Myrtle Beach Passes The 'Teenage Test'

Planning a vacation that the whole family will enjoy is often difficult -- and teenagers can be particularly hard to please.

Myrtle Beach, however, passes the "teenage test." My 19-year-old stepson, who has grown bored with our more local beach towns, just returned from a trip to Myrtle Beach and loves it. So much so, in fact, he is already planning another trip this summer.

With that in mind, if you have an older teenager you are trying to convince to come along on a family vacation, you ought to check out this Myrtle Beach Resort. Actually, if you click on this one website, you'll actually be able to learn about seven different Myrtle Beach Resorts and Myrtle Beach Hotels.

If you have teenagers and thought the days of them being able to join in and really enjoy a family vacation were long since past, you ought to check out these links. For once, you might surprise your teenager -- instead of the other way around.

This was a sponsored post.

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Dads Respond to Teens' Risky Sexual Behavior With Increased Supervision

Two-thirds of American teenagers have sex by the time they're 18. A new longitudinal study finds that when adolescents engage in risky sexual activity, fathers respond by increasing their efforts to supervise and monitor their children.

Researchers at Boston College, the University of Pittsburgh, and Harvard University conducted the study, which appears in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

The study followed more than 3,200 teenagers ages 13 to 18 over a period of four years. The teens were a subset of participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a representative sample of American adolescents. Each year, the teens reported on their parents' knowledge of their activities, friends, and so forth. Starting at age 14, the teens also answered questions about their engagement in risky sexual activities, including frequency of intercourse, number of partners, and incidences of unprotected intercourse.

The study suggests that fathers react differently than mothers to their children's sexual behavior. When teens engaged in risky sexual behavior, instead of parents becoming less involved, as previously seen, fathers boosted their involvement, learning more about their children's friends and activities. This finding contradicts previous research, which has found that parents react with hostility and are less engaged following such discoveries.

This study also identified involvement in family activities as a protective force. Specifically, it found that teens who took part in routine family activities like eating meals together or joining in fun projects were less likely to engage in risky sexual activity, and teens who didn't engage in risky sexual behavior were more likely to participate in family activities.

"This research highlights the complex interplay of relationships between parents and their adolescent children," says Rebekah Levine Coley, associate professor of applied developmental and educational psychology at Boston College and the study's lead author. "Given the notably negative potential repercussions of risky sexual activity during adolescence, this study can inform efforts to increase parents' oversight of and active engagement with their teenage children."

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Examination Reveals Adolescent Reaction to Iraq War

University of Cincinnati researchers are reporting what they call a significant pattern among Iraqi adolescents and their reaction to the war in Iraq – the higher the perceived threat of the war, the higher the teens reported their self-esteem. The findings – from a 2004 survey of 1,000 Iraqi adolescents in 10 neighborhoods in Baghdad – are reported in the current issue of the Journal of Adolescence.

Steve Carlton-Ford, a University of Cincinnati associate professor and co-author of the study, says the findings give a rare look at the impact of war on adolescents, explaining that, in general, sociologists and psychologists are examining how war affects small children. Carlton-Ford adds that in the cases of young children, conflict-related events typically lower a child’s psychological well-being. The survey of Iraqi teens was conducted in 2004 by co-author Morton Ender of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, who supervised field surveys with the U.S. Army in the neighborhoods surrounding Baghdad. The study is also authored by UC doctoral student Ahoo Tabatabai.

The authors found that despite obvious threat to the adolescents’ sense of security, the youth were coping fairly well in 2004, with self-esteem levels comparable to that of Palestinian youth. “In the presence of conflict-related trauma one generally observes lower levels of psychological well-being (e.g., PTSD, grief reactions), and sometimes lower self-esteem,” write the authors. “Our results, however, are consistent with a body of theory and research that predicts self-esteem striving and higher self-esteem among the individuals who face indirect threats to central components of their social identities (rather than directly facing traumatic war-related events). In other words, in a situation where we observe a broad social context involving the presence of foreign forces (a clear violation of Muslim principles) combined with general violence throughout Baghdad and Iraq, we also observe a heightened sense of self, at least to the extent that one’s self is tied to one’s nation.”

The study suggests future surveys of adolescents under conditions of armed conflict to track their self-concept as they become young adults.

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ER Episode Impacts Viewers' Health Knowledge, Behavior

A new study by researchers at the University of Southern California suggests that some TV may be good for you.

Researchers found that a storyline on the primetime NBC network drama ER that dealt with teen obesity, hypertension and healthy eating habits had a positive impact on the attitudes and behaviors of viewers, particularly among men.

The study, published in the Sept. 14 Journal of Health Communication and now available online, offered researchers a rare opportunity to evaluate the impact of health messages in entertainment, says Thomas Valente, associate professor of preventive medicine and member of the Institute for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention Research (IPR) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“This study demonstrates the importance of interventions and programs targeted at a population level,” says Valente. “We have so many public heath issues to deal with, we can’t restrict ourselves to any one strategy. We have to do everything and anything we can to help people improve their health.”

The storyline depicted an African-American teen who is diagnosed with hypertension during a visit to the emergency room and is advised to eat more fruits and vegetables and to get more exercise. The story aired over three episodes from April 29 to May 13, 2004.

The impact of the episodes was evaluated using three separate datasets, one of which provided data on a sample of 807 primetime viewers before and after the episodes aired. An independent firm collected surveys from viewers, measuring whether their self-reported behavior and their nutrition attitudes, knowledge and practices were impacted by the storyline.

Results showed that ER viewers were 65 percent more likely to report a positive change in their behavior after watching the episodes. The results also suggested that the storyline had modest impacts on knowledge, attitudes and practices, Valente notes. Those who watched ER also had a five percent higher rate of knowledge about nutrition than those who did not. Researchers accounted for a number of factors, including age, sex, ethnicity, income and education.

Interestingly, the effects were stronger for men than they were for women. Researchers theorize this may be because men started with a lower baseline knowledge of the information shown in the episodes, Valente says.

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Girls Who Begin Dieting Twice as Likely to Start Smoking

Starting to diet seems to double the odds a teenage girl will begin smoking, a University of Florida study has found.

UF researchers, who analyzed the dieting and smoking practices of 8,000 adolescents, did not find the same link in boys, who were also less likely than girls to diet, according to findings released Friday in the American Journal of Health Promotion.

“Dieting was a significant predictor of initiation of regular smoking among females,” says Mildred Maldonado-Molina, a UF assistant professor of epidemiology and health policy research and lead author of the study. “We were expecting that this relationship was going to be stronger among females. That has been well-documented, especially because (nicotine) can suppress your appetite.

“In boys we found something we don’t understand yet,” she says. “We found that those who were inactive dieters, those who first started dieting and then stopped, were more likely to engage in smoking behaviors.”

The researchers derived their findings from the answers of 7,795 adolescents who were surveyed during the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, completed in 1994 and 1996. The teens were in seventh, eighth and ninth grade when surveyed.
UF researchers included the answers of adolescents who said they were trying to lose weight and divided the group into four units: non-dieters, new dieters, former dieters and consistent dieters, who said they were dieting both times they were surveyed. They excluded teens who were already smokers and those who admitted to taking diet pills, vomiting and using other unhealthy weight-loss tactics.

“That group (of teens who were beginning to diet) was the one we were most interested in, seeing how the start of one behavior related to initiation of smoking,” Maldonado-Molina says.
Researchers also found that girls who consistently dieted were more likely to smoke.

Still, the number of children smoking in the United States has dropped in the 10 years since the first two waves of the survey were completed. In 1995, about 35 percent of high school students smoked regularly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now about 23 percent of high-school age children reportedly smoke and 8 percent of middle school students do. The percentage of girls who smoke is slightly higher in both age groups, according to a 2006 CDC report on tobacco use among youth.

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Inhaling From Just 1 Cigarette Can Lead To Nicotine Addiction

A new study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows that 10 percent of youth who become hooked on cigarettes are addicted within two days of first inhaling from a cigarette, and 25 percent are addicted within a month. The study found that adolescents who smoke even just a few cigarettes per month suffer withdrawal symptoms when deprived of nicotine, a startling finding that is contrary to long-held beliefs that only people with established smoking habits of at least five cigarettes per day experience such symptoms.

The study monitored 1,246 sixth-grade students in six Massachusetts communities over four years. Students were interviewed frequently about smoking and symptoms of addiction, such as difficulty quitting, strong urges to smoke, or nicotine withdrawal symptoms such as cravings, restlessness, irritability, and trouble concentrating. Of those who were hooked, half were already addicted by the time they were smoking seven cigarettes per month. As amazing as it may seem, some youth find they are unable to quit smoking after just a few cigarettes. This confirms an earlier study by the same researchers.

Recent research has revealed that the nicotine from one cigarette is enough to saturate the nicotine receptors in the human brain. “Laboratory experiments confirm that nicotine alters the structure and function of the brain within a day of the very first dose. In humans, nicotine-induced alterations in the brain can trigger addiction with the first cigarette,” comments

Joseph R. DiFranza, MD, professor of family medicine & community health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and leader of the UMMS research team. “Nobody expects to get addicted from smoking one cigarette.” Many smokers struggle for a lifetime trying to overcome nicotine addiction. The National Institutes of Health estimates that as many as 6.4 million children who are living today will die prematurely as adults because they began to smoke cigarettes during adolescence.

“While smoking one cigarette will keep withdrawal symptoms away for less than an hour in long-time smokers, novice smokers find that one cigarette suppresses withdrawal for weeks at a time,” explains Dr. DiFranza. “One dose of nicotine affects brain function long after the nicotine is gone from the body. The important lesson here is that youth have all the same symptoms of nicotine addiction as adults do, even though they may be smoking only a few cigarettes per

month.”

Symptoms of nicotine addiction can appear when youth are smoking as little as one cigarette per month. At first, one cigarette will relieve the craving produced by nicotine withdrawal for weeks, but as tolerance to nicotine builds, the smoker finds that he or she must smoke ever more frequently to cope with withdrawal.

According to DiFranza, the addiction-related changes in the brain caused by nicotine are permanent and remain years after a smoker has quit. This explains why one cigarette can trigger an immediate relapse in an ex-smoker. It also explains why an ex-smoker who relapses after many years of abstinence cannot keep the craving away by smoking one cigarette per month. Unlike the newly addicted novice smoker, a newly relapsed smoker must smoke several cigarettes each day to cope with the craving.

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Breakthrough Video Game for Teens Helps Save Lives

A new video game called “Re-mission” is designed to give young cancer patients a sense of power and control over their disease. Rated T for teen, the 3D game is a 20 level journey through the bodies of fictional patients with different types of cancer. Players control a nanobot named Roxxi. The task? Blast cancer cells, battle bacterial infections, and manage realistic, life-threatening side effects.

But the game is more than a fun challenge. Studies show that young cancer patients who play the game are more likely to take their medicine, undergo needed therapy and understand their illness. That's because the game is geared to help teenagers better adhere to their cancer treatment and embrace vital behaviors to improve their health.

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Video: Teens Fall Victim To Identity Theft

A growing number of teens are falling victim to the pernicious, digital age crime of identity theft.

Watch how teens are falling prey and how you and your teens can avoid this trap.

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When It Comes to Delinquency, Boys Exposed to More Risk

Researchers trying to understand why high school-age boys are involved in serious delinquency more often than girls have found that males are exposed to higher levels of risk factors and lower amounts of protective factors.

A new study of more than 7,800 high school sophomores from 40 suburban and rural communities in seven states examined 22 risk and protective factors associated with serious delinquency. It found that boys reported higher levels of risk and lower levels of protection for 18 of the factors than did girls. In addition, boys were twice as likely to engage in seven of the eight serious delinquent behaviors that were measured.

“Boys come into contact with risk factors in their families, school, peers and in their personal attributes more frequently and are sometimes influenced by them more strongly than are girls,” says Abigail Fagan, lead author of the study and an intervention specialist with the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group.

All of the risk and protective factors examined were significantly related to serious delinquency for both boys and girls, according to Fagan.

The students in the study came from communities with populations ranging from 1,600 to 106,000 in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Slightly more than half of the students were girls, and 79 percent were white.

Data were collected from surveys administered in school, including questions about participation in eight behaviors in the past year that are indicative of serious delinquency – being arrested, carrying a handgun, bringing a handgun to school, attacking someone with the intent to do harm, stealing a motor vehicle, selling illegal drugs, being suspended or expelled from school, and being drunk or high at school.

Being drunk or high at school was the most common self-reported offense with nearly 20 percent of the girls and 26 percent of the boys reporting such behavior. Attacking someone was the second-most-common behavior, with 11 percent of girls and 21 percent of boys reporting it. However, the overwhelming majority of teenagers said they did not engage in delinquent acts.
The 22 protective factors measured included the teens’ attachment to each of their parents, rewards for good behavior in school and social skills in dealing with other people. Risks included family conflict, low commitment to school, peer drug use and sensation seeking.

While boys experience higher levels of risk and lower protection for 18 of these factors, girls only reported higher risk for family conflict and less protection from attachment to their fathers. There were no gender differences for exposure to peer drug use and for peer rewards for delinquency.


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Start School Later in the Morning, Say Sleepy Teens

A survey of sleep-deprived teens finds they think that a later start time for school and tests given later in the school day would result in better grades. The survey was presented at the American Thoracic Society 2007 International Conference, on Sunday, May 20.

The survey of 280 high school students confirmed what most parents with a teenager know: they are not getting enough sleep. More sleep would translate into improved academic performance, according to the teens questioned. They all attended Harriton High School in suburban Philadelphia, where the school day begins at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 2:25 p.m.

The survey found that:

• 78% of students said it was difficult to get up in the morning
• Only 16% said they regularly had enough sleep
• 70% thought their grades would improve if they had more sleep
• 90% thought their academic performance would improve if school were to start later
  

The surveyed teens say they do not feel alert while taking tests during early morning periods, and they do not think they can perform at the pinnacle of their ability during the early morning hours. Most students said they thought the best time to take a test would be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. They thought they would perform better academically and that their grades would improve if they could sleep longer.

Richard Schwab, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, conducted the study with his daughter Amanda, one of the sleep-deprived teens who attended Harriton High School. “I watched her get up early for four years, and saw how difficult it was,” Dr. Schwab says. “Teenagers need more sleep than adults and their circadian rhythms are phase shifted so that their ideal bedtime is midnight to 1:00 a.m.; yet they have to get up at 6:30 or earlier for high school.

While adults usually need 7 to 8 hours of sleep, teens need 8 to 9 hours, he says. In addition, teens go to bed much later – their biological clock often keeps them up until 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. Because they have to get up so early for school, many teens achieve only 6 ½ to 7 hours of sleep or, in some cases, much less. That means they tend to sleep in on the weekends, often until 11 am or later, to try to make up for their sleep deficit.

“Right now, high schools usually start earlier in the morning than elementary schools. But if school start times were based on sleep cycles, elementary schools should start at 7:30 and high schools at 8:30 or 8:45 – right now it’s the reverse. School systems should be thinking about changing their start times. It would not be easy—they would have to change the busing system—but it would increase their student's sleep time and likely improve their school performance.”


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Teen Risk-Taking May Be Biologically Driven and Inevitable, Research Says

While the government spends billions of dollars on educational and prevention programs to persuade teens not to do things like smoke, drink or do drugs, a Temple University psychologist suggests that competing systems within the brain make adolescents more susceptible to engaging in risky or dangerous behavior, and that educational interventions alone are unlikely to be effective.

Laurence Steinberg, distinguished university professor and the Laura H. Carnell professor of psychology at Temple, outlines his argument in, “Risk Taking in Adolescence: New Perspectives from Brain and Behavioral Science,” in the April issue of the journal, Current Directions in Psychological Science.

“While it is probably not fair to say that none of the programs we have developed works, most of the educational efforts to persuade kids to not smoke or to not use drugs or alcohol, to engage in safe sex or to drive more safely have not been effective,” says Steinberg, director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. “There is a program here or there that works, but, by and large, we have spent billions of dollars on initiatives that have not really had much of an impact.”



Steinberg says that over the past 10 years there has been a great deal of new research on adolescent brain development that he believes sheds light on why kids engage in risky and dangerous behavior, and why the educational programs or interventions that have been developed have not been especially effective.



According to Steinberg, heightened risk taking in adolescence is the result of competition between two very different brain systems, the socioemotional and cognitive-control networks, that are undergoing maturation during adolescence, but along very different timetables. During the adolescence, the socioemotional system becomes more assertive during puberty, while the cognitive-control system gains strength only gradually and over a longer period of time.
The socioemotional system, which processes social and emotional information, becomes very active during puberty allowing adolescents to become more easily aroused and experience more intense emotion, and to become more sensitive to social influence.



Conversely, says Steinberg, the cognitive-control system is the part of the brain that regulates behavior and makes the ultimate decisions, but is still maturing during adolescence and into a person’s mid-20s at least.



In the article, Steinberg says that the socioemotional network is not in a state of constantly high activation during adolescence. When the socioemotional network is not highly activated -- for example, when individuals are not emotionally excited or are alone -- the cognitive-control network is strong enough to impose regulatory control over impulsive and risky behavior, even in early adolescence.



In the presence of peers, however, or in situations where emotions run high, the socioemotional network becomes sufficiently activated to diminish the regulatory effectiveness of the cognitive-control network.


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