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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.

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New Articles

• 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

• 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.


• Concerns about bird flu (avian influenza, or H5N1) increased in April 2024 when it was discovered that a strain of bird flu had spread among cattle in the United States, even appearing in inactive, fragmented traces of the virus in the U.S. milk supply. CDC officials warn against consuming dairy products made from raw milk, but note that the risk of H5N1 passing to humans through pasteurized milk products is low. We’ve updated our Avian Flu article with the latest developments.


• A study released in April 2024 found a direct link between exercising in teenage years and improved mental wellbeing in adulthood. The ages 15 to 17 were the most critical period for developing lifelong exercise habits, with 58 percent of young people who regularly exercised between those ages still exercised regularly in later life. We’ve updated our article on Staying Fit with the good news that exercising in your teenage years can improve your mental health as an adult.


• Nicotine pouches are a type of smokeless tobacco product that have become increasingly popular with teens and young adults. In 2023, the CDC’s National Youth Tobacco Survey estimated that about 1.5 percent of middle and high school students had used nicotine pouches. Pouches contain nicotine and other fillers, and come in mint, fruit, and candy flavors. Users place the pouch under their upper lip and the nicotine is absorbed through their gums and saliva. We’ve updated our Tobacco and Nicotine article to address the dangers of this increased use of nicotine pouches.


• A survey released in March 2024 by the EdWeek Research Center found that 55 percent of students have self-diagnosed mental health issues using social media sites like TikTok and Instagram. As with everything online, there are both risks and benefits to using social media to improve one’s mental health, which we discuss in our updated article on Depression and Mood Disorders.


• Diabetes among young people continues to be a major health concern. About 24,000 young people are diagnosed with type 1 and type 2 diabetes each year, according to the American Diabetes Association. Increasingly, diabetes specialists are calling for mass screening of children for type 1 diabetes to help head off diabetic ketoacidosis, which can be life-threatening. Our Diabetes article covers the essentials of the disease, its diagnosis, its treatment, and the challenges with living with diabetes.


• If you’re not familiar with Delta-8, you should be. It’s a chemical compound that naturally occurs in marijuana and hemp plants, but most Delta-8 available in commercial cannabis products is synthetic and much more powerful than the natural kind. Its popularity among young people is on the rise, as are visits to poison control centers due to adverse health effects from taking the compound. Our Marijuana article keeps you up to date on Delta-8 and marijuana more generally.


• Teens and children in North American consume a lot of chocolate, perhaps not knowing that a lot of children in West Africa produce it. Child labor among small farms is a common problem in Ivory Coast and neighboring West African countries, where most of the world’s cocoa is produced. Soaring chocolate prices due to poor harvests in 2024 have also brought attention to the environmental impacts of cocoa production. We’ve updated our Fair Trade article with this and other examples of how young people’s consumer habits affect environmental and working conditions around the world.


• Teaching financial literacy to young people means keeping up with the increasing variety of employment types and ways in which money is transacted. We’ve updated our Parent Is Out of Work article to explain gig work jobs at businesses like Uber and DoorDash. We’ve also updated our First Bank Account and First Investments article to give young people advice on protecting their privacy while using digital wallets like Venmo or Cash App.


• As noted in Food Allergies and Sensitivities, in February 2024 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first medication that can help protect against multiple severe food allergies, including milk, eggs, and nuts. The drug, called Xolair, is not taken during an allergic reaction. Instead, it is taken at regular intervals, such as every few weeks, to help reduce the risk of allergic reactions over time. Xolair is not a cure, so people taking the drug must continue to avoid foods they are allergic to.


• Also in February 2024, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new findings on why teens might experiment with drugs and alcohol. The CDC’s study, the first of its kind, expanded on limited research previously done on why teens use substances. CDC researchers surveyed teens who were receiving treatment for substance abuse. We cover this and other recent surveys in an entire article dedicated to the links between Drugs, Alcohol, and Emotional Health.


• Dengue fever is endemic in most tropical regions and is a constant threat to people’s health. Brazil is currently experiencing an enormous outbreak of dengue fever, and public health experts predict a surge in cases in the Americas, including Puerto Rico. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2024 says a single-dose vaccine called Butantan-Dengue is highly effective at preventing dengue fever, even after just one dose. We cover the news as well as explain the nature of dengue and other tropical infectious diseases in Dengue Fever, Zika, and Chikungunya.


• The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear oral argument beginning on March 26, 2024, over access to the drug mifepristone, which is used in combination with another drug to produce a medical abortion. Mifepristone is used in over half of all abortions performed in the United States, but in April 2023 a federal judge in Texas suspended the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug. We cover the case in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in our article on Reproductive Rights.