Social Media, Not Phones, Get Kids Addicted

NEW YORK (AP) — A mother and three children, ages 11, 7 and 3, died early Monday in fast-moving New York City house fire that also left the children’s father and two teenagers in critical condition, a fire official said. The fire was reported around 2:30 a.m. in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay neighborhood.

They’re considering requiring parental approval for kids under the age of 16 to open a social-network or messenger account, but that won’t work too well: Teens would hate it and the networks would be complicit. Regulators probably can’t address addictive software as they have, say, tobacco. Users will …

Scores rose for the American teens who were bribed. The economists estimated that if U.S. students had put this much effort into the real PISA test, they would have scored 22 to 24 points higher in math, moving the U.S. from 36th to 19th in the 2012 international rankings. (The U.S. ranked 39th in 2015.).

As part of the global “takeover” on World Children’s Day today, Unicef in partnership with Independent Newspapers invited some local youth to write their own articles for The Star, in which they shared their views and hopes. Pictured with The Star’s multimedia reporter Khaya Koko, right, are Nkanyiso Zulu, …

Cigarette smoking has dropped so sharply among American teenagers that vaping and marijuana use are now more common, according to a national … “Kids are taking hits on their vape pens in the hallways and nobody notices,” Ms. Poncelow said, noting that some devices resemble flash drives, which …

And based on an open letter written by Catholic bishops to parents of transgender kids, gender identity is no exception. On Friday … Zack Ford, the author of a ThinkProgress article about the letter, echoed Thoreson’s criticisms, writing that the Catholic church’s rejection of “a whole lot of science and human …

Medical professionals have come up with protocols for children and teens. They recommend that some kids with gender dysphoria essentially pause puberty with hormone blockers until they’re certain they want to live as a different gender. But the child must be prepubescent. It was too late when Theo and …

While teachers pick the articles they use (acting as a filter Snapchat doesn’t have), the site’s user data proves kids want to grapple with serious stuff. … For precocious teens and preteens interested in current events but unlikely to sit down with a newspaper, Saturday Night Live often serves as a glimpse at …

Despite years of reform efforts, thousands of teens still wake up in large, secure, prison-like facilities such as Lincoln Hills, many of them for nonviolent offenses. Marcus is one of a growing number of voices arguing that such places should be shut down for good. “It’s clear that youth prisons are not places of redemption and …

“But when you look at the economic or homework data, it doesn’t line up with the rise in teen suicide or depression,” Twenge says. Youth smartphone ownership does. “I’m open to exploring other factors, but I think the more we learn about kids and smartphones, the more we’re going to see that limiting their …