More Lonely, Fewer 'Friends', Less Sex - Have Smartphones Destroyed A Generation?

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis...

The Atlantic"s Jean Twenge asks the most crucial question of our age... "have smartphones destroyed a generation?"

...Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, [teens today] talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of friends. “It’s good blackmail,” Athena said. (Because she’s a minor, I’m not using her real name.) She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said. “We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people.”

I’ve been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in psychology. Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. Beliefs and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so. Millennials, for instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys. Then I began studying Athena’s generation.

Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data - some reaching back to the 1930s - I had never seen anything like it.

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What happened in 2012 to cause such dramatic shifts in behavior? It was after the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009 and had a starker effect on Millennials trying to find a place in a sputtering economy. But it was exactly the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent.

The more I pored over yearly surveys of teen attitudes and behaviors, and the more I talked with young people like Athena, the clearer it became that theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media. I call them iGen. Born between 1995 and 2012, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the internet.

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More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, today’s teens are physically safer than teens have ever been. They’re markedly less likely to get into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are less susceptible to drinking’s attendant ills.

Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

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There is compelling evidence that the devices we’ve placed in young people’s hands are having profound effects on their lives - and making them seriously unhappy.

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You might expect that teens spend so much time in these new spaces because it makes them happy, but most data suggest that it does not. The Monitoring the Future survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and designed to be nationally representative, has asked 12th-graders more than 1,000 questions every year since 1975 and queried eighth- and 10th-graders since 1991. The survey asks teens how happy they are and also how much of their leisure time they spend on various activities, including nonscreen activities such as in-person social interaction and exercise, and, in recent years, screen activities such as using social media, texting, and browsing the web. The results could not be clearer: Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy.

There’s not a single exception. All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness. Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say they’re unhappy than those who devote less time to social media.

The allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds less sway over today’s teens, who are less likely to leave the house without their parents. The shift is stunning: 12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often than eighth-graders did as recently as 2009.

Today’s teens are also less likely to date. The initial stage of courtship, which Gen Xers called “liking” (as in “Ooh, he likes you!”), kids now call “talking”—an ironic choice for a generation that prefers texting to actual conversation. After two teens have “talked” for a while, they might start dating. But only about 56 percent of high-school seniors in 2015 went out on dates; for Boomers and Gen Xers, the number was about 85 percent.

The decline in dating tracks with a decline in sexual activity. The drop is the sharpest for ninth-graders, among whom the number of sexually active teens has been cut by almost 40 percent since 1991.

Even driving, a symbol of adolescent freedom inscribed in American popular culture, has lost its appeal for today’s teens. Nearly all Boomer high-school students had their driver’s license by the spring of their senior year; more than one in four teens today still lack one at the end of high school. For some, Mom and Dad are such good chauffeurs that there’s no urgent need to drive. “My parents drove me everywhere and never complained, so I always had rides,” a 21-year-old student in San Diego told me. “I didn’t get my license until my mom told me I had to because she could not keep driving me to school.”

The number of eighth-graders who work for pay has been cut in half. These declines accelerated during the Great Recession, but teen employment has not bounced back, even though job availability has.

At the generational level, when teens spend more time on smartphones and less time on in-person social interactions, loneliness is more common.

So is depression. Once again, the effect of screen activities is unmistakable: The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression.

Teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide, such as making a suicide plan. Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens has declined, but the suicide rate has increased. In 2011, for the first time in 24 years, the teen suicide rate was higher than the teen homicide rate.

This trend has been especially steep among girls. Forty-eight percent more girls said they often felt left out in 2015 than in 2010, compared with 27 percent more boys. Girls use social media more often, giving them additional opportunities to feel excluded and lonely when they see their friends or classmates getting together without them. Social media levy a psychic tax on the teen doing the posting as well, as she anxiously awaits the affirmation of comments and likes.

The correlations between depression and smartphone use are strong enough to suggest that more parents should be telling their kids to put down their phone. As the technology writer Nick Bilton has reported, it’s a policy some Silicon Valley executives follow. Even Steve Jobs limited his kids’ use of the devices he brought into the world.

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If you were going to give advice for a happy adolescence based on this survey, it would be straightforward: Put down the phone, turn off the laptop, and do something—anything—that does not involve a screen. Of course, these analyses don’t unequivocally prove that screen time causes unhappiness; it’s possible that unhappy teens spend more time online. But recent research suggests that screen time, in particular social-media use, does indeed cause unhappiness. One study asked college students with a Facebook page to complete short surveys on their phone over the course of two weeks. They’d get a text message with a link five times a day, and report on their mood and how much they’d used Facebook. The more they’d used Facebook, the unhappier they felt, but feeling unhappy did not subsequently lead to more Facebook use.

I realize that restricting technology might be an unrealistic demand to impose on a generation of kids so accustomed to being wired at all times. Prying the phone out of our kids’ hands will be difficult, even more so than the quixotic efforts of my parents’ generation to get their kids to turn off MTV and get some fresh air. But more seems to be at stake in urging teens to use their phone responsibly, and there are benefits to be gained even if all we instill in our children is the importance of moderation. Significant effects on both mental health and sleep time appear after two or more hours a day on electronic devices. The average teen spends about two and a half hours a day on electronic devices. Some mild boundary-setting could keep kids from falling into harmful habits.

Read the full report here...

Taxpayers Funding Heroin Vaccine as Govt Keeps Cannabis Solution to Opioid Crisis Illegal

After 20 years of patented opioid painkillers flooding America thanks to the pharmaceutical industry and careless doctors, the United States finds itself in a raging opioid epidemic.

The numbers are telling: 80 percent of the global opioid supply is consumed in the U.S., representing about 300 million prescriptions in 2015 alone or “enough drugs to give every single American 64 Percocets or Vicodin.”

As pain pill prescriptions have surged, overdose deaths from these legal drugs now total about 15,000 every year. When people can’t afford patented pills anymore, they turn to heroin, which killed almost 13,000 people in 2015—a 23 percent increase in one year.

Meanwhile, Big Pharma rakes in $24 billion a year from prescription opioids. Fully aware of the problem they helped create, companies like Purdue Pharma—perhaps the most notorious pill pusher with its infamous OxyContin—are now selling patented “abuse-deterrent” painkillers. These are bringing billions more in profits to pharma companies, “even though there’s little proof they reduce rates of overdoses or deaths.”

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Another questionable avenue for tackling the opioid problem is the development of an “addiction vaccine.” The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a federal agency, is using taxpayer dollars to fund efforts for anti-drug vaccines, as described on their webpage.

“A successful anti-drug vaccine will induce an immune response that blocks the target drug from entering the brain.

A patient who has been vaccinated will obtain no reward or relief of craving from taking the target drug, and so will have reduced motivation to continue further in relapse.”

NIDA funded experiments at the Scripps Research Institute have resulted in a successful anti-heroin vaccine used on primates. In a July 3 press release, study author Kim Janda noted the research “validates our previous rodent data and positions our vaccine in a favorable light for anticipated clinical evaluation.”

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If vaccines can save the lives of opioid addicts without causing harm to brain-body functions, that is apparently a good thing. The question is, who will profit from it? Will this taxpayer-funded research turn into patented products bringing billions of dollars to Big Pharma?

Federal government supports anti-drug vaccines and other methods, including “overdose-reversal interventions” such as Nalaxone and medications to treat opioid addiction, but there is one elephant in the room which it continues to ignore.

Medical cannabis.

The National Academy of Sciences recently analyzed the state of scientific research on medical cannabis and reported “conclusive evidence” for its success at treating chronic pain.

As The Free Thought Project has covered extensively, studies are proving the real-world potential for medical cannabis to help solve the opioid crisis. In August 2015 we reported on a study finding that deaths from painkillers plummet in states with legal cannabis.

This was only the beginning. A study released in July 2016 confirmed that opioid use declines dramatically in states with legal medical cannabis. Prescriptions for depression, seizure, nausea and anxiety also declined. In March 2017, an analysis of hospital records found that medical cannabis access reduces harm from opioid abuse among the population.

Although government may deny the benefits of medical cannabis, the people are well informed. In January 2016, we reported on a study finding that 80 percent of therapeutic cannabis users give up prescriptions pills for the healing plant. A study last week confirmed this phenomenon, reporting that nearly 100 percent of medical cannabis users are giving up prescription pills.

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Former “drug czar” Michael Botticelli admitted in October 2016 that “government hasn’t wholly supported research to really investigate what’s the potential therapeutic value [of cannabis].” Indeed, Congress has made sure to block any chance at medical cannabis being part of the solution to the opioid crisis.

While the feds gladly fund research for anti-drug vaccines and other medications to treat opioid abuse—meaning more patent potential for their Big Pharma buddies—the prohibition of cannabis remains in full effect. Tens of thousands die and suffer while the ludicrous war on a plant continues.

With cannabis’ proven efficacy at combating the opioid epidemic, the only criminal act being committed is lawmakers keeping prohibition in place.

Seattle Set To Become First City To Offer "Safe Spaces" For Heroin Use

Modeled after similar programs in Europe, Australia and Canada, Seattle is on track to become the first city in the United States where heroin addicts can legally shoot up at a supervised healthcare facility.  The controversial program is intended to reduce the number of overdose deaths by bringing users out of the alleys and into "safe places" where overdoses can be treated immediately, all at taxpayer expense, of course.  This new concept goes one step beyond needle exchange programs that exist in other cities intended to decrease the spread of disease through dirty needles.

The goal of the program, as Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse points out, is to reduce the occurrence of ancillary diseases such as HIV that result from heroin use and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat.  Per The Washington Examiner:

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, said not taking action to reduce the spread of those diseases would be irresponsible from a public health perspective. Cutting even one HIV infection would save $379,668 in lifetime costs, according to NIDA data.

King County spends $1.2 million annually on its needle exchange program, allowing the program to essentially pay for itself if three infections are prevented per year. Cutting infections by 1 percent in King County would save more than $70 million in HIV-related medical costs, the county"s website states.

As CNN noted, "safe injection centers" have been around in Vancouver since at least 2013.  But, despite claims they save hundreds of lives each year, actual data from the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General would suggest that drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed since that time...unpossible.

Of course, such programs are not without their critics as one Washington State Senator says "toleration is not compassionate, it is a signal of defeat."

Republican state Sen. Mark Miloscia proposed a bill to ban secure injection zones in Washington, and the bill is sitting in committee in the Senate.

"Toleration is not compassionate, it is a signal of defeat. We cannot give up on drug users. In the end, these sites will only distract us from getting resources into real, medically proven treatment options," Miloscia said.

John P. Walters, director of drug control policy in George W. Bush"s administration, agreed the only safe approach to heroin is not to take it.

"Supporting addicts" heroin use maintains their disease, administering the poison that causes their illness and diminishes their lives. A government-approved place for unlimited heroin injection creates the conditions for never-ending addiction and gives government a drug dealer"s power over the addicted," Walters wrote in an op-ed. "We do not protect addicts by reviving them from overdose death only to return them to death"s front door, perpetuating the self-destructive cycle of addiction."

Meanwhile, to our complete lack of surprise, the progressive, snowflake haven of San Francisco is also in the midst of implementing their own "safe injection facilities" (SIFs) which they estimate could save taxpayers millions.

Supervised injection facilities (SIFs) have been shown to reduce infection, prevent overdose deaths, and increase treatment uptake. The United States is in the midst of an opioid epidemic, yet no sanctioned SIF currently operates in the United States. We estimate the economic costs and benefits of establishing a potential SIF in San Francisco using mathematical models that combine local public health data with previous research on the effects of existing SIFs. We consider potential savings from five outcomes: averted HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections, reduced skin and soft tissue infection (SSTI), averted overdose deaths, and increased medication-assisted treatment (MAT) uptake. We find that each dollar spent on a SIF would generate US$2.33 in savings, for total annual net savings of US$3.5 million for a single 13-booth SIF. Our analysis suggests that a SIF in San Francisco would not only be a cost-effective intervention but also a significant boost to the public health system.

So all this time the cure for drug abuse was just offering up more drugs...if only such progressive thought prevailed in the 80"s we could have avoided so many deaths in the "war on drugs" and simultaneously enriched drug dealers even more...could have been a win-win really.

For the First Time Ever, the Federal Govt is Referring to Marijuana as Medicine

A profound shift in the federal government’s stance on cannabis was marked by subtle changes made this month to one webpage. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, now has a webpage titled Marijuana as Medicine. Prior to March 2017, it was titled Is Marijuana Medicine?

Apparently, they feel the question has been answered. The timing of NIDA’s update is very curious, as there are signs from the Trump administration that a crackdown may be coming on states’ cannabis legalization progress made over the last few years.

The Department of Justice is now headed by rabid prohibitionist Jeff Sessions, who cites falsehoods and Reefer Madness propaganda when discussing cannabis. Only a few days ago, Sessions said cannabis “is slightly less awful” than heroin – a mind-boggling display of ignorance. Trump chose to keep Chuck Rosenberg as head of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), who said medical cannabis is “a joke” and oversaw the department’s decision to keep the plant as a Schedule 1 drug with “no medicinal use.”

Perhaps this stunning level of denial – in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence of cannabis’ ability to treat a variety of ailments – prompted NIDA to make their change. Twenty-eight states have legalized medical cannabis in some way, eight more have legalized its recreational use, and more states are set to join the list. They aren’t doing this on a whim; decriminalizing medical use is an acknowledgment of cannabis’ power as medicine.

Some would argue that the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services 2001 patent 6630507 called “Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants” was a tacit acknowledgement of medial cannabis. But still, no government agency admitted the obvious conclusion.

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In 2015, the federal government unwittingly admitted cannabis is medicine in 2015 when the National Cancer Institute supported a study finding that cannabis kills cancer cells. Now, with the revised webpage title, NIDA appears to have moved beyond a reasonable doubt.

“The term medical marijuana refers to using the whole, unprocessed marijuana plant or its basic extracts to treat symptoms of illness and other conditions. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not recognized or approved the marijuana plant as medicine.

However, scientific study of the chemicals in marijuana, called cannabinoids, has led to two FDA-approved medications that contain cannabinoid chemicals in pill form. Continued research may lead to more medications.

Because the marijuana plant contains chemicals that may help treat a range of illnesses and symptoms, many people argue that it should be legal for medical purposes. In fact, a growing number of states have legalized marijuana for medical use.”

The webpage now has an informational box on CBD and Childhood Epilepsy. This is a rather dramatic inclusion, as cannabidiol (CBD) has become a very promising treatment for childhood epilepsy. At the Dec. 2015 meeting of the American Epilepsy Society, the largest study presented there confirmed the astounding benefits of medical cannabis to treat seizures.

There is now a better explanation of cannabinoids, making a distinction between those naturally derived from the plant and those manufactured in a lab. NIDA also acknowledges the “state-approved medicinal use of marijuana,” and says “continued research [on cannabinoids] might lead to more medications.”

Indeed, we are only just beginning to unlock the secrets of the body’s endocannabinoid system, and using cannabis to stimulate this system for relieving inflammation which is thought to be the cause of many diseases.

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Interestingly, the NIDA update also removed a link to WhiteHouse.gov regarding state laws, because the Trump administration removed the White House page explaining state cannabis laws. It appears that talk of respecting states’ rights may be just another Trump lie.

Kudos to NIDA for taking a step in the right direction and being the first federal entity to explicitly acknowledge cannabis as medicine.