Posts Tagged ‘Teens’
Breakfast Habits and School Performance
“Dear diary, today I had cereal and orange juice for breakfast.” That kind of diary entry might make for fairly boring reading, but it’s exactly what the authors of a recent study on nutrition habits and school performance were interested in. In the study, 294 British teenagers kept food diaries for a week, reporting the…
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Family Connectedness Predicts Teen Coping Skills
The family someone comes from can shape how they relate to the world around them – including how they cope with stressful situations, as it turns out. A new study from researchers in Canada and New Zealand suggests that the sense of connection teenagers have with their families foreshadows the coping skills they will develop,…
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Are Today’s Teenagers the Most Bored Ever?
Today’s teenagers have an abundance of digital diversions and instant gratifications at their disposal. Yet for this richness of entertainment options, adolescents in recent years might be more bored than their historical predecessors, at least according to a newly published study. The study surveyed over 100,000 eighth-, tenth- and twelfth-graders between the years 2008 and…
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Phubbing Destroys Relationships
Consider this your annual AllPsych public health announcement about the negative effects of phubbing. In early 2018, I wrote about the dangers of phubbing – that is, of snubbing people by going on your phone. A year and change later, there’s more research out on the topic. That research gives us new evidence that everything…
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Bedtime Cues Matter for Teens
How do you know when it’s time to go to bed? Recently, researchers in Australia and Finland looked at how teenagers answer that question, and whether the way they answer it has implications for sleep quality. In a survey of 1,374 adolescents, the researchers considered several different ways these teens might decide when it’s time…
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A Psychological Profile of the “Class Clown”
When you were in middle school, you could probably name without having to think who the “class clown” was. If you’re a middle school teacher, bless your heart, you can probably do the same. It’s not hard to know who the class clown is, since they’re generally happy to draw attention to themselves. But figuring…
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Social Media Might Kind of Affect Life Satisfaction in Teens
Maybe you’ve heard that social media usage is linked to lower life satisfaction. But what does that mean? There are multiple ways social media and life satisfaction could be “linked”: People with higher life satisfaction use social media less than people with lower life satisfaction People tend to use social media more when they become…
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Teens With Anxiety Disorders Tell Their Life Stories Differently
Our mental health is often tied up in how we see the relationship between the past, present and future. For that reason, how we tell our life stories can say something about our psychological state. A couple years ago, for example, I wrote about how people who draw more connections between different phases of their…
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“Popular” Teens May Be Lonelier
Along with the changes of adolescence comes an increased desire to be “popular.” But teenagers who aspire to high levels of social prestige might want to be careful what they wish for. A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan suggests that, paradoxically, popularity and loneliness tend to go together in adolescence. In…
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Is a Need to Contribute Key for Teens?
When it comes to the basic psychological needs of adolescence, we often talk about things like becoming more independent and developing a sense of identity. A new paper argues that teenagers have another fundamental psychological need we don’t talk about enough: the need to contribute. Whereas developing autonomy and identity are processes that are focused…
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