BMI) has been a common metric for measuring obesity for decades, but a recent article in the medical journal JAMA Network Open introduced many readers to the concept of the ”body roundness index“ (BRI). Unlike BMI, which only uses height and weight, BRI also considers hip and waist measurements. The article states that this provides a more accurate estimate of total and visceral fat, the deep belly fat around organs that poses higher health risks. We’ve updated our Obesity article to reflect the new findings.


• Natural disasters are hard on everyone, but especially on young people who lack the resources or experience needed to protect themselves in such situations. July 2024’s Hurricane Beryl was just the latest in devastating weather-related disasters to strike North America. We keep our Natural Disasters article updated with the latest preparedness and emergency contact information to help inform teens on how to remain safe, and give advice on how to cope when disasters strike.


• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced that it is banning the use of brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in food and drink products, which has primarily been used to stabilize citrus flavorings in sodas, sports drinks, and energy drinks. New research suggests that BVO can accumulate in organs and tissues at potentially harmful levels, and may be toxic to the thyroid. Our Sodas, Sports Drinks, and Bottled Water article covers the short- and long-term health effects of sodas and sports drinks.


• A new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics finds that there may be a connection between teens with hypertension (high blood pressure) and a lack of quality sleep. Dr. Amy Kogon, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, says health officials typically focus on diet and exercise but rarely consider how sleep might play a role in a teen’s cardiovascular health. As we note in our updated Sleep and Sleep Deprivation article, on a typical school night, just over 25 percent of high school students get eight or more hours of sleep.


• The summer of 2024 has seen record-breaking heat waves sweep across the western United States, and the average global temperatures between July 2023 and June 2024 were the highest on record, with Earth surpassing the 1.5° Celsius warming limit targeted by the 2016 Paris Climate Accords. As our article on Ecoanxiety notes, worries about the climate are increasingly a mental health challenge for many teens as they face an ever-warming planet.


• As noted in our Marijuana and our Marijuana and the Legalization Debate articles, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) recently announced that it is seeking to downgrade cannabis from its current classification as a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III controlled substance. This change, recommended by U.S. health regulators, would recognize the medical uses of cannabis and make it easier to conduct research on cannabis products, but wouldn’t legalize marijuana for recreational use at the federal level. It would also lessen or potentially do away with the criminal penalty for possession.


• We’ve added the American Heart Association’s Teen of Impact to the Resources page of our Emergency Lifesaving Techniques, Heart, and Living a Heart-Healthy Life articles. Teen of Impact highlights teens who have taken action to promote good heart health among teens. Sixteen-year-old Aniston Barnette of Bristol, Tennessee, is the 2024 National Teen of Impact Winner. Aniston got involved with the American Heart Association because she had family members who had suffered and died from heart disease.


• The U.S. National Alliance on Mental Health recently conducted a survey with teens ages 12–17 and found that only a minority of teens felt comfortable talking about their mental health regularly to their parents or friends. To help teens break the stigmas around mental health struggles, we’ve added the Wish You Knew podcast to a number of our articles’ Resources pages, including Anorexia Nervosa, Anxiety and Panic Attacks, and Mindfulness. Wish You Knew was created by 18-year-old Breiny Lipskier and gives friends and peers a platform to have important conversations about their journeys with mental health.