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Start using TikTok for business. Know the latest trends, get creative, create challenges, and much more only on TikTok to boost your brand presence.

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Researcher Associate Professor Jessica McLean

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The surprising benefits of TikTok for teenagers

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New research shows young people are using the social media platform to nurture relationships, find support and become more socially conscious.

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Experiment looks at effects of Fortnite on 10-year-old's brain I ABC7

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Since its release, parents, educators and health experts have issued warnings about the addictive nature of Fortnite Battle Royale, currently the most popular multiplayer online video game in the world - and those concerns are valid. Gaming Disorder is real. The World Health Organization now recognizes Gaming Disorder and defines it as a pattern of digital or video gaming behavior characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences. An estimated 2.2 billion people worldwide play video games and, while there are no hard numbers specific to Fortnite, research suggests as many as 4% of those who play video games -- or 90 million people worldwide - are addicted.

The phenomenon of online addiction isn't unique to gaming. With the advent of the mobile phone, digital usage has become almost exponentially more prevalent, and addictions related to the use of social media, online gambling, online shopping and other compulsions have all increased. Impaired control, prioritization, escalation or continuation of use despite negative consequences are the criteria we use to classify addiction, no matter the substance. The symptoms and behaviors of those with digital addiction mirror those of other process disorders such as shopping, gambling or sex. Therefore, at Caron we look at the issue of Gaming Disorder as part of what we classify as Internet and Video Game Use Disorder (IVGUD).

So is Fortnite as addictive as heroin? My short answer - yes.

What makes the digital world so addictive?

Video games and other online entertainment are designed to get us hooked. They do this through intermittent reinforcement. The pleasure center of our brain is activated when we win, and the reward from the increased dopamine makes us want to do more. But if we win so often that it becomes a sure thing, then our brain can become bored - you can't eat key lime pie four times a day. For this reason, the games are designed so that you win only once in a while. Part of the joy of playing is the anticipation of winning, and each loss is just a goad to try for another win, and our brain chases the rush of dopamine we receive from the next virtual win.

Social media also works this way. Facebook purposefully sets your newsfeed so that you see a random assortment of posts in addition to those of your friends. It keeps you guessing about what you are going to see next as you continue to scroll.

For most people, this is can be a good bit of harmless fun, but others - because of their genetic predisposition, psychological and emotional makeup, and the circumstances of their lives - they become obsessed with the online world.

"Digital disorders" aren't just for teens

There is a belief that IVGUD primarily affects teen and young adult males, but the issue is more pervasive. For example, with gaming, males under the age of 18 do play the most (18%), but gaming is popular among all ages and genders. The average gamer is 35-years old, and 41% are women. For women, the age group that plays games the most online are those aged 50 or over (13%).

While the issue of teen and young adult gaming gets the headlines, there should be just as much concern and support for the 45-year-old living alone, who is living digitally, with most of their relationships through Facebook or other social media outlets. Their life may also have some of the same dynamics. They may have a job and therefore can pay their rent, but they may also be lonely, depressed, or emotionally bankrupt.

We also see this online obsession in many of our older patients, who are dealing with losses in their lives and turn to the online world for solace. Their digital addiction is going to look very different from that of an 18-year old. Perhaps it is expressed as compulsive online shopping rather than playing Fortnite, or they strike up an online friendship with someone in another country who asks them to wire thousands of dollars, but the compulsion to spend time in the digital world can be just as devastating.

That's why I prefer to talk about IVGUD, because it can affect anyone of any age, gender, or background.

Possible warning signs of an Internet and Video Game Use Disorder (IVGUD)

Some warning signs for IVGUD are:

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Behind the Numbers: Fortnite May Be as... - Caron Treatment Centers

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Since its release, parents, educators and health experts have issued warnings about the addictive nature of Fortnite Battle Royale, currently the most popular multiplayer online video game in the world - and those concerns are valid. Gaming Disorder is real.

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As parents of children and teenagers, it can be difficult to navigate the world of digital gaming. If your child is an avid gamer, chances are they have come across a game called Fortnite.

This highly interactive online shooter video game has become extremely popular amongst gamers everywhere and many claims that it has become quite addictive for those who play it.

But what do you need to know as a parent about this game so you can keep your child safe? In this blog post, we'll provide you with information on Fortnite addiction risks while playing it and tips on how to make sure that your child stays safe while still being able to enjoy the game.

What is Fornite?

Fortnite is a video game that was developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is a battle royale game, in which 100 players fight to be the last person standing on a constantly shrinking map. Players can collect weapons, resources, and items to help them survive and defeat their opponents.

Fortnite is available on a variety of platforms, including PC, Mac, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch. It is free to play, but players can purchase in-game items and features to enhance their experience.

Why is Fortnite the hottest video game in gaming history?

Fortnite has become one of the hottest video games in recent years for a variety of reasons.

1. The main reason is that it is a free-to-play game, which means that anyone can download and play it without having to pay upfront. This has made it accessible to a wide audience, including players who may not be able to afford other games.

2. Another reason for Fortnite's popularity is its engaging and exciting gameplay. The battle royale format, in which 100 players fight to be the last person standing on a constantly shrinking map, is fast-paced and intense, and the game's bright and colorful graphics and varied weapons and items make it fun and satisfying to play.

3. Fortnite has a strong online community, with millions of players around the world competing and collaborating in the game. This has helped to create a sense of social connection and competition among players, which has contributed to its popularity.

Overall, Fortnite's accessibility, engaging gameplay, and strong online community have made it one of the hottest video games in recent years.

Fortnite Addiction Symptoms

Like any other form of entertainment, it is possible for children to develop Fortnite addiction. This can lead to a range of negative consequences, including problems with concentration, school or work, and physical health. Some common symptoms of Fortnite addiction may include:

Spending excessive amounts of time playing Fortnite, to the point where it interferes with other activities or responsibilities

Feeling irritable, restless, or anxious when not playing Fortnite

Lying to friends or family about how much time is spent playing Fortnite

Prioritizing Fortnite over other activities, such as exercise, hobbies, or socializing

Neglecting personal hygiene or physical health due to excessive Fortnite play

Struggling to control the amount of time spent playing Fortnite, despite negative consequences

How to stop Fortnite addiction

If your child or someone you know is struggling with a Fortnite addiction, there are several steps that can be taken to help stop the addiction and address its negative consequences. Some strategies that may be helpful include:

Setting limits on Fortnite play: Establishing clear boundaries around how much time is spent playing Fortnite can help to reduce the risk of addiction. This may involve setting a daily limit on Fortnite play or only allowing Fortnite to be played at certain times of the day.

Finding other activities to engage in: In order to break the cycle of addiction, it is important to find other activities to engage in and enjoy. This may involve pursuing hobbies, after school activities, joining sports teams or clubs, or spending time with friends and family.

Seeking support from friends and family: Addiction can be a lonely and isolating experience, so it is important to have a support network of friends and family who can provide encouragement and understanding. Sharing your struggles with addiction with loved ones can help to provide a sense of accountability and prevent relapse.

Talking to a mental health professional: If the addiction to Fortnite is causing significant distress or disruption to your life, it may be helpful to talk to a mental health professional who can provide guidance and support. A therapist or counselor can help to identify the underlying causes of the addiction and develop strategies for overcoming it.

Overall, overcoming Fortnite addiction will require a combination of self-discipline, support from loved ones, and professional help. With the right approach, it is possible to break the cycle of addiction and reclaim a healthy and balanced life for your child.

Moonpreneur is empowering the young generation to become future innovators and entrepreneurs by providing them with the world's education. Keep learning and follow Moonpreneur to get such informative content for your child.

We are also offering a free robotics workshop for kids between the ages of 8-15 years which your child can access and enjoy.

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Help Your Child Overcome Fortnite Addiction in 2023

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Here is how parents can help their children come out of Fortnite addiction and develop an interest in other healthy activities.

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Getty Images/iStockphoto

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A proposal to ban TikTok in the U.S. has garnered bipartisan support and raised bigger questions about data access laws.

The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into TikTok on March 17, 2023, including allegations that the company spied on American journalists. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee to defend the application on March 24, 2023. His testimony touched on TikTok's consumer privacy and data security policies, the platform's mental health impact and security concerns about the platform's parent company, ByteDance.

This is not the first time the United States has threatened to ban TikTok. In 2020, the Trump administration attempted to use its emergency power to block the application.

TikTok is a private company with more than 150 million users in the United States and more than 1 billion active users worldwide. TikTok has proposed a plan -- Project Texas -- to move all U.S. data to the United States to allay privacy and security concerns.

Why does the US want to ban TikTok?

The United States wants to ban the application for several reasons. The main reason is national security. U.S. lawmakers are concerned that ByteDance may leak U.S. user data to the Chinese government if the Chinese government forced them to.

"Today, the CCP's [Chinese Communist Party's] laws require Chinese companies like ByteDance to spy on their behalf," Committee Chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said during the hearing.

Shou Zi Chew told U.S. lawmakers that China-based ByteDance employees would have access to some U.S. TikTok user data until Project Texas is implemented. TikTok does not condone any effort by its own employees to access U.S. user data.

TikTok releases a transparency report where it discloses formal legal requests for user data. The biannual information request report shows how many requests were made in each country. According to the latest report, requests for information by law enforcement reached an all-time high in the first half of 2022, with 4,054 total requests around the globe.

Every testimonial in the five-hour congressional hearing touched on different topics, but some of the main focuses included the following:

Addictiveness. While TikTok's addictiveness is a concern, it has a feature that tells users to leave the application after 60 minutes.

Misinformation. TikTok claims it does not allow misinformation as part of its community guidelines and actively works to remove it. It also does not accept political ads.

Children's safety. There are many concerns over children abusing or misusing the application. However, TikTok has different UX for users under 13. For example, they cannot go viral and cannot use the private messaging feature.

Mental health. Content that promotes eating disorders, tobacco use or suicide is a concern. However, TikTok -- like most social media companies -- has a content moderation policy and aims to remove all violating content.

Selling data. Gathering and selling data that TikTok doesn't need to make a profit is a concern. TikTok claims it does not sell data to data brokers.

Data security. Data leaks are a concern. Data leaks are a risk with any online service and common with social media. TikTok -- and other social media platforms -- use data access protocols to protect and organize data into categories of sensitivity.

The U.S. already bans the application on federal and public sector employees' phones and on state employees' phones in 32 of 50 states. Several states have also recently sued TikTok. The first state to sue the company was Indiana, on claims that the application serves users inappropriate content and violates consumer protection laws in its data collection practices. Another lawsuit came from Arkansas, which sued TikTok, ByteDance and Facebook's parent company, Meta, over claims that the companies violate the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

Montana was the first U.S. state to pass legislation banning TikTok on all personal devices. The bill was to go into effect in January 2024, but a federal judge temporarily blocked the ban in November 2023, saying it likely violated the First Amendment. The law would have prevented the app from operating within the state and fined app stores that hosted TikTok within state lines up to $10,000 per day. A final decision in the matter will be made following a trial expected sometime in 2024.

Several universities have also banned the app on their networks.

What countries is TikTok banned in?

The United States is not the only country that has full or partial TikTok bans in place. Partial bans are usually limited to government or public sector employees. Full bans apply to all citizens.

Some countries have full bans on TikTok, including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal and Somalia.

Regions with partial bans and the devices they're banned on include the following:

Australia -- on devices issued by some individual government agencies.

Belgium -- on federal government work devices.

Canada -- on government-issued devices.

Denmark -- on Defense Ministry staff devices.

European Union -- on Parliament, Commission and EU Council staff devices.

France -- on professional phones of civil servants.

Latvia -- on work devices at the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

New Zealand -- on Parliament members' and lawmakers' work devices.

Norway -- on government work devices.

Taiwan -- on government devices.

United Kingdom -- on government devices.

United States -- on federal government devices and systems.

Other countries have banned TikTok in the past and have since rescinded the bans. Two examples are Indonesia and Pakistan, which both banned the application temporarily due to explicit content.

How would the U.S. enforce a ban?

It's unclear how the United States would prohibit citizens from using the application on their personal devices. One likely scenario -- if a ban is ordered -- involves ordering popular app stores, such as Google Play and Apple App Store, to remove the app from their platforms. This would make it much harder to acquire the app but wouldn't remove it from phones that already have it downloaded. On phones with the app installed, there would be no more updates or new features, and the apps would slowly become harder to use.

Another possible scenario involves forcing internet and telecommunications providers to block TikTok, which would make it impossible to use. The Indian government blocked TikTok entirely using this method.

A third option involves criminalizing the application, which has been done before but not with an application anywhere near the size of TikTok.

What types of data does TikTok collect?

One point of contention is the safety of TikTok's recommendation engine. The recommendation engine uses behavioral data to determine the user's interests and feed them relevant content. Some data that TikTok uses to do this is the following:

How long a user stays on a page.

If a user shares a video.

If a user swipes away from a video.

If a user comments on a video.

If a user likes a video.

Basic login information, such as name, age, phone number and email address.

Location data.

IP address.

Biometric data.

Dispersion mechanisms are used to keep the user from seeing repetitive content. TikTok's data collection protocols are available in full on its privacy policy page.

Project Texas

Project Texas is a proposal from TikTok to move U.S. data into a third-party cloud infrastructure to create more transparency and security. Only a team of U.S. residents would have access to that user data.

All TikTok user data is currently stored in Singapore and Virginia. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in an interview with The New York Times that he expected data localization to be a theme in the future. He also said that TikTok's goal of providing localized data management for each country is a novel one that is challenging and expensive.

Project Clover is a similar initiative, designed to store data locally in Ireland and Norway for European data.

TikTok vs. Douyin

Both TikTok and Douyin are owned by ByteDance.

While TikTok is not available in mainland China, Douyin is a short-form video application that is often portrayed as the Chinese version of TikTok. Douyin has to follow Chinese media laws, and a Chinese phone number is required to download Douyin. TikTok is available in many countries around the world and is beholden to the laws of the country it operates in.

Douyin has more features than TikTok. For example, Douyin has hotel booking and e-payment features in the application. It also offers full-length movies, in addition to standard short-form video. Douyin preceded TikTok. Douyin was launched in 2016, whereas TikTok was launched in 2017.

ByteDance owns other apps as well. At the time of this writing, its newest is Lemon8, a health, fitness and wellness app.

Challenges of banning TikTok

One of the main challenges of banning TikTok is alienating young users politically. TikTok's user base skews young. To ban access to the app would negatively influence a lot of young voters who enjoy the app.

Another challenge is that many SMBs rely on the platform for their business model. Many multinational corporations also have their own TikTok accounts and rely on the platform for some portion of business. There are petitions to save the app and protests against the ban, with support from lawmakers as well.

A third challenge of banning TikTok is gathering and presenting evidence that the application is a national security threat or a danger to users in some way. This would involve differentiating the application from other social media companies, such as Meta and Twitter, that also collect user data; are vulnerable to breaches and privacy concerns; and are -- to a degree -- under the control of their operating country's government.

The investigation into TikTok has reinvigorated a larger conversation about data privacy on all social platforms, sparking calls for data privacy law reform.

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TikTok bans explained: Everything you need to know

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TikTok has been under the gun for several years now. Learn what's driving the latest talk about TikTok bans.

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If I asked you to name which apps are on your child's phone right now, could you answer correctly? Do you even know? According to Backlinko, the total number of TikTok downloads has reached 3 billion, making it the most downloaded app in 2021. As a parent it can seem overwhelming and even impossible to stay on top of the constant information, media, trends, and noise that is specifically targeted at our children .

Luckily, parental controls and age restrictions help keep a lot of unsavory apps from reaching our children. But sometimes seemingly harmless apps (like Instagram & Snapchat) can slip through the cracks and cause problems for you child.

TikTok is such an app. TikTok is a music video based social media app that allows users to record themselves lip syncing to popular songs, add effects, and share them with other users (think snapchat with music).

According to SocialMediaToday, TikTok is set to surpass 1.5 billion active users in 2022, pulling way ahead of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.

TikTok is actually the second version of the app. The original app went by the name Musical.ly which was acquired by the Chinese company Bytedance in late 2017 and underwent a total rebranding. Musical.ly faced its own series of problems over its 3 year history. While the app is currently rated 16+, Musical.ly used to be rated 12+.

As this app has become increasingly popular we've been hearing from concerned parents wanting to know about this app.

So here are 5 Things Parents Need to Know about TikTok in 2024

1. Is TikTok Safe for Kids?

Privacy Setting Have Been Updated for Young Users

Previously, all TikTok accounts defaulted to a "public" setting no matter the age of the user, leaving your child open to DM's and interactions from strangers. With its new 2021 update, TikTok accounts for users aged 13-15 will now default to "private". Also, videos created by users under 16 years of age are restricted by default for download unless the settings are changed or update.

According to TikTok, " with a private TikTok account, only someone who the user approves as a follower can view their videos. "

Suggestive Content Abounds

As with any social media platform, there is always suggestive content mixed into the bag. With TikTok being mostly based on music and video, profanity and suggestive clothing/dancing are the most obvious sources of adult content.

But the app also encourages some themes that are much more mature than their 16+ rating would suggest. With a quick hashtag search, your child will have access to mature content, as well as suggestive themes and challenges.

Because of the increase and promotion of inappropriate content, TikTok has been banned in several countries, including China (where the app originated), India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

States are also cracking down on TikTok. According to GritDaily, states including Alabama, Maryland, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and Texas have baneed the app on government devices. And, there's been a push for Apple and Google to raise the minimum age for users to at least 17.

2. What is the Age Limit for TikTok?

The minimum age for a TikTok user is 13 years old. While this is great news for younger users, it's important to note that TikTok doesn't use any age verification tools when new users sign up. That means, if your child signs up for a new account without your knowledge, they'll have access to explicit and inappropriate content without restriction.

3. What are TikTok's Parental Controls?

With a feature called "Family Pairing", parents can link their child's account to their own where they can control direct messages, set screen time limits, and turn on/off restricted content directly from their phone.

Parents will also receive a notification if any of the settings are changed or turned off from their child's phone.

There's also a "Digital Wellbeing" Setting

One of the more admirable functions in the app is the ability to turn on the 'digital wellbeing' setting. Once turned on, this setting will set time limits on app use, which can help your child moderate the time they spend on their phone. You can also find strategies for keeping your child's screen time in check in this Kid Matters blog post.

This setting also allows a parent to put restrictions on their child's account. This will block videos that have been flagged as inappropriate. An important point to remember however is that not all inappropriate material is flagged properly; things slip through the cracks.

While TikTok is great for socializing and can provide a creative outlet for your child, it can also have some harmful effects. Like with any social media platform, posting videos and pictures regularly leaves your child open to negative reactions and harsh comments.

This can have a huge impact on your child's self-esteem, body image, and confidence. In some instances, it can lead to depression, anxiety, and even eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. While those are extreme cases, young users and even influencers on the platform have expressed concerns over the negative comments they receive and how it affects their daily lives.

5. Does TikTok Collect User Data?

While this is nothing new and all social-media apps participate in this practice, it is worth reminding parents of. This is a quote directly from TikTok's page on privacy-
We share your data with our third-party service providers we rely on to help provide you with the Platform. These providers include cloud storage providers and other IT service providers. We also share your information with our business partners, advertisers, analytics and search engine providers..."
Before their most recent update, even when the app wasn't being used, it was collecting info off of your phone clipboard. That meant if you or your child copy and pasted sensitive information such as passwords or private conversations, TikTok was noting and storing that information.

If you're still concerned about whether TikTok may be storing your child's information, make sure your phone's security settings are up to date and you're using the latest operating system.

For iPhone users, updating to iOS 14 or higher should fix the issue.

HEY PARENTS!
Be sure to check our our parent resources for Instagram, Snapchat, & YouTube.

Or, click here on all our articles on technology.

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If you feel unsure of how to start a conversation on internet safety with your kids and where to start, check out another post I wrote on 5 Books Every Grade School Parent Should Know Regarding Internet Safety. Or, If you need additional resources to help you with internet safety or with how to help your kids navigate tricky things in the digital age give one of our therapists a call. We are here to help!

Remember to have ongoing open conversations with your kids about the content they're consuming when on TikTok and encourage them to come to you when/if they're seeing content that is harmful or inappropriate.

Stay safe in this digital world. Be creative. Don't parent alone.

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5 Things Parents Need to Know about Tik-Tok (Updated 2024)

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Tik-Tok is a social media app that allows users to record themselves, but children are using it in ways that may be dangerous. Here are 5 things parents need to know about tik-tok.

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Fortnite is one of the best Battle Royale games available. This free game has allowed millions of players to enter a new dimension of the multiverse to play with over 200+ skins and characters in different POIs.

The concept of Battle Royale in the gaming industry provides players from different locations and devices to compete with each other online. The objective - be the last man standing!

Fortnite Battle Royale was soon released to the public, free of cost for all players who have availability on various platforms ranging from console to PC.

Even though the game concept is the same, there are several components and elements that Fortnite provides to its community and player-base for experience and use.

8 reasons why Fortnite is the best Battle Royale game

1) Storyline

The Fortnite universe provides an immersive and thrilling storyline. No other game has yet come close to the various breathtaking moments of the game. These storylines are experienced through daily challenges, changes on the looped island, and interactive, eye-catching live events.

2) The adventurous island

It's a looped island that players can't wait to explore. Loopers drop onto an island that contains different POIs and secrets to gear up and fight their way through their opponents.

3) Building mechanics

One of the key aspects that separates it from the rest of the Battle Royale game is its building mechanics.

This is one of the first-ever battle royale games that focus on weaponry combat and builds structures that may provide users with an advantage based on their ability to use it.

4) Wide range of weapons and items

A wide range of weaponry and items of different variants motivate players to use and fight them. Several weapons are adapted from real-life franchises, including Star Wars, Marvel, DC, etc.

5) Skins and cosmetics

Skins and various cosmetics make Fortnite all the more attractive and addictive to play. These cosmetics, ranging from more than 1000, can be purchased, redeemed, or won through various methods.

6) Competitive arena

The game's competitive side provides the ground with a proper balance between players to showcase their skills to win exciting prizes and cash rewards. Top pro players demonstrate these skills and motivate young loopers to participate and showcase their mantle.

7) Fun game modes

Apart from traditional solos, duos and squads, there are other fun modes. The popular creative mode was added where players were allowed to design their games and maps for other loopers to play online.

8) Unique graphics and game design

Even after having several in-game features, it still provides a unique game design that is not visible on other battle royale maps. The game looks very presentable and likable with their growing years around the community.

The Battle Bus is heading into Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 4 soon! Check out the final Fortnite item shop today!

Quick Links

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8 reasons why Fortnite is the best Battle Royale game ever

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Fortnite is one of the best Battle Royale games available.

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I played the video game Fortnite the other day with my teen grandson. As an educator, I've worked with thousands of kids with ADHD, social skills challenges, and similar challenges. And I wanted to know more about how Fortnite might affect them.

Fortnite is an online, multiplayer shooter video game. It's free and can be played on a computer, on a gaming system like the Xbox, or on a mobile device. The most popular game mode is Battle Royale, where 100 players drop onto an island, try to find construction materials and weapons, and fight each other to be the last person (or team of people) standing. Players can talk to one another, and each game lasts 20 minutes. To get a sense of what it's like, imagine an arcade version of the film The Hunger Games.

Fortnite has taken the world by storm. As of 2021, there are more than 80 million active users every month. There are news reports of kids playing at all hours of the day, late at night, and even under their desks at school. And many experts have weighed in on whether the game is good for kids.

What hasn't been addressed is the impact on kids with learning and thinking differences. After playing Fortnite, I have some specific things for parents of kids with ADHD and social skills issues to keep in mind.

1. The age recommendation for Fortnite is 13 and up, but each child is different.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board rates Fortnite "T" for teen, which means ages 13 and up. Common Sense Media, an Understood founding partner, also recommends the game for kids 13 and up, because of its action violence and open chat. This is a good starting point.

However, you know your child best. Some "tweens" can handle the action. But other kids with ADHD or who struggle with social interaction may not be mature enough. Or they may need more supervision. You'll need to make a personal decision regarding your child.

2. Kids with ADHD can get absorbed by Fortnite and need limits.

Kids with ADHD can get hyperfocused on things that interest them. That can happen with any video game, and Fortnite is no exception.

If you allow video game screen time (with Fortnite or any other game), it's important to have clear rules and set limits about when and where. How much time each day? How will your child transition to other activities when needed? Fortnite, like many other video games, also allows players to spend real money on in-app purchases. If your child is impulsive, you'll need to address this too.

3. Kids need explicit guidance on Fortnite (and screen time).

Kids with ADHD or social skills issues need rules spelled out clearly. After you decide on screen time rules, I encourage you to talk to your child as directly as possible about them.

At the same time, be willing to listen. A lot of kids want to play Fortnite because it's a hot topic among their peers in middle and high school. That's not a reason to let your child play if you feel it's not appropriate. But it's important to be open to your child's feelings.

4. If you don't allow Fortnite, your child may find a way to play anyway.

If you don't allow Fortnite at home or elsewhere, your child may be tempted to play behind your back. The game is present at school, summer camp and friends' houses, where you can't monitor your child's use.

Again, that's not a reason to allow Fortnite, but it is something to consider when you set rules. If you don't allow it, there are videos of people playing the game on YouTube, and you may want to watch one of those videos with your child. That will at least give your child enough background to talk about the game with friends.

5. Fortnite may encourage kids to practice planning, collaboration, and teamwork.

After I played Fortnite with my grandson, I realized that the game requires a lot of skill. Players need to gather equipment, build forts, and fight battles. These tasks require executive functioning skills like flexible thinking and planning. Team play is also a big part of Fortnite. Playing in a duo team or four-person squad requires teamwork and collaboration.

All players must learn to escape potential danger, think on their feet, and be alert to external threats and changes. These are the same skills that can trip up many kids with ADHD in their daily lives. Some practice developing these skills in a game format could actually help kids when they're not playing.

6. Player communication in Fortnite can be good for social skills development.

In Fortnite, players chat with their partners or squads as they try to win. This can have positives for kids who struggle to connect with other kids. It gives a reason to talk about strategy and find common ground with peers.

At the same time, players can also communicate with strangers in Fortnite. This can be risky, especially for younger players. It's important to be aware of this and take precautions. On some devices - the Xbox, for instance - you can turn off voice chat in the parental control settings.

7. The violence in Fortnite is less than other games, but keep a close eye on your child.

While playing Fortnite, I noticed very little blood and gore. There's less graphic violence compared with other shooting games, like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. Still, violence is part of the game. In Battle Royale, for example, players try to eliminate enemies in combat using weapons.

Research hasn't established a clear link between playing violent video games and engaging in physical or criminal violence. However, there is evidence that video games can lead to aggressive thoughts and behavior, as well as leading to less empathy in kids. This is a hotly debated area in which experts don't always agree. My advice is to keep a close eye on your child's video game play. If your child has ADHD or social skills issues and is playing excessively, it's time to reinforce screen time limits in clear terms. Allowing your child to play a video game like Fortnite is a personal family decision - and it's OK to say no. Keep in mind, however, that video games and screens are here to stay. Whatever you decide, make sure you have a plan when your child asks for a chance to play.

Any opinions, views, information, and other content contained in blogs on Understood.org are the sole responsibility of the writer of the blog, and do not necessarily reflect the views, values, opinions, or beliefs of, and are not endorsed by, Understood.

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Fortnite and Kids With ADHD: 7 Things to Know | Understood

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I played the video game Fortnite the other day with my teen grandson. As an educator, I've worked with thousands of kids with ADHD, social skills challenges, and similar challenges. And I wanted to know more about how Fortnite might affect them. Fortnite is an online, multiplayer shooter video game.

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https://vocal.media/gamers/fortnite-is-it-worth-your-time-a-look-at-the-pros-and-cons

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Normal Teenage Behavior or Mental Health Issue? Know When to Seek Help

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Normal Teenage Behavior or Mental Health Issue? Know When to Seek Help

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Normal Teenage Behavior or a Mental Health Issue? Know When to Seek Help

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During adolescence, teens can start to see symptoms of anxiety and depression, and serious mental health issues can emerge. Family members should know when to seek help.

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Adolescent mental health - Moving forward after the pandemic |by Thorhildur Halldorsdottir

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Adolescent mental health - Moving forward after the pandemic |by Thorhildur Halldorsdottir

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Adolescent mental health - Moving forward after the pandemic | Thorhildur Halldorsdottir | TEDxBasel

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The New Pandemic: The Teenage Mental Health Crisis by Lily Green - TedTalk

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The New Pandemic: The Teenage Mental Health Crisis by Lily Green - TedTalk

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The New Pandemic: The Teenage Mental Health Crisis | Lily Green | TEDxYouth@LincolnStreet

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The mental health crisis among children and teens: How parents can help

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The mental health crisis among children and teens: How parents can help

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The mental health crisis among children and teens: How parents can help - Harvard Health

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Teen Mental Health: How to Know When Your Child Needs Help

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Teen Mental Health: How to Know When Your Child Needs Help

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By: Richard J. Chung, MD, FAAP

If your teenage child is dealing with anxiety, depression or any other mental health concern right now, you're not alone. More than a year after the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) joined with other organizations to declare a national emergency in youth mental health, many teens are still struggling.

Still, you may wonder whether the symptoms are part of the biological and social changes all young people go through on their way to adulthood, or something more. As a parent or caregiver, how do you know when to talk with your teen and their doctor about mental health?

Read on to learn more about teen mental health, including signs someone is struggling and may need more support. You can also visit the AAP YouTube channel for a series of videos for teens on mental health. The videos address topics including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm and other topics. Share with someone you care about:

Pressures teens face

Youth mental health expert raised concerns about the extreme pressures on children and teens throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the lingering effects of school closures and other COVID-related stressors are not the only factors in teen stress. Many young people are also dealing with:

Overwhelming pressure to figure out their future, get good grades or gain admission to elite colleges and universities

The need to be superstars in sports, the performing arts or other extracurriculars

Tough schedules that don't allow enough time for rest, relaxation and unstructured fun

Bullying (whether in person, via social media or both)

Persistent fears about climate change, global conflict and other weighty issues

Discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation​, weight, religion, disability or other factors

Problems related to a poverty or lack of money for safe, stable housing and enough nutritious food.

How will I know if my teen is struggling?

The mental health symptoms you might see in your child will, of course, be unique to them. But as a parent or caregiver, you have a good sense of what their "normal" looks like.

Signs your teen may be having mental health difficulties

In addition to more overt symptoms like mood swings, irritability, anger and tearfulness, you may see:

Notable changes in sleep, weight, eating habits or other everyday patterns

Loss of interest in the things they usually love or quitting activities that they enjoy

Withdrawing more than usual from friends, family and community

Canceling plans with their closest friends with little or no explanation

Academic struggles that seem different or more intense: for example, failing quizzes in their favorite subject or refusing to do homework that once would have seemed easy

Running thoughts or worries that won't leave them alone

A whole new set of friends you've never met before

Refusing to talk about what's bothering them, even after you've made it as safe as possible to discuss hard issues openly

Obsession with a certain goal, possibly with the belief that if they don't achieve it, their life will never be the same

Signs of drug, alcohol or other substance use

Signs of self-harm such as cuts, burns, bruises, etc. that your teen tries to hide or can't explain fully and credibly

Sexual activity or interest that seems new or more intense than before

Keep in mind that having just one symptom on this list doesn't mean your teen is experiencing a full-blown crisis. Biological changes, including the hormone shifts all tweens and teens go through, can affect your child's mood, school performance and more. But if you consistently see one or more of these signs, it's time to open a conversation about mental health with your teen.

What mental health conditions are most common for teens?

Young people face pretty much the same array of mental health challenges that adults do. However, these are the most common mental health conditions seen in U.S. tweens and teens:

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) affects nearly 10% of all U.S. kids aged 3 to 17.

Nearly 9.5% experience anxiety that interferes with their everyday functioning.

Around 4.5% live with depression. In teens, depression may or may not look like the stereotyped tearful blues. Symptoms of depression can sometimes look more like anger/irritability.

Though they are less common, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa can cause major health problems for teens and young adults. Self-harm,thought to be underreported, is another serious concern for tweens and teens.

Are drinking and drugs part of the problem?

Substance use is very common among teens. It can combine with mental health issues (and in most cases, making them worse).

Around 15% of all high-school students say they have used street drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, inhalants, heroin, meth, hallucinogens or MDMA (also called ecstasy or molly). Some 14% report they have misused prescription opioids. Nearly 30% say they've tried alcohol and 14% admit to binge drinking. A frightening 17% got into a car driven by someone who had been drinking, exposing them to a whole new level of danger.

Substance use is a concern all its own-one you should definitely discuss with your teen, even if you don't see signs of mental health issues. But noticing it alongside mental health symptoms raises extra concern. Drinking and drugs are often used to cope with difficult feelings or circumstances. This can signal deep emotional pain that needs to be addressed.

What role does social media play?

Young people spend a lot of time on sites such as Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and others. One study found that 90% of teens aged 13 to 18 use multiple platforms, with more than 60% engaging with social media every day.

We are still learning about the ways social media can affect human health, especially among children and teens. Healthy use of social media can foster positive connections. However, some young people may face greater risks for negative effects. See " Social Media & Your Child's Mental Health: What the Research Says" for insights that can help you consider social media's impact on your child.

How can I open conversations with my child?

Here are some points to consider as you open the door to discussing your teen's mental health. Ideally, this should be a a series of ongoing conversations and "check ins" that you have with your child. This can help support your child's mental health and also give you a foundation for times your child may be struggling more and need more problem-focused support.

Resolve to listen more than you speak. Nothing will send your teen running the other way faster than failing to see and hear them fully. You will need to manage your own fears during the conversation so you can avoid autobiographical listening. This happens when you filter everything through your own life lens instead of listening for deep understanding.

Realize that mental health stigma still exists. Despite much progress, some people still believe that having a mental health condition means someone is broken, untrustworthy or potentially violent. In fact, many don't seek mental health treatment because they're afraid of what others will think of them. If you're concerned about the harm stigma can do to your teen, this article may help.

What to remember about mental health​ as you move forward

How can our pediatrician support us?

Your pediatrician cares about your child's health and has helped many other parents and caregivers with mental health concerns. Your pediatrician also knows about local resources you can tap to support your teen, now and throughout the healing process.

Pediatricians can explain treatment options, including medications that might help. They can also refer you to mental health specialists who can evaluate your teen. In this way, your pediatrician will become part of a care team that can help you create a treatment plan, as well as a crisis plan that spells out what you will do if things get worse for your child.

What if my teen is having thoughts of suicide?

Suicidal thoughts or actions should NEVER be ignored. If your teen is in crisis right now, call The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or text 'TALK" to 741741. Trained lifeline staff will help you figure out immediate steps to protect your child.

If your teen is thinking about suicide but not in crisis, it's still vitally important to get help. Call your child's pediatrician or mental health provider right away to find resources and plan for appropriate treatment and support.

If you're concerned you might be missing the warning signs of suicide, here is an article that may help.

Proactively promote mental health & self-care

Also keep in mind that mental health is not just about responding to problems. It is important to promote positive mental health and resilience in everyday, proactive ways.

Even if your teen is doing fine, help them find time for self care and mood-boosting healthy habits. Make time to enjoy each other as a family. Positive activities and relationships can have a protective, "scaffolding" effect on mental health.

We all have good days and bad days, just as days when we feel healthier than other times. Mental health should stay on our radar; promoting it should be among our day-to-day goals.

More information

About Dr. Chung

Richard J. Chung, MD, FAAP is a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist in Durham, North Carolina. He is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Adolescence.

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Teen Mental Health: How to Know When Your Child Needs Help

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For many teenagers, the transitions that accompany adolescence and other pressures can lead to one or more of a variety of mental health disorders. Here are signs parents and caregivers can watch for, and information to help know when they may need more support.

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WHY I STILL PLAY FOOTBALL, DESPITE THE RISKS

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WHY I STILL PLAY FOOTBALL, DESPITE THE RISKS

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Why I Still Play Football, Despite the Risks – VoiceWaves Long Beach

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It was a play just like any other play. I was a 15 year-old sophomore, proud to be playing football for Long Beach Polytechnic High School, a team that has produced a number of NFL players, including Marques Anderson, who played for the Green Bay Packers, the Denver Broncos and the San Francisco 49e…

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Can Football Change The World?: David Shaw at TEDxStanford

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Can Football Change The World?: David Shaw at TEDxStanford

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Can Football Change The World?:  David Shaw at TEDxStanford

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Why We Need High School Football - Angus Reid 

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Why We Need High School Football - Angus Reid 

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Why We Need High School Football | Angus Reid | TEDxWestVancouverED

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Study Finds Routine Hits From Playing Football Cause Damage to the Brain

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Study Finds Routine Hits From Playing Football Cause Damage to the Brain

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Study Finds Routine Hits From Playing Football Cause Damage to the Brain - News - Carnegie Mellon University

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Research led by CMU and the University of Rochester Medical Center indicates concussions aren’t the sole cause of damage in contact sports.

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Is Football Worth The Brain-Injury Risk? For Some, The Answer Is No

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Is Football Worth The Brain-Injury Risk? For Some, The Answer Is No

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Is Football Worth The Brain-Injury Risk? For Some, The Answer Is No

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When he killed himself at 50, former NFL player Dave Duerson’s brain showed serious damage, likely from hits during his football career. His son now questions the gamble of playing the game.

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There are an estimated 1.7 to 3.8 million traumatic brain injuries each year in the United States, according to the CDC, of which 10 percent arise due to sports and recreational activities. Amongst American children and adolescents, sports and recreational activities contribute to over 21 percent of all traumatic brain injuries. Sustaining an injury while playing sports can range from a mild physical trauma such as a scalp contusion or laceration to severe TBI with concurrent bleeding in the brain or coma. It is important to recognize when a head trauma is severe or has resulted in a TBI because it is crucial to seek immediate medical attention. While most brain injuries are self-limiting with symptoms resolving in a week, a growing amount of research has now established that the sequelae from recurrent minor impacts is significant in the long term.

Traumatic Brain Injury

A traumatic brain injury (TBI) is defined as a form of acquired brain injury from a blow or jolt to the head or a penetrating head injury that disrupts the normal function of the brain. TBI can result when the head suddenly and violently hits an object, or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue. Symptoms of a TBI can be mild, moderate, or severe, depending on the extent of damage to the brain. Mild cases (mild, traumatic brain injury, or mTBI) may result in a brief change in mental state or consciousness, while severe cases may result in extended periods of unconsciousness, coma or even death. Individuals with TBI may experience one or more of the following:

Pain: Constant or recurring headache

Motor Dysfunction: Inability to control or coordinate motor functions, or disturbance with balance

Sensory: Changes in ability to hear, taste or see; dizziness; hypersensitivity to light or sound

Cognitive: Agitation; confusion; shortened attention span; easily distracted; overstimulated by environment; difficulty following directions or understanding information; feeling of disorientation and confusion and other neuropsychological deficiencies

Speech: Difficulty finding the "right" word; difficulty expressing words or thoughts; dysarthric or slurred speech

Concussions Concussions frequently affect athletes in both contact and non-contact sports, and are considered to be diffuse brain injuries that traumatically induce alterations of mental status. A concussion may result from shaking the brain within the skull and, if severe, can cause shearing injuries to nerve fibers and neurons.
The 5th International Conference on Concussion in Sport held in Berlin, Germany, in 2016 defined Sport-related Concussion as:

Sport-related concussion is the historical term representing low velocity injuries that cause brain 'shaking' resulting in clinical symptoms and that are not necessarily related to a pathological injury. Concussion is a subset of TBI and will be the term used in this document. It was also noted that the term commotio cerebri is often used in European and other countries. Minor revisions were made to the definition of concussion, which is defined as follows:

Sport related concussion is a traumatic brain injury induced by biomechanical forces. Several common features that may be utilized in clinically defining the nature of a concussive head injury include:

1. Sport related concussion may be caused either by a direct blow to the head, face, neck or elsewhere on the body with an "impulsive" force transmitted to the head.

2. Sport related concussion typically results in the rapid onset of short-lived impairment of neurological function that resolves spontaneously. However, in some cases, signs and symptoms evolve over a number of minutes to hours.

3. Sport related concussion may result in neuropathological changes, but the acute clinical symptoms largely reflect a functional disturbance rather than a structural injury and, as such, no abnormality is seen on standard structural neuroimaging studies.

4. Sport related concussion results in a range of clinical symptoms that may or may not involve loss of consciousness. Resolution of the clinical and cognitive symptoms typically follows a sequential course. However, it is important to note that in some cases symptoms may be prolonged.

The clinical signs and symptoms should not be explained by drug, alcohol, or medication use, other injuries (such as cervical injuries, peripheral vestibular dysfunction, etc.) or other comorbidities (e.g., psychological factors or coexisting medical conditions).
To view peer-reviewed literature related to sports concussions, the Sports Concussion Library can be found here .

Grading the concussion can be a helpful tool in the management of the injury and depends on:

1. Presence or absence of loss of consciousness;

2. Duration of loss of consciousness;

3. Duration of posttraumatic memory loss; and

4. Persistence of symptoms, including headache, dizziness, lack of concentration, etc.

Some team physicians and trainers evaluate an athlete's mental status by using a five-minute series of questions and physical exercises known as the Standardized Assessment of Concussion (SAC). More recently, teams have employed , a 25-minute computer-based testing program specifically designed for the management of sports-related concussion. A player who has sustained a concussion is three to six times more likely to sustain another one. While the decision when an athlete is ready to return to play isn't straightforward - such as in this , when in November of 2013 a professional soccer player helped bring his team to victory despite having lost consciousness and dislocating five vertebrae - every player could benefit from baseline neurological testing before the season so that the results can be used for comparison in the event the athlete receives a blow to the head.

Note: There is no evidence to demonstrate all participants in contact collision sports should have baseline computerized neuropsychological (NP) tests. NP tools such as ImPACT/Cogsport, as well as SCAT3 have yet to be proven reliable or validated. These screening tests can be used only as a tool in the expert medical diagnosis and return to play decision-making process. Second Impact Syndrome (SIS) is an acute, sometimes fatal, brain swelling that occurs when a second concussion is sustained before complete recovery from a previous concussion. This repeat injury causes vascular congestion and increased intracranial pressure, which may be difficult or impossible to control. The risk for SIS is higher for sports such as boxing, football, ice or roller hockey, soccer, baseball, basketball and snow skiing.

The issue of concussion is covered further within another AANS Patient Information section. To view that page, click here .

refers to a profound or deep state of unconsciousness. An individual in coma is alive but is unable to respond to his or her environment. The unconscious state has variability and may be very deep, where no amount of stimulation will cause the person to respond or, in other cases, the person in a coma may move, make noise or respond to pain, but is unable to obey simple, one-step commands such as "hold up two fingers" or "stick out your tongue." Although higher brain functions like thinking are impaired, key functions like breathing and circulation remain intact in comatose patients. The process of recovery from coma is a continuum along which a person gradually regains consciousness.

For people who sustain severe injury to the brain and are comatose, recovery is variable. The more severe the injury, the more likely the result will include permanent impairment.

The Glasgow Coma Scale is administered upon admission to the hospital or by paramedic first responders to establish a baseline level of consciousness, motor function, and eye findings. Abilities are scored from 3 to 15 on the GCS, with higher scores correlating with less severe injuries. Frequent evaluations of the patient are imperative to help assess neurologic improvement or deterioration.

Brain-imaging technologies, particularly computerized tomography (CT or CAT scan), can offer important immediate information about a person's status. The purpose of performing an emergency CT scan is to rule out a large mass lesion (hematoma) that may be compressing the brain. A magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be used to image subtle changes that may not be captured by a CT scan.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease typically found in individuals who have sustained repeated head injuries in the past, including concussions during contact sports. The symptoms of CTE usually develop over several years to decades after repeated injuries and consist of cognitive deficits such as learning disabilities, disinhibition, memory disturbances, and mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. As the disease progresses, some patients may experience progressive dementia and motor symptoms such as balance instability and extrapyramidal disorders.

A research study conducted in 2017 at Boston University examined 202 brains from deceased football players and found that 177 of them (87%) had signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy from repeated blows to the head.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) tracks injuries through its National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS).

According to CPSC data, there were an estimated 454,407 sports-related head injuries treated at U.S. hospital emergency rooms in 2018. This number represents a decrease of nearly 32,875 sports-related injuries from the previous year. Of all the sports noted below, most of them posted a decrease in the number of injuries treated from 2017.

The actual incidence of head injuries may potentially be much higher for two primary reasons. In the 2018 report, the CPSC excluded estimates for product categories that yielded 1,200 injuries or less, those that had very small sample counts and those that were limited to a small geographic area of the country. Additionally, the system does not track many less severe head injuries treated at physicians' offices, immediate care centers, or are self-treated. Sports/recreational activities, in addition to the equipment and apparel used in these activities are included in these statistics. For example, swimming-related injuries include the activity as well as diving boards, equipment, flotation devices, pools, and water slides.

The following sports/recreational activities represent the categories contributing to the highest number of estimated head injuries treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms in 2018.

The top 10 sports-related head injury categories among children ages 14 and younger: *Note: Reported incidence is known to be significantly under-reported (up to 50%, McCrea Clin J Sports med 13:13-17, 2004) and do not reflect those that are treated by family doctors or other para-medical professionals.

Anyone with signs or symptoms of moderate to severe traumatic brain injury should receive medical attention as soon as possible. Although little can be done to reverse the brain damage, stabilizing the individual with TBI and preventing further injury is very important. Most studies indicate that once brain cells are damaged, they do not regenerate for the most part. However, recovery after brain injury can take place as the surrounding tissue of the brain sometimes makes up for the injured areas by rerouting the information and functions of the damaged tissue.

With mild traumatic brain injuries, individuals should be monitored closely at home for any persistent, worsening or new symptoms. Indications for returning to work, school or physical activities are based upon the physician's recommendations.

Moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries may require emergent medical care to ensure that the individual has proper oxygen supply to the brain and the rest of the body, adequate blood flow and a normal blood pressure. Further medical management may be required based on the patient's symptoms, e.g. people who develop seizures after their injury may be given anti-seizure medications. If the patient is severely injured, a neurosurgeon may need to remove or repair hematomas (ruptured blood vessels), contusions (bruised brain tissue) or skull fractures.

Most people with a significant brain injury will require some form of rehabilitation to relearn basic skills and perform their daily activities. The type and duration of rehab depends on the severity of the injury and what part of the brain was injured.

Information on Specific Sports

Boxing

Over time, professional and amateur boxers can suffer permanent brain damage. The force of a professional boxer's fist is equivalent to being hit with a 13-pound bowling ball traveling 20 miles per hour, or about 52 times the force of gravity.

According to the Journal of Combative Sport , from January of 1960 to August of 2011, there were 488 boxing-related deaths. The journal attributes 66 percent of these deaths to head, brain or neck injuries; one was attributed to a skull fracture.

There are boxers with minimal involvement and those that are so severely affected that they require institutional care. There are some boxers with varying degrees of speech difficulty, stiffness, unsteadiness, memory loss, and inappropriate behavior. In several studies, 15-40 percent of ex-boxers have been found to have symptoms of chronic brain injury. Most of these boxers have mild symptoms. Recent studies have shown that most professional boxers (even those without symptoms) have some degree of brain damage.

Cheerleading

Cheerleading has changed drastically in the last 20 years, with increasingly difficult acrobatic stunts performed. A number of high school and college level schools have limited the types of stunts that can be attempted by their cheerleaders. Rules and safety guidelines now apply to both practice and competition.

According to 2010 cheerleading data from the CPSC, head and neck injuries accounted for 19.3 percent of total cheerleading injuries. Additionally, in the 2010-2011 school year head injuries were associated with 1579 concussions, 361 contusions and 2,292 internal injuries; neck injuries accounted for 118 contusions, 16 fractures and 1,301 sprains/strains.

In its Catastrophic Sports Injury Report for fall 1982 through spring 2011 , the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina (UNC) noted that there was one direct high school cheerleading catastrophic injury during the 2010-2011 school year. A high school cheerleader collided with another cheerleader during practice and elbowed in the temple. The result was two skull fractures, seizures and a medically induced coma. Recovery at the time was incomplete.
UNC also reported that college cheerleading was not associated with any direct injuries during the 2010-2011 school year.

A 2009 study by the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital yielded the following head-injury statistics:

The majority (96 percent) of the reported concussions and closed-head injuries were led by the cheerleader performing a stunt.

Nearly 90 percent of the most serious fall-related injuries were sustained while the cheerleaders were performing on artificial turf, grass, traditional foam floors or wood floors.

A 2012-2013 RIO study by the Nationwide Children's Hospital yielded the following statistics about high school cheerleading:

Cheerleading yielded 0.73 injuries per 1,000 athletic exposures in the 2012-2013 school year.

Injuries to the head/face accounted for 36.5 percent of all cheerleading injuries in the 2012-2013 school year.

The National Cheer Safety Foundation offers comprehensive resources and safety information specific to cheerleading, including news articles such as .
Cycling

Every year, more than 500,000 people visit emergency rooms in the U.S. with bicycle-related injuries. In 2009, nearly 85,000 of those were head injuries. There are about 600 deaths a year, with two-thirds attributed to TBI. It is estimated that up to 85 percent of head injuries are preventative with proper use of helmets, such as those approved by The Snell Memorial Foundation , American National Standards Institute (ANSI) or American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). It is essential that the helmet fit securely while the user is riding or if he or she takes a fall. According to Safe Kids Worldwide , more children from ages five to 14 visit emergency rooms for biking-related injuries than from any other sport. Helmets can reduce the risk of severe brain injuries by 88 percent. However, approximately 55 percent of children are reported not always wearing a helmet while bike riding.

The following facts/statistics are from Safe Kids USA :

Head injury is the leading cause of wheeled sports-related death and the most important determinant of permanent disability after a crash.

Without proper protection, a fall of as little as two feet can result in a skull fracture or other TBI.

Approximately 50 percent of U.S. children between 5- and 14-years own a helmet, and only 25 percent report regularly wearing it while bicycling.

Universal use of bicycle helmets by children ages 4 to 15 could prevent 45,000 head injuries.

Helmets reduce the risk of head injury by at least 45 percent, brain injury by 33 percent, facial injury by 27 percent, and fatal injury by 29 percent. Eight states and the District of Columbia require children to wear a helmet while participating in wheeled sports such as riding scooters, in-line skates, or skateboards.

One study found that the rate of bicycle-helmet use by children ages 14 and under was more than twice as high in a county with a fully comprehensive bike-helmet law than in a similar county with a less comprehensive law.

Safe Kids Worldwide further reported that in 2010, 112 children under the age of 19 died while riding a bike. This is the smallest number of deaths since 1999, and a 56-percent reduction in the number of deaths since, with a 59-percent decrease in the death rate.
Football

The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSIR) also tracks a number of statistics for "catastrophic" football injuries, which it defines as those that resulted in brain, or spinal cord injury, or skull or spine fracture. Recent findings in the Annual Survey of Catastrophic Football Injuries, 1977-2012, include the following:

A few football injuries also have resulted in fatalities, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research's Annual Survey of Football Injury Research, 1931-2012 :

There were two fatalities directly related to football during the 2012 football season. Both fatalities were in semi-professional football. There is only one other year where there were no direct fatalities in high school and college football and that was in 1990.

The rate of direct fatal injuries is very low on a 100,000 player exposure basis. For the approximately 4,200,000 participants in 2012, the rate of fatalities was 0.04 per 100,000 participants.

The rate of direct fatalities in high school (grades 9-12) was 0.00 per 100,000 participants. The rate of direct fatalities in college was 0.00 per 100,000 participants. The rate for all other areas of football was 0.06 per 100,000 participants.

Most direct fatalities usually occur during regularly scheduled games, and in 2012 this was true with both direct semi-professional fatalities occurring in games.

According to the same report by NCCSIR, a number of the players associated with brain trauma complained of headaches or had a previous concussion prior to their deaths.
The National Federation of State High Schools released the following statement on February 23, 2010: "Effective with the 2010 high school football season, any player who shows signs, symptoms or behaviors associated with a concussion must be removed from the game and shall not return to play until cleared by an appropriate health-care professional." The new concussion language is now in all NFHS rules books as well as the "NFHS Suggested Guidelines for Management of Concussion."

More recently, the long-term implications of concussion have been discussed at length in the media, sparked by the controversy between the and its former players. An ESPN from early November 2013 covered the chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) diagnosis of three ex-NFL players. Additionally, ESPN also reported that last year UCLA tested five other former players and was able to diagnose all five as has having signs of CTE, marking the first time the disease has been recognized in living patients.

Rule Changes in College Football to Prevent Head and Neck Injuries

The National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) and the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) Task Force, headed by Ron Courson, director of sports medicine for the University of Georgia, has focused on two primary problems associated with head contact.

Head-down contact still occurs frequently in intercollegiate football

Helmet-contact penalties are not adequately enforced

Rule changes implemented by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) related to head-down contact and spearing in collegiate football have been distributed to all coaches and officials throughout the country. The objective is to eliminate injuries resulting from a player using his helmet in an attempt to punish an opponent.
With the rule changes and more diligent enforcement of the rules, there is hope that a significant reduction in head and neck injuries will result.

The NCAA revised its 16-year-old guidelines on treatment of concussion in the NCAA Sports Medicine Handbook to better provide member institutions with appropriate responses to concussion injuries and procedures for returning athletes to competition or practice. According to page 59 of the 2013-2014 edition, "...Any athlete who is diagnosed with a concussion must not return to play or practice that day and must be cleared by a healthcare professional before returning to play or practice."

The "Concussion Diagnosis and Management" section details circumstances in which an athlete should be withheld from competition pending clearance by a physician. Football-related Head and Neck Injury Prevention Tips

Horseback Riding While head injuries comprise about 18 percent of all horseback riding injuries, they are the number one reason for hospital admission. A 2007 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that horseback riding resulted in 11.7 percent of all traumatic brain injuries in recreational sports from 2001 to 2005, the highest of any athletic activity. Of the estimated 14,446 horseback-related head injuries treated in 2009, 3,798 were serious enough to require hospitalization. Subdural hematomas and brain hemorrhages comprised many of the serious injuries. According to the Equestrian Medical Safety Association, head injuries account for an estimated 60 percent of deaths resulting from equestrian accidents.

There are factors that may increase the risk of falling, such as a green horse, slippery footing or bareback riding, but it is the height from which the rider falls that most significantly affects the severity of the injury. According to the Ontario Equestrian Federation , a rider sitting on a horse is elevated eight feet or more above the ground: a fall from just two feet can cause permanent brain damage. Riders ages 10-14 are most likely to be involved in an accident with a horse.

While serious head injury can occur while wearing a helmet, the data very clearly shows the severity of the head injury can be decreased with helmet wear. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, helmets can reduce head and brain injuries by 85 percent. While helmets are required in equestrian sports that involve jumping, including eventing and show jumping, in high-level dressage competitions, the riders generally wear top hats, which provide no protection. Accidents are less common in competitive dressage, but accidents can occur. While most dressage riders do not wear helmets even when practicing, they are allowed during practice and competition.

The U.S. Equestrian Federation strongly encourages all riders while riding anywhere on the competition grounds to wear protective headgear with harness secured which passes or surpasses ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials)/SEI (Safety Equipment Institute) standards for equestrian use and carries the SEI tag.

Snow Skiing/Snowboarding

According to a John Hopkins Medicine-led study , approximately 10 million Americans ski or snowboard in the United States each year, with about 600,000 injuries reported annually. Severe head trauma accounts for about 20 percent of all skiing- and snowboarding-related injuries, and of those head injuries, 22 percent are severe enough to cause loss of consciousness or concussion. Head injuries are the most frequent cause of death and severe disability among skiers and snowboarders.

According to the National Ski Areas Association's (NSAA's) 2012-2013 National Demographic Study, 70 percent of skiers and snowboarders wore helmets during the most recent ski season. This shows a 5-percent increase from the 2011-2012 season. Among those interviewed, helmet usage has increased by 180 percent since the 2002-2003 season, when only 25 percent of skiers and snowboarders reported wearing helmets.

More importantly, 80 percent of skiers and snowboarders age 17 and under reported wearing helmets on the slopes during the 2012-2013 ski season. The NSAA National Demographic Study was compiled from more than 130,000 interviews of skiers and snowboarders nationwide.

The 2012-2013 NSAA study also revealed that:

89 percent of children 9 years old or younger reported helmet usage in the 2012-2013 ski season

83 percent of children between the ages of 10 and 14 reported wearing helmets

81 percent of adults over the age of 65 reported helmet usage

Skiers and snowboarders ages 18-24 have traditionally represented the lowest percentage of helmet use among all age groups. In the 2012-2013 season, 60 percent of all 18 to 24 years olds interviewed wore helmets, a 13-percent increase from the 2011-2012 season, when only 53 percent wore helmets.

NSAA recently launched a revamped Lids on Kids website designed to provide parents with pertinent helmet-safety information; it includes simple helmet-sizing instructions to help ensure a proper fit.
Helmet Usage

In 2011, New Jersey became the first state to require those under the age of 18 wear a helmet while skiing or snowboarding. Currently, there are no other state laws mandating helmets for skiing or any winter sports. Ski resorts in Aspen, Colo., mandate skiers under age 12 wear helmets. Following the high-profile skiing-related deaths of Michael Kennedy in December of 1997, Sonny Bono in January of 1998 and Natasha Richardson in March of 2009, an increase in the number of skiers wearing helmets has been noted in several studies.

Meanwhile, helmet use has been mandatory for snowpark users in Quebec, Canada, since the winter of 2006-2007, according to the Quebec Ski Areas Association (ASSQ). And in January of 2010, the Canadian Ski Council (CSC) issued the following national policy:

"The Canadian Ski Council recommends wearing helmets for skiing and riding. Skiers and snowboarders are encouraged to educate themselves on the benefits and limitations of helmet usage. The primary safety consideration, and obligation under the Alpine Responsibility Code, is to ski and ride in a controlled and responsible manner."

The policy developed after research undertaken by the CSC showed that helmet usage in Canada is increasing steadily, with more than 50 percent of Canadian skiers and boarders wearing helmets. Usage is much greater among youth, reaching 90 percent in many areas. To ensure compliance with this initiative, the CSC notes that Canadian ski areas have invested heavily in making the sport safer, with improved signage, better grooming, and safer equipment; areas have purchased more than 50,000 rental helmets to include in their rental packages, which are available at nearly all Canadian ski areas.

In a February 2010 release from Quebec's Trauma Centres and the ASSQ, Dr. Tarek Razek, director of the Montreal General Hospital Trauma Program, said, "Wearing a helmet reduces the risk of head injuries in skiers and snowboarders by approximately 35 percent." Dr. Razek also advocates helmet use in other sports, including cycling and rollerblading.

As part of a survey of 80 Canadian ski areas:

Area operators estimated that 55 percent of all skiers and boarders wore helmets. Quebec had the highest rate of usage at 65 percent, with the lowest rate in Western Canada at 50 percent.

The Grade 4/5 Snowpass program, which had 41,000 youth participants in 2008-2009, provides reduced-cost lift tickets and other specials for participants. Fifty-four percent of the parents of Snowpass holders reported wearing helmets regularly, and 93 percent of youth participants reported wearing helmets on a regular basis.

A survey of 1,500 attendees conducted at the Toronto Ski Show in October of 2008 found that 55.3 percent of men and 57.6 percent of women wore helmets all or most of the time. Older skiers and boarders had a higher usage of helmets than younger adults.

Meanwhile, according to the 2012-2013 National Demographic Study of Skiers and Boarders, the National Ski Area Association in the U.S. found the following;

Seventy-one percent of survey respondents were wearing a helmet when interviewed, up six percent in the previous season.

Helmet usage increases with ability level, rising from 26 percent usage by beginners, to 38 percent by intermediates, to 55 percent by advanced/expert participants.

Helmet usage is higher for children ages 9 and under (89%) and 10-14 (83%), and adults ages 55-64 (76%) and 65+ (81%) than for other age groups. Helmet usage is lowest among 18-24-year-olds (62%).

Soccer Protection against head injuries in soccer is complicated since heading is an established part of the game, and any attempt to protect against head injuries must allow the game to be played without modification. Several head guards have been developed to reduce the risk of head injuries in soccer. One independent research study found that none of the products on the market provide substantial benefits against minor impacts, such as heading with a soccer ball.
A McGill University study found more than 60 percent of college-level soccer players reported symptoms of concussion during a single season. Although the percentage at other levels of play may be different, these data indicate head injuries in soccer are more frequent than most presume.

According to CPSC statistics, 40 percent of soccer concussions are attributed to head to player contact; 10.3 percent are head to ground, goal post, wall, etc.; 12.6 percent are head to soccer ball, including accidents; and 37 percent are not specified.

Prevention Tips

Buy and use helmets or protective headgear approved by the ASTM for specific sports 100 percent of the time. The ASTM has vigorous standards for testing helmets for many sports; helmets approved by the ASTM bear a sticker stating this. Helmets and headgear come in many sizes and styles for many sports and must properly fit to provide maximum protection against head injuries. In addition to other safety apparel or gear, helmets or headgear should be worn at all times for:

General Tips

Resources for More Information

Author Information

Nitin Agarwal, MD
Rut Thakkar
Khoi Than, MD, FAANS

The AANS does not endorse any treatments, procedures, products or physicians referenced in these patient fact sheets. This information is provided as an educational service and is not intended to serve as medical advice. Anyone seeking specific neurosurgical advice or assistance should consult his or her neurosurgeon, or locate one in his or her area through the AANS' Find a Board-certified Neurosurgeon online tool.

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​What kinds of sports result in the most head injuries? How are those injuries diagnosed and treated? Learn more in this neurosurgeon-edited guide.

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Ninety-nine percent of ailing NFL player brains show hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease, autopsy study finds

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Ninety-nine percent of ailing NFL player brains show hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease, autopsy study finds

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Ninety-nine percent of ailing NFL player brains show hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease, autopsy study finds

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Study could ramp up pressure to further protect players of American football

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Head to Head: The National Football League & Brain Injury

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Head to Head: The National Football League & Brain Injury

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NYU Langone's High School Bioethics Project developed this primer so students may understand the basics of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and tau protein, as well as trends in biomedical research involving CTE and the National Football League (NFL). It also allows students to explore ethical questions related to safety, risk, and health policy.

Curriculum Integration Ideas

This guide may be used in life sciences classes during units that cover topics including the following:

sports and health

anatomy, physiology, and neurology

public policy discussions on safety, risk, and sports

Head Injuries in the NFL

Over the past few years, concussions suffered by NFL players have been in the news. Many high-profile football players-superstars like former Philadelphia Eagles running back Brian Westbrook and Washington Redskins running back Clinton Portis-have been sidelined by severe head injuries. Although severe head trauma and brain injury have gotten much attention in the media, efforts to minimize these injuries have lagged. The NFL has only recently begun taking steps to protect its players in response to a torrent of criticism.

Background on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and Tau Protein

In 2008, research surfaced that was gathered by neuropathologist Ann McKee, MD, from the Bedford VA Medical Center and CTE Center at Boston University Medical Center. After studying the brains of 12 former football players over a 2-year period, Dr. McKee found evidence of neurodegeneration. Each brain showed apparent signs of repeated trauma, the only cause of a condition known as CTE. CTE has been found to lead to depression, loss of judgment, inability to control impulse, rages, and memory loss, and can ultimately result in dementia. What's worse, these symptoms are not immediately apparent and can emerge up to 10 years after one stops playing football.

As Dr. McKee found, with every accumulation of brain trauma there is an increased effect on tau protein in the brain. Tau protein is a microtubule-associated protein (MAP) that plays a large role in microtubule stability. Microtubules transport nutrients and molecules within cells of the brain. In Alzheimer's disease, tau is altered chemically and begins pairing with other tau threads, becoming tangled, and a similar thing happens in CTE. These altered tau structures collapse, causing microtubules to disintegrate and the cells to die.

Altered tau structures collapsing, causing microtubules to disintegrate. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE EDUCATION AND REFERRAL CENTER, A SERVICE OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING.

This deterioration of tau protein appears in the brain as small black specks. In areas of the brain that have experienced repeated damage, entire sections can become stained or discolored, turning brown or black. In the case study of John Grimsley, a former NFL player who died at age 45 from an accidental gunshot wound, Dr. McKee displays the difference between the brain of a healthy person with no evidence of degeneration, a football player with obvious presence of degeneration, and a boxer with extreme levels of degeneration. In the cross-section slides (accessible halfway down the page, by clicking on the "+" to expand John Grimsley's Case Study), the healthy person's slide is white, John Grimsley's slide is brown, and the boxer's slide is close to black.

Trends in Biomedical Research: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and the NFL

What's more troubling about Dr. McKee's studies is the relationship between CTE and the NFL. Former Tampa Bay Buccaneer and Philadelphia Eagles lineman Tom McHale was among the athletes whose brains she studied. McHale died in 2008 at the age of 45 from a drug overdose likely linked to the symptoms he suffered from CTE. In his journal, McHale wrote that he felt he was losing his mind and had become addicted to painkillers-changes that were said to be highly out of character. Dr. McKee said McHale's brain showed "tremendous neurodegeneration."

"What we have seen in all of these players... is a trauma-induced disease. It is caused by trauma. And so, I don't think there is any question about what has caused the disease in these players," Dr. McKee said in testimony about her research on CTE before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary in October 2009. "None of my colleagues have ever seen a case of CTE without a history of head trauma."

A survey by the Associated Press in November 2009 showed approximately 32 of the 160 NFL players surveyed-20 percent-replied that they have hidden or downplayed the effects of a concussion. Half said they have had at least 1 concussion, and 50 players-roughly 38 percent-missed playing time due to head injury. According to Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Farrior, "It's just a natural reaction for you to fib a little bit and not give all the doctors all the information because you want to go out there and play. You don't want them to come back and tell you you're not able to play." The common perception of concussions is similar to Atlanta Falcons center Todd McClure's, "If you come out [of a game], you're seen as 'soft.' That's the way it is."

While players may currently hide their concussions in order to play, they may not be able to hide from them in the future. In a 2009 study at the University of Michigan commissioned by the NFL, 6 percent of retired NFL players over the age of 50 had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, dementia, or another memory-related disease. This study shows the much higher level of diagnoses in NFL players than in American men of a similar age who did not play professional football. The incidence in these men is only 2 percent.

What Is Being Done, and Is It Enough?

In 2007, the NFL mandated neuropsychological baseline tests and retests for players before they can return to play after sustaining head trauma. The NFL now prohibits players from returning to a game from which they were knocked unconscious and also established a hotline to report pressure to play against a doctor's advice. The hotline was created after New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick convinced former linebacker Ted Johnson to play too soon after a concussion, after which he sustained a more severe injury.

In 2015, the NFL released a new concussion poster to its players. It discloses more information about the effects of repeated head trauma than in previous information released to its players and, for the first time, acknowledges the serious long-term harm that concussions cause.

How Do We Protect Our Future Athletes?

It's no secret that adolescents idolize athletes. They want to be like them and play the same sports. But how do we prevent them from making the same mistakes our current athletes make? How do we protect a generation of young athletes who still celebrate the current warrior mentality of the NFL?

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has lobbied for states to adopt legislation similar to the Lystedt Law, which prevents a child from returning to play too soon after suspicion of a concussion and promotes concussion education and awareness. Concussions are not uncommon to football played at all levels. In fact, they can be even more devastating to someone whose brain is still developing, as injuries can take longer to heal. In 2006, Zackary Lystedt was 13 years old when he suffered permanent brain damage. He collapsed during a junior high football game from brain hemorrhaging after returning to play 60 seconds after sustaining severe head trauma. He remains in a wheelchair.

A major issue with concussions is they can be difficult to diagnose, and many student athletes return to play too soon. Many high schools lack the necessary medical personnel and equipment to examine athletes properly. A concussed athlete who returns to play before their brain is properly healed is more susceptible to sustaining an even worse injury known as second-impact syndrome-a condition in which the brain is vulnerable to another, often more severe, injury. Sixteen-year-old Jaquan Waller died during a game two days after sustaining brain trauma in practice. A medical examiner said "neither impact would have been sufficient to cause death in the absence of the other impact." Waller was cleared to play by his team's certified athletic trainer.

Making the proper diagnosis of a concussion and removing an athlete from play are hard enough when the symptoms are there. But the true danger lies in the inability to diagnose someone who demonstrates no symptoms.

A 2012 Purdue University study monitored 21 high school football players for an entire season. Four of the players were not diagnosed with concussion but suffered from brain injury equal to if not worse than players who were diagnosed with a concussion and removed from play. Researchers found these four undiagnosed athletes to have had a significant decrease in routine cognitive tests as well as decreased brain activity associated with memory. This was the case for Cincinnati Bengals' wide receiver Chris Henry, who died in 2009 at the age of 26. An autopsy revealed that his brain had signs of degeneration-he had CTE. But the most troubling aspect of this finding is that Henry reportedly never sustained a concussion in his collegiate or professional football career. You do not have to have a history of concussions to develop CTE.

Henry's case might seem shocking, but another common misconception is that an athlete must lose consciousness in order to sustain a concussion. In fact, it is not always the severity of the hit that can cause brain trauma leading to CTE. The mere accumulation of hits can be just as devastating.

Here are some figures to think about:

a high school lineman receives between 1,500 and 1,800 subconcussive hits each season

someone who plays four years of high school football can experience 6,000 to 7,200 subconcussive hits

playing 4 years of college football additionally doubles the amount of hits-12,000 to 14,400 hits to the head before a player has the opportunity to play in the NFL

Not only does a player suffer from habitual head trauma while they play, but the longer they play and the further they advance in their career, the players around them get bigger, the speed of the game gets faster, and the hits get harder. This is why the NFL must consider these facts and figures before ever realistically proposing an expanded season.

High school athletes are taught to play through broken fingers and torn hip flexors; they are conditioned to play with pain. Why would a headache be a concern? The NFL needs to be proactive in changing the mentality of a game for an entire generation of young athletes. Over-competitive coaches must be taught not to force players onto the field prematurely. Parents and trainers must encourage kids to report their symptoms. Ultimately, athletes must be taught to care for themselves above playing a sport that lacks honest, responsible self-governance.

Review Questions

Here are some sample questions to review during this lesson:

Which do we value more: watching sports, like football games, or the safety of athletes?

Where is the technology to save the multi-million-dollar athlete?

Should we reform the game of football? Can we?

Is letting players play football any different than letting your friend drive drunk? Are fans the enablers?

Is risk for serious injury part of what makes football, "football"? Propose a set of rules or policies that both protects players but also maintains the "essence" of football.

References and Further Reading

Bachynski K. No Games for Boys to Play: The History of Youth Football and the Origins of a Public Health Crisis. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press; 2019.

Kerr ZY ... Zuckerman SL. Concussion incidence and trends in 20 high school sports. Pediatrics. 2019. DOI.

Halstead ME, Walter KD, and Moffatt K. Sports-related concussion in children and athletes. Pediatrics. 2018. DOI.

Sabatino MJ, Zynda AJ, and Miller S. Same-day return to play after pediatric athletes sustain concussions. Pediatrics. 2018. 141(1 Meeting Abstract):203.

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Head to Head: The National Football League & Brain Injury | NYU Langone Health

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NYU Langone's High School Bioethics Project developed this primer so students may understand the basics of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and tau protein, as well as trends in biomedical research involving CTE and the National Football League (NFL). It also allows students to explore ethical questions related to safety, risk, and health policy.

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Capital Punishment:Our Duty or Our Doom?

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Capital Punishment:Our Duty or Our Doom?

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Capital Punishment:
Our Duty or Our Doom?

By Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez

About 2000 men, women, and teenagers currently wait on America's "death row." Their time grows shorter as federal and state courts increasingly ratify death penalty laws, allowing executions to proceed at an accelerated rate. It's unlikely that any of these executions will make the front page, having become more or less a matter of routine in the last decade. Indeed, recent public opinion polls show a wide margin of support for the death penalty. But human rights advocates and civil libertarians continue to decry the immorality of state-sanctioned killing in the U.S., the only western industrialized country that continues to use the death penalty. Is capital punishment moral?

Capital punishment is often defended on the grounds that society has a moral obligation to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens. Murderers threaten this safety and welfare. Only by putting murderers to death can society ensure that convicted killers do not kill again.

Second, those favoring capital punishment contend that society should support those practices that will bring about the greatest balance of good over evil, and capital punishment is one such practice. Capital punishment benefits society because it may deter violent crime. While it is difficult to produce direct evidence to support this claim since, by definition, those who are deterred by the death penalty do not commit murders, common sense tells us that if people know that they will die if they perform a certain act, they will be unwilling to perform that act.

If the threat of death has, in fact, stayed the hand of many a would be murderer, and we abolish the death penalty, we will sacrifice the lives of many innocent victims whose murders could have been deterred. But if, in fact, the death penalty does not deter, and we continue to impose it, we have only sacrificed the lives of convicted murderers. Surely it's better for society to take a gamble that the death penalty deters in order to protect the lives of innocent people than to take a gamble that it doesn't deter and thereby protect the lives of murderers, while risking the lives of innocents. If grave risks are to be run, it's better that they be run by the guilty, not the innocent.

Finally, defenders of capital punishment argue that justice demands that those convicted of heinous crimes of murder be sentenced to death. Justice is essentially a matter of ensuring that everyone is treated equally. It is unjust when a criminal deliberately and wrongly inflicts greater losses on others than he or she has to bear. If the losses society imposes on criminals are less than those the criminals imposed on their innocent victims, society would be favoring criminals, allowing them to get away with bearing fewer costs than their victims had to bear. Justice requires that society impose on criminals losses equal to those they imposed on innocent persons. By inflicting death on those who deliberately inflict death on others, the death penalty ensures justice for all.

This requirement that justice be served is not weakened by charges that only the black and the poor receive the death penalty. Any unfair application of the death penalty is the basis for extending its application, not abolishing it. If an employer discriminates in hiring workers, do we demand that jobs be taken from the deserving who were hired or that jobs be abolished altogether? Likewise, if our criminal justice system discriminates in applying the death penalty so that some do not get their deserved punishment, it's no reason to give Iesser punishments to murderers who deserved the death penalty and got it. Some justice, however unequal, is better than no justice, however equal. To ensure justice and equality, we must work to improve our system so that everyone who deserves the death penalty gets it.

The case against capital punishment is often made on the basis that society has a moral obligation to protect human life, not take it. The taking of human life is permissible only if it is a necessary condition to achieving the greatest balance of good over evil for everyone involved. Given the value we place on life and our obligation to minimize suffering and pain whenever possible, if a less severe alternative to the death penalty exists which would accomplish the same goal, we are duty-bound to reject the death penalty in favor of the less severe alternative.

There is no evidence to support the claim that the death penalty is a more effective deterrent of violent crime than, say, life imprisonment. In fact, statistical studies that have compared the murder rates of jurisdictions with and without the death penalty have shown that the rate of murder is not related to whether the death penalty is in force: There are as many murders committed in jurisdictions with the death penalty as in those without. Unless it can be demonstrated that the death penalty, and the death penalty alone, does in fact deter crimes of murder, we are obligated to refrain from imposing it when other alternatives exist.

Further, the death penalty is not necessary to achieve the benefit of protecting the public from murderers who may strike again. Locking murderers away for life achieves the same goal without requiring us to take yet another life. Nor is the death penalty necessary to ensure that criminals "get what they deserve." Justice does not require us to punish murder by death. It only requires that the gravest crimes receive the severest punishment that our moral principles would allow us to impose.

While it is clear that the death penalty is by no means necessary to achieve certain social benefits, it does, without a doubt, impose grave costs on society. First, the death penalty wastes lives. Many of those sentenced to death could be rehabilitated to live socially productive lives. Carrying out the death penalty destroys any good such persons might have done for society if they had been allowed to live. Furthermore, juries have been known to make mistakes, inflicting the death penalty on innocent people. Had such innocent parties been allowed to live, the wrong done to them might have been corrected and their lives not wasted.

In addition to wasting lives, the death penalty also wastes money. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it's much more costly to execute a person than to imprison them for life. The finality of punishment by death rightly requires that great procedural precautions be taken throughout all stages of death penalty cases to ensure that the chance of error is minimized. As a result, executing a single capital case costs about three times as much as it costs to keep a person in prison for their remaining life expectancy, which is about 40 years.

Finally, the death penalty harms society by cheapening the value of life. Allowing the state to inflict death on certain of its citizens legitimizes the taking of life. The death of anyone, even a convicted killer, diminishes us all. Society has a duty to end this practice which causes such harm, yet produces little in the way of benefits.

Opponents of capital punishment also argue that the death penalty should be abolished because it is unjust. Justice, they claim, requires that all persons be treated equally. And the requirement that justice bc served is all the more rigorous when life and death are at stake. Of 19,000 people who committed willful homicides in the U.S. in 1987, only 293 were sentenced to death. Who are these few being selected to die? They are nearly always poor and disproportionately black. It is not the nature of the crime that determines who goes to death row and who doesn't. People go to death row simply because they have no money to appeal their case, or they have a poor defense, or they lack the funds to being witnesses to courts, or they are members of a political or racial minority.

The death penalty is also unjust because it is sometimes inflicted on innocent people. Since 1900, 350 people have been wrongly convicted of homicide or capital rape. The death penalty makes it impossible to remedy any such mistakes. If, on the other hand, the death penalty is not in force, convicted persons later found to be innocent can be released and compensated for the time they wrongly served in prison.

The case for and the case against the death penalty appeal, in different ways, to the value we place on life and to the value we place on bringing about the greatest balance of good over evil. Each also appeals to our commitment to"justice": Is justice to be served at all costs? Or is our commitment to justice to be one tempered by our commitment to equality and our reverence for life? Indeed, is capital punishment our duty or our doom?

(Capital punishment) is . . . the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated . . can be compared . . . For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.
--Albert Camus

If . . . he has committed a murder, he must die. In this case, there is no substitute that will satisfy the requirements of legal justice. There is no sameness of kind between death and remaining alive even under the most miserable conditions, and consequently there is no equality between the crime and the retribution unless the criminal is judicially condemned and put to death.--Immanuel Kant

For further reading:

Hugo Adam Bedau, Death Is Different: Studies in the Morality, Law, and Politics of Capital Punishment (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987).

Walter Berns, For Capital Punishment (New York: Basic Books, 1979.)

David Bruch, "The Death Penalty: An Exchange," The New Republic, Volume 192 (May 20, 1985), pp. 20-21.

Edward I. Koch, "Death and Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life," The New Republic, Volume 192 (April 15,1985), pp. 13-15.

Ernest van den Haag and John P. Conrad, The Death Penalty: A Debate (New York: Plenum Press, 1983).

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Capital Punishment: Our Duty or Our Doom?

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But human rights advocates and civil libertarians continue to decry the immorality of state-sanctioned killing in the U.S. Is capital punishment moral?

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Genny Rojas was four years old when her aunt and uncle, Veronica and Ivan Gonzales, tortured and murdered her. They suspended her alive by a hook on the closet wall in their apartment. They shook her violently, strangled her, beat her with a hairbrush, and handcuffed her for days. She died after she was forced into a scalding bath tub for three minutes. A California jury sentenced Veronica and Ivan to death, and the California Supreme Court upheld their convictions. If anyone deserved the ultimate punishment, they did.

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Since 1977, one year after the US Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty, more than 1,480 people have been executed, primarily by means of lethal injection. Most death penalty cases involve the execution of murderers although capital punishment can also be applied for treason, espionage, and other crimes.

Proponents of the death penalty say it is an important tool for preserving law and order, deters crime, and costs less than life imprisonment. They argue that retribution or "an eye for an eye" honors the victim, helps console grieving families, and ensures that the perpetrators of heinous crimes never have an opportunity to cause future tragedy.

Opponents of capital punishment say it has no deterrent effect on crime, wrongly gives governments the power to take human life, and perpetuates social injustices by disproportionately targeting people of color (racist) and people who cannot afford good attorneys (classist). They say lifetime jail sentences are a more severe and less expensive punishment than death.

PROS & CONS BY CATEGORY

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Death Penalty - Pros & Cons - ProCon.org

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The pros and cons of the death penalty debate include aguments for and against life imprisonment, crime deterrence, and methods like hanging.

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Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished? (Published 2021)

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In its last six months, the United States government has put 13 prisoners to death. Do you think capital punishment should end?

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WHY THE DEATH PENALTY SHOULD BE ABOLISHED

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WHY THE DEATH PENALTY SHOULD BE ABOLISHED

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The risk of executing innocent people exists in any justice system
There have been and always will be cases of executions of innocent people. No matter how developed a justice system is, it will always remain susceptible to human failure. Unlike prison sentences, the death penalty is irreversible and irreparable.

The arbitrary application of the death penalty can never be ruled out
The death penalty is often used in a disproportional manner against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic, political and religious groups.

The death penalty is incompatible with human rights and human dignity
The death penalty violates the right to life which happens to be the most basic of all human rights. It also violates the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. Furthermore, the death penalty undermines human dignity which is inherent to every human being.

The death penalty does not deter crime effectively
The death penalty lacks the deterrent effect which is commonly referred to by its advocates. As recently stated by the General Assembly of the United Nations, "there is no conclusive evidence of the deterrent value of the death penalty" (UNGA Resolution 65/206). It is noteworthy that in many retentionist states, the effectiveness of the death penalty in order to prevent crime is being seriously questioned by a continuously increasing number of law enforcement professionals.

Public opinion is not a major stumbling block for abolition
Public support for the death penalty does not necessarily mean that taking away the life of a human being by the state is right. There are undisputed historical precedences where gross human rights violations had had the support of a majority of the people, but which were condemned vigorously later on. It is the job of leading figures and politicians to underline the incompatibility of capital punishment with human rights and human dignity.

It needs to be pointed out that public support for the death penalty is inextricably linked to the desire of the people to be free from crime. However, there exist more effective ways to prevent crime.

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Why the Death Penalty should be abolished - International Commission against the Death Penalty

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The risk of executing innocent people exists in any justice system There have been and always will be cases of executions of innocent people. No matter how developed a justice system is, it will always remain susceptible to human failure. Unlike prison sentences, the death penalty is irreversible and irreparable.

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WE KNOW THAT, TOGETHER, WE CAN END THE DEATH PENALTY EVERYWHERE.

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WE KNOW THAT, TOGETHER, WE CAN END THE DEATH PENALTY EVERYWHERE.

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Amnesty International holds that the death penalty breaches human rights, in particular the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Both rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948.

Over time, the international community has adopted several instruments that ban the use of the death penalty, including the following:

The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty.

Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, concerning the abolition of the death penalty, and Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, concerning the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances.

The Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Although international law says that the use of the death penalty must be restricted to the most serious crimes, meaning intentional killing, Amnesty believes that the death penalty is never the answer.

The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it.

Juvenile Executions

The use of the death penalty for crimes committed by people younger than 18 is prohibited under international human rights law, yet some countries still sentence to death and execute juvenile defendants. Such executions are few compared to the total number of executions recorded by Amnesty International each year.

However, their significance goes beyond their number and calls into question the commitment of the executing states to respect international law.

Since 1990 Amnesty International has documented at least 158 executions of persons who were children at the time of the crime for which they had been convicted, in 10 countries: China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sudan, the USA and Yemen.

Several of these countries have changed their laws to exclude the practice. Iran has executed more than twice as many people who were below the age of 18 at the time of the crime as the other nine countries combined. At the time of writing Iran has executed at least 108 of them since 1990.

Execution Methods used in 2021

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The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

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Amnesty International holds that the death penalty breaches human rights, in particular the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Both rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948.

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Why Dunkin' Is Taking On Starbucks And Betting On Coffee

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Why Dunkin' Is Taking On Starbucks And Betting On Coffee

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Why Dunkin' Is Taking On Starbucks And Betting On Coffee

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With America's favorite coffee, innovative beverage strategies, and mouth-watering snacks, Dunkin' has become the brand everyone knows nationally and loves locally.

Bring the top name in coffee and beverages- #1 in customer loyalty for over 15 consecutive years - to your community.

Dunkin' franchise advantages:

1. Established brand strength

2. Flexible restaurant designs

3. Exceptional support system

4. Premier locations still available

Ready to run with Dunkin'?

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We are brewed to be our best. Get to know us. Learn more about The Joy In Childhood Foundation, blog, career and franchising opportunities and how to contact us.

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Since 1971, Starbucks has been committed to ethically sourcing and roasting the highest quality arabica coffee in the world. Today, with stores around the globe, the company is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the world.

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Starbucks vs. Dunkin': See Which Celebs Have a Clear Preference

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Starbucks vs. Dunkin': See Which Celebs Have a Clear Preference

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Marriage is all about compromise, but when it comes to Starbucks vs. Dunkin', that's where some couples draw the line. Newlyweds Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were recently seen out in public on an adorable coffee date, picking up Frappuccinos from Starbucks as caught by . In terms of where caffeinated loyalties lie, Affleck has basically committed treason; he's been known as a die-hard Dunkin' coffee drinker for decades, so the temporary switch-up is definitely a big deal.

Affleck and Lopez may be able to live with their coffee differences, but other celebs won't budge when it comes to their go-to latte brands. Here are the coffee shop preferences of celebrities across the U.S. who choose Dunkin' or Starbucks.

RELATED: 9 Coffee Brands That Use the Highest Quality Ingredients

By now you must have seen the 2020 memes of Affleck ungraciously dropping Dunkin' coffee and donuts outside of his home, but the fact is, this Massachusetts native is hyper-loyal to his home state's famous coffee and claims he has it every day.

RELATED: Celebrity Couples Who Work Out Together To Stay Fit

Despite her new hubby's penchant for Dunkin', JLo has her own coffee preference and that comes in the form of Starbucks. The fact that Affleck is willing to visit another coffee shop shows his true devotion to Lopez.

The pop singer likes her 'bucks so much she has even collaborated with the Seattle-based coffee company on everything from special edition music to getting her own latte on the secret menu.

The TikTok star is one of the company's latest celebrity collaborations, debuting " The Charli" based on her usual order: a medium cold brew with whole milk and 3 pumps of caramel swirl.

Soul chill singer Andy Grammer loves Dunkin' so much that he collaborated with the brand for a sweet wedding pop-up event, inclusive of donut bouquets.

On casual days, and sometimes on set, Selena Gomez can be seen with a Starbucks coffee in hand.

Why have one coffee order when you can have a few? Kim Kardashian loves a good soy chai latte from Starbucks, but she's also been known to order a white chocolate mocha with whipped cream as well.

The youngest of the three official Kardashian sisters once made a pit stop in 2014 at Dunkin' Donuts with her ex-boyfriend, French Montana. Although she's also known to enjoy Starbucks too, so we know she's not biased at least.

After a three-month stint in rehab back in 2014, Lohan was spotted out and about with a cup of Dunkin' coffee.

Another singer and unofficial "Starbucks Ambassador," Grande helped conceive the Cloud Macchiato. Her actual go-to order however is a Venti Vanilla Bean Frappuccino, with no whipped cream.

RELATED: 5 Healthy Eating Habits Ariana Grande Swears By

Klum loves sporting her Dunkin' hat while posting pics of her iced coffees for fans to see. It's totally free advertising for the company, she swears!

Kat is a born and raised New Yorker exploring the world as she writes, eats, and everything in between. Read more about Katka

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Starbucks vs. Dunkin': See Which Celebs Have a Clear Favorite

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Marriage is all about compromise, but when it comes to Starbucks vs. Dunkin', that's where some couples draw the line. Newlyweds Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were recently seen out in public on an adorable coffee date, picking up Frappuccinos from Starbucks as caught by .

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Dunkin's controversial new rewards program looks more like Starbucks'. Here's how they stack up

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Dunkin's controversial new rewards program looks more like Starbucks'. Here's how they stack up

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Dunkin's controversial new rewards program looks more like Starbucks'. Here's how they stack up.

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Starbucks Rewards is a better deal for getting free drinks, but Dunkin' has better food rewards.

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Dunkin’ vs Starbucks: Which Has Better Coffee? [Comparison]

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Dunkin’ vs Starbucks: Which Has Better Coffee? [Comparison]

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Dunkin’ vs Starbucks: Who’s Has Better Coffee? [Comparison]

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In this article, you’ll be able to read the ultimate Dunkin’ vs Starbucks showdown. We’ll look at their coffee, their stores, menus, customer service, and more!

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Why Firearms Are Effective for Self-Defense

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Why Firearms Are Effective for Self-Defense

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Among the many benefits of gun ownership, self-defense is one of the most important. Here’s how guns are effective tools for defending yourself and others.

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Helicopter parents, while not a new phenomenon, are now far more skilled in the borderline stalking of their children than anyone could have ever foreseen in their worst nightmares.

Life360 tries to step out of its realm as a safety app, as it tracks the location of its users while also providing driving reports of the users' speeds and length of driving trips. As an additional feature, it also notifies users when a group member's battery falls below 10%.

These features, while made to encourage teenagers to make safe and smart decisions, have only caused stress and paranoia between teenagers and animosity with their parents.

Teenage years are- above all- a time for learning. Without taking risks and making stupid, and yes, sometimes dangerous, mistakes, teenagers would have no way to learn and grow into adults. These years are a time for exploring more freedom and growing as an individual, yet Life360 inhibits this growth.

Letting go of children and trusting them to make the right choices can be very hard for parents, but it is an incredibly necessary step to make. Especially as teenager and parent relationships can become strained when the teenager feels as though their parent doesn't trust them.

Constant paranoia and fear over whether your parents are going to punish you through what they find from Life360 causes more stress for children than it alleviates for parents. Life360 and its invasive nature is not necessary for safety, as there are several applications where parents can see where their children are in need of emergency.

For example, the FindMy app on iPhones gives information on the whereabouts of family members, but does not go to the extreme as to give notifications like Life360 does with information on battery life and driving patterns of its users. This offers a balance of parents knowing where their teens are in case of emergency and teens feeling more trust between themselves and their parent.

Along with the detrimental extremities, the app's intrusive nature puts user's privacy at risk when using the application. In January of 2022, the company announced that they would stop sales of precise location data to over a dozen data brokers they had been working with, meaning that anybody who used Life360 before January has most likely had their location data sold to companies without their knowledge. The company continues to sell precise location data to Arity and "aggregated" location data to PlacerAI. This data collection and subsequent sales has resulted in millions of users' privacy being breached for the profit of the corporate elites.

While Life360 means to be an app that facilitates the safety of teenagers in the modern era, its ruinous qualities allow it to be only that of an attempt. This cause is an honorable one, but Life360 didn't achieve its goals in the way it was supposed to. Instead of facilitating safety, it has facilitated helicopter parenting and teenager paranoia. Life360's features go beyond just tracking teens for safety reasons, and facilitates parents who wish to control every aspect of their children's lives.

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Helicopter parents, while not a new phenomenon, are now far more skilled in the borderline stalking of their children than anyone could have ever foreseen in their worst nightmares. Life360 tries to step out of its realm as a safety app, as it tracks the location of its users while also providing driving reports of the users' speeds and length of driving trips.

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Pro: Should parents use Life360 to track their kids?

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Pro: Should parents use Life360 to track their kids?

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In a time where parents need to worry about their children being victims of school shootings, kidnapping, abuse, or worse, Life360 is not simply useful, it is necessary. When unexpected problems arise, teenagers are bound to panic and make decisions that can be detrimental. Life360 can solve these problems by allowing parents to supervise them. Life360 clues parents in on the type of activities their children are engaging in and keeps them safe.

Life360 allows parents to monitor where their children are, therefore they have the ability to oversee their children's actions as well. Being observed by parents may prevent some teenagers from making decisions that could harm them down the road. Having parents supervise their kids creates a safer environment and encourages communication.

Life360 can pinpoint a child's exact location. Parents and emergency services can use this if they are in danger. If phone lines and other communication systems do not work, parents can send messages to their kids through Life360. In addition, during an emergency, the child can also click a button that will send a notification via text, email, and voice mail to all of their emergency contacts. The message will include the child's exact location. These features could save a child's life.

Some might argue that constant communication between parents and their kids is unhealthy and unnatural, unfortunately because of the dangers that exist today, Life360 has become the best tool to keep kids safe. Because almost every teenager owns an iPhone, parents have no other choice than to use Life360. Texting and calling can only go so far when teens might be dishonest about their true location or not respond to their parents at all. Life360 guarantees that a parent can locate their child if something goes wrong. If Life360 existed years ago, many disasters could have been prevented.

Life360 lets parents take the extra mile to ensure that their child is safe. Some parents are afraid that by downloading Life360, they will take away their child's privacy and sense of independence. In reality, Life360 does not completely invade teens' privacy because the app does not have audio or video monitoring. Children still have the freedom to make their own decisions, only now parents have easier access to observe them.

Driving is one of the first major steps teens take into becoming fully independent and Life360 makes the process even safer. The app allows parents to track their child's phone use while driving and view their overall speed. Using Life360, parents can discipline their children if they practice unsafe driving habits while their parents are not there. Life360 ultimately motivates teens to practice driving safely. Learning to exercise a sense of maturity on the road is essential to decreasing the rate of teenage motor vehicle deaths and accidents.

As a child grows up and becomes a teenager, they gain a new sense of independence that enables them to make decisions that ultimately may be unsafe. To ensure that the mistakes teenagers make are not detrimental to their future, they need guidance, specifically from their parents. Overall, Life360 is the perfect app for parents because it helps them guide their children and make sure that they are out of harm's way.

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Pro: Should parents use Life360 to track their kids?

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In a time where parents need to worry about their children being victims of school shootings, kidnapping, abuse, or worse, Life360 is not simply useful, it is necessary. When unexpected problems arise, teenagers are bound to panic and make decisions that can be detrimental. Life360 can solve these problems by allowing parents to supervise them....

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Life 360 Should Be Called “Life Sentence 360”

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Life 360 Should Be Called “Life Sentence 360”

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We are clearly living in a smartphone world, which, in turn, has led to a world of child surveillance. With 80% of teenagers having their own phone , there's been a huge rise in apps like Life 360, offering to track, monitor, and Big Brother your children.

While apps like this may give some parents peace of mind, we have to wonder what life is like for kids who are being electronically watched 24/7 for "their safety." Some kids even report that teen phone monitoring invades their privacy.

So what is Life 360 anyway?

The app has both free and paid versions. It includes basic services, like location sharing and history, as well as more advanced features, like crash detection and driver reports. Of course, the second you start thinking you need "crash detection" anytime your kid is driving anywhere, you are already on the road to anxiety.

The website says this app brings families closer together and offers them more security. And it's certainly not the only company that makes this type of claim. Do a quick search for "phone monitoring and location monitoring services," and you'll be swamped with options.

Some go the subtle route with names like FamiSafe. But others call it like it is with names like PhoneSheriff, MamaBear, and Spyzie. These services vary from one to the next, but basically they share and celebrate the goal of tracking and monitoring.

But what do the tracked teens think? Actually, what does being monitored think? How does it feel to live under constant surveillance? Let Grow has been leery of apps like Life 360 for a while, and we've heard from kids and parents who agree. Take a look:

From a mom trying to co-parent with her ex and his new wife ...

My stepkids' mom is like this. They all-the kids (17 and 15) and her husband-are required to have Life 360 on their phones. They aren't allowed to turn the phones off or remove the stupid app. My husband and I were over there recently, and her phone pinged all the time- Bruce left school. Benji arrived home. Bruce arrived home. Husband arrived home. He drove 15 miles at 67 MPH. It took him 7 minutes to get home from work. Benji left school. Both kids hate it. Her husband hates it. My husband and I have tried telling the kids that their mom doesn't do it because she doesn't trust them or has control issues but because it soothes and comforts her for some reason. But they know that's BS and we're just putting a softer face on the control-freak-with-boundary-issues behavior.

From the teen who says it's ruined her relationship with her parents ...
I am going to be real. I'm 17, and my parents have the Life 360 app, and some of my friends' parents have [it], too. I promise you it has ruined my relationship with them. It has honestly made me be MORE reckless by leaving my phone places so I am not constantly tracked. I understand that people want to know where their kids are, but honestly just use find my iPhone in states of emergency. If you want to have trust with your kid and really want to know what's going on, build a relationship so they actually feel comfortable talking to you about stuff.
From the college student whose dad has threatened to cut her off if she doesn't use it ...
I am 20. I'm studying in another city from my parents' home. My dad forces me to have this insane app for my "safety." He needs to know where I am and what I am doing every second. One day I went out with my friends and arrived home around 9 p.m. My phone died, I had no battery, and my dad got crazy. He thought I was trying to escape. He told me that the next time, he would cut off my money. Then I would have to pay for my studies on my own.
There have to be better ways to find peace of mind.

If you keep reading some of the comments below, you'll see that there are people who are using the Life 360 app in a less-controlling way. But I'd argue that the app gives parents less peace of mind and more fear that kids are in constant danger.

Life happens. God forbid the phone falls out of a pocket or gets left on the bus as it heads to depot; mom and dad will think the kid is dead at the side of the road or being spirited away. Normalizing constant contact means that the second contact is interrupted, parents dive into panic mode. It is anxiety producing. And it is new. When we were young, most of us left the house without our parents knowing our location every second, and this worked fine for both them and us.

Kids deserve to practice their independence. There are better ways to achieve peace of mind, and they don't involve an app. They involve trusting your kids, having an emergency plan, and just going the old-fashioned route of "call when you get there."

At Let Grow, we hope parents will think twice about ultra-monitoring and seriously consider these two questions: How are kids supposed to learn self-reliance when there's always an adult watching, worrying, and ready to swoop in? And how would you like to be tracked every second of the day?

Remember, until now, the only people who lived under 24/7 surveillance were were in prison or on work-release, with Life360 on their phones. Whoops! I mean with ankle monitors on their legs.

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Life 360 Should Be Called "Life Sentence 360"

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We are clearly living in a smartphone world, which, in turn, has led to a world of child surveillance. With 80% of teenagers having their own phone , there's been a huge rise in apps like Life 360, offering to track, monitor, and Big Brother your children.

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Tracking apps have gained popularity in the past years, primarily to allow families to stay connected through location sharing. In 2008, Bay Area entrepreneur Chris Hull launched Life360, and it has since become one of the most popular tracking apps available.

Parents mainly use Life360 to track their kids' location with the goal of enhanced safety and organization. Unlike Apple's "Find My" app, Life360 can also track the speed of a vehicle a user is in and can be used to send out SOS signals in case of an emergency.

While strict parenting is a common complaint for teenagers, they have now taken to TikTok to air their grievances. Its most critical teenage users claim that Life360 "ruins" their social life by taking away their privacy of location. There are also claims that Life360 enables helicopter parenting-when parents are overly involved in their children's lives-which is proven to negatively affect children's emotional well-being. Sarcastic remarks and insults are prevalent in Hulls' comment section, and many urge him to delete the app altogether. His replies to the comments are personal, apologetic, and seemingly sincere.

To one commenter that said, "You took away my teenage experience," he replied, "I'm sorry to hear this. It's all about safety, not control. Sounds like your parents ruined it? Have you tried ghost mode?" Ghost mode, as explained by Hull, gives the parent or guardian a general idea of where the other users in their "circle" are, but not their exact location.

However, students shared that their parents were reluctant to turn on Ghost Mode because they wanted to know their exact location at all times. Senior Tiziano Bolaños said "It annoyed me because when I didn't go into the app, my dad would get very mad and wouldn't let me go out if it wasn't turned on."

Despite Ghost Mode and good intentions, Life360 ultimately disadvantages both parents and teenagers. Many students wish that they could hang out with friends without feeling like someone is keeping tabs on them. Freshman Noah de Haaff said, "Life360 is overall really annoying, because my parents constantly check where I am."

In addition, Life360 often encourages kids to use less secure apps to bypass restrictions . Downloading unsafe apps such as VPN (virtual private network) changers to change a Life360 location can lead to stolen information . Many students have also taken to disabling the WiFi and data on their phones to turn off their location completely. The most important factor of Life360, user safety through location tracking, is broken, along with the trusting relationship between child and parent.

Sophomore Mckenna Bolka said, "It [Life360] definitely makes breaking the rules more appealing because they shouldn't have put it on my phone in the first place."

It's important to note that there is a line when it comes to complete independence for kids. Life360 can be crucial for elementary and middle school students beginning to get used to technology. It can also be vital for parents to track their kids if they have a bad record of lying or abusing their independence.

However, many kids feel as though their parents don't trust them to an unreasonable degree, especially students who have earned parental trust through good grades and judgment. Numerous have shown that child and teenage autonomy is crucial for development into adulthood.

For high school upperclassmen in particular, a natural parenting step would be to loosen control and allow for more self-reliance, starting with deleting tracking apps. Being able to have honest conversations with guardians about social events and independence is more beneficial than forcing teenagers to be monitored at all times. "I am a few months away from turning 18, and I am not the kind of kid who goes to unsafe places. I wish my parents would understand that I am an honest person. Independence will protect kids as they get older, and apps like Life360 just foster a permanent sense of mistrust," said an anonymous M-A senior.

For families who want to know where their loved ones are each day, a better option is to go over the schedule for the day, whether on a family group chat or in-person, the night before. Encouraging a positive and honest environment creates the trusting relationship that Life360 strives for without the harsh supervision.

That same anonymous senior said, "As I go off to college and regain my independence, I have learned about the relationships around me and the qualities in a family that I deeply value-trust, respect and empathy. In the future, I want to be the kind of parent that my children can be open with and want to share things about themselves and their social life."

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Life 360: Friend or Foe? - M-A Chronicle

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Tracking apps have gained popularity in the past years, primarily to allow families to stay connected through location sharing. In 2008, Bay Area entrepreneur Chris Hull launched Life360, and it has since become one of the most popular tracking apps available. Parents mainly use Life360 to track their kids' location with the goal of enhanced safety and organization.

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Why gun violence can't be our new normal

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Why gun violence can't be our new normal

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Why gun violence can’t be our new normal

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It doesn’t matter whether you love or hate guns; it’s obvious that the US would be a safer place if there weren’t thousands of them sold every day without background checks. Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, makes a passionate, personal appeal for something that more than 90 percent of Americans want: background checks for all gun sales. “For every great movement around the world, there’s a moment where you can look back and say, ‘That’s when things really started to change,’” Gross says. “For the movement to end gun violence in America, that moment is here.”

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David Farrell: A solution to gun violence found in US history

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David Farrell: A solution to gun violence found in US history

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David Farrell: A solution to gun violence found in US history | TED Talk

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Guns weren’t always the contentious issue they are today in the US. Forty years ago, guns were primarily used for sport and recreation, and mass shootings were a rarity. Much has changed since then, and while there’s a lot of debate around how to put an end to gun violence, there has yet to be a sol…

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17 Big Pros and Cons of the 2nd Amendment

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17 Big Pros and Cons of the 2nd Amendment

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During the initial days of the United States as an independent nation, the founding fathers worked together to form a governing set of laws that would apply to all people. It would begin with the Constitution, and then proceed to the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights is a set of amendments that are treated as if they were part of the original Constitution. Each amendment is given a number under American law, and then implemented immediately once three-quarters of the state's ratify any new ideas. One of the most important amendments in the U.S. is the Second Amendment, which states the following.
"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The founding fathers adapted the wording of the Second Amendment from clauses that were nearly identical in some of the original state constitutions that were written during the 18th century. Recent rulings by the Supreme Court have set the precedent that all people in good standing can own a gun or guns without being part of a recognized state militia.

"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own," Jeff Cooper wrote in Art of the Rifle. "Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."

Is this perspective correct? Or should Americans work to embrace more gun control legislation that could reduce the ownership of weapons that could create mass casualties?

Here are some of the pros and cons of the Second Amendment to consider.

List of the Pros of the Second Amendment

1. Gun ownership works to reduce other types of crime in society.
Frank Lloyd Wright once said, "I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." The fact will always be that a gun is a tool and nothing more. Can it be used to kill someone? Yes. Is it possible to inflict mass casualties with certain types of firearms? Yes. It can also be useful for hunting to provide food for one's family. Guns can protect you when someone breaks into your home. People use them to drive off predators that try to take their livestock. Owning a gun can even reduce homicide numbers, sexual assault, and aggravated assault by at least 5%.

2. The Second Amendment offers people a chance to defend themselves.
According to information published by the National Sheriffs' Association, the average amount of time for a school shooting to take place is 12.5 minutes, but it takes police officers 18 minutes to respond to the first calls that come across emergency lines. Active shooter incidents in all locations, but especially schools, have risen at an alarming rate in recent years. During the entire decade of the 1960s, there was one incident. In 2015, there were 55 active shooter incidents in American schools. As Cooper wrote, the only choice that we can make is one that allows us to protect ourselves. We can't stop bad people from getting their hands on a gun to use it for evil purposes, but we can help good people find ways to stop them with the same tool.

3. It reinforces the laws of the Constitution by its mere presence in the Bill of Rights.
Alan Dershowitz may not be a fan favorite of every conservative in the United States, but he does offer this observation about the Second Amendment. "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."

Guns might be controversial in some ways because of the ease that they inflict damage, but it is also because of this tool that people in the U.S. have the freedoms that are available to them. When you start to erode one granted right, it does not take long for more of them to experience the same outcome.

4. The Second Amendment allows the average person to defend their country.
In Priority, Aaron Powell makes this observation about the Second Amendment. "When the Chinese invade our country, who do you want to depend on? The over-extended police force and the National Guard? Or the next-door neighbor who is a former Marine and has enough guns and ammunition for your entire block?"

The entire point of the Second Amendment from the perspective of the founding fathers is still valid. When you own a gun, then it is more difficult to take away what you have earned in life than if you did not own this weapon. People will think twice (or more times) about trying to take something from you, including domestic and foreign governments, if you have the capacity to defend yourself adequately.

5. It allows for a well-regulated militia to be part of U.S. culture.
The focus on the Second Amendment is often on the right of gun ownership, but it is also essential to note that there is the right for states to have a well-regulated militia because of this addition to the Bill of Rights. Even though we have numerous levels of law enforcement that work to serve and protect our communities, there may still come a time when there is a need to keep the peace in other ways. This option allows for states to develop their own defensive resources without costing taxpayers in other locations any money to do so. If you need to defend your home for any reason, all you need to do is get together, form a militia, and follow whatever state rules are in place for organization.

6. You must qualify to own a gun in the United States already.
There are already regulations in place that make it impossible for anyone to walk into a gun shop to make a purchase. Any store that sells firearms must use the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, called NICS, to see if there are any records in place that would prevent a customer from owning a gun. This system scans three different databases to ensure there are no matches. Anyone declared mentally unfit, convicted of a felony, or receives a misdemeanor sentence of 2+ years will not qualify for the purchase. Lying on the form in an attempt to purchase the gun is also considered an illegal act which could strip you of the firearm when discovered.

7. The Second Amendment offers more checks-and-balances for society.
When the founding fathers creating the structure of the American government, they wanted to make sure that no one branch of it could hold more power than the other. The system of checks-and-balances ensures that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches must work together to the benefit of society.

The Second Amendment offers this same benefit for the average person in their daily routines. It is a way to protect your individual liberties to ensure that you are not deprived of the right to pursue happiness. "The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted," said James Madison. Gun ownership is a way to ensure that the government is obliged to control itself in addition to supervising the governed.

List of the Cons of the Second Amendment

1. It does not provide for the safe usage and implementation of a gun in society.
"Saying gun control hurts our freedom is a false argument amounting to propaganda," said DaShanne Stokes. "Gun laws don't curtail freedom any more than speed limits or seat belts. You still get to drive your car and have guns. We're just trying to save lives as you do." Although the Second Amendment does allow for the private ownership of guns according to the current interpretation offered by the Supreme Court, it does not contain provisions that require the safe use of this tool. That level of implementation is left to the states, which means there is a patchwork series of laws that gun owners must follow to stay in compliance.

2. There is no guarantee that a good guy with a gun is going to be around.
DaShanne Stokes has also said that gun violence in the United States is not a Republican or Democrat problem, but an American problem - and one that requires an American solution. "When a country with less than 5% of the world's population has nearly 50% of the world's privately-owned guns and makes up nearly a third of the world's mass shootings, it's time to stop saying guns make us safer," he said.

Even though there are plenty of stories about a good guy with a gun stopping a crime that you can find, there are also more than 14,000 homicides attributed to firearms each year in the United States. That means 4.5 deaths per 100,000 population are because of guns.

3. Gun ownership comes with great risk to the owner's household.
There are plenty of good reasons to own a gun in today's American society, but there are also a few reasons why some families believe that the rights given under the Second Amendment are not something they want to use. That is because up to 95% of the suicides that occur with a firearm are potentially preventable if the gun wasn't present in the home. Households that own just one gun carry a 7 times higher risk of experiencing premature death than those without one.

Even the states which have the least amount of controls places on gun ownership see homicide rates that are more than double those of states with the most extensive restrictions. The problem with a firearm is that this tool doesn't offer many second chances.

4. There are multiple ways to deter crime other than gun ownership.
In Guns Part 2, Aaron Powell makes this observation.

1. "So, disturbed kids are taking guns to school and killing teachers and classmates. We better make sure kids can't get guns."

2. So, disturbed kids are taking guns to school and killing teachers and classmates. We better find out what's making these kids want to kill, fix that, and then they won't want to use guns to kill teachers and classmates."

Both sides of the Second Amendment debate can quote statistics which support their argument. There are stories about how gun ownership can save lives, just as there are times when it takes lives. Saying that guns are the only way to deter crime is laziness. There are multiple facets of protection that we can implement every day if we are willing to take bold steps to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities. Can guns stop a crime? Sure. So can an alarm system, an airlock system in schools, metal detectors, and many more methods. We cannot have tunnel vision on just one outcome.

5. It creates the potential for a domestic arms race.
"If Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns - or the one we live in now?" asks Quentin Bufogle. "If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious."

When we push toward a world of gun ownership, then we are creating a society where good and evil are both racing toward a place where each feel like it can be a dominant force. This perspective is what fueled the nuclear race during the Cold War, and it is also what causes some people to stockpile firearms. There are an estimated 89-100 guns for every 100 Americans, but only up to 29% of households actually own one. 14% of owners have between 8 to 140 guns in their possession, accounting for 50% of civilian ownership.

6. We already know that the current gun control laws don't work.
According to reporting from The New York Times, only 8 states have laws which provide an explicit mechanism so that people who are suspected of owning guns in violation of their prohibitions are required to hand them over. Some of these laws allow, but do not require, the police to seek a court order for confiscation.

Authorities in Chicago knew for over 4 years that Gary Martin was a felon with a violent history, yet did nothing to make sure that he surrendered his Smith and Wesson handgun with a laser sight. He used that weapon to kill five of his co-workers in Aurora, IL, in February 2019. It would be helpful to enforce the laws on our books to ensure that we are doing all that we can to stop the bad guys with guns.

7. The Second Amendment increases the cost of law enforcement.
Open-carry laws for gun ownership because of the Second Amendment create a phobia about this tool that increases the amount of resources that law enforcement must receive each year. 40% of Americans already say that one of their biggest fears is that they will end up being the victim of a mass shooting. Firearms are already the second-leading cause of death for American children and teens. Women are 21 times more likely to be killed with a gun in the United States than they are in other high-income countries.

Because there are so many guns on the streets, even if they are owned by a minority of the population, the resources dedicated to law enforcement activities are that much higher. Even a slight reduction in this cost could be directed toward something more useful, like free firearm education programs.

8. This amendment has seen inconsistent application in the law.
Before the recent Heller ruling set the precedent for individual ownership as a right, the judicial system interpreted the Second Amendment as applying to militias only. That meant no one had the right to travel with their gun across state lines. The common law standard was that there was a duty to retreat if someone wanted to take your things. If you lived in the city, then a loaded firearm was banned from being in your home.

Once upon a time, you even had to swear a loyalty oath as an American to have the right to own a firearm. Refusing to take that pledge meant that your right to gun ownership disappeared. It is an inaccurate statement to say that the U.S. has never had gun restrictions in place before. What we are doing is creating inconsistent case law based on current political desires.

9. There is no right to own a firearm if you cannot afford the cost.
One of the unique aspects of the Second Amendment is that it doesn't mention the cost of ownership as part of your individual rights as an American. There is nothing that would stop Congress from passing a law which required a minimum price for this item, similar to the expense one must pay to obtain a passport or a driver's license. The only thing that the Bill of Rights guarantees is that if you can afford the cost of a gun and there are no other restrictions in place for you, then this is an opportunity that you can have.

10. The Second Amendment does not exclude specific actions, behaviors, or choices.
The Second Amendment would be arguably more powerful if it created specific restrictions to ownership based on high-risk behaviors. Several demographics, including teens with a history of violence, can still purchase firearms despite their history of choices. Even people convicted of a gun crime can still buy more of them if they are not convicted of a felony and their misdemeanor sentence is less than 2 years in some states.

One Final Thought on the Second Amendment

Most people read the key pros and cons of the Second Amendment in the form of an echo chamber. They will see the areas in which they agree and use that information to support their position while dismissing everything else. Although it is true that guns have long been part of the culture in the United States, we cannot be honest with ourselves by saying that we treat this tool differently than other elements of life.

When terrorists flew airplanes into the twin towers, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 was retaken by passengers to crash so it couldn't do more damage, the legislative response from the U.S. government was immediate. The focus is on the outside threats more than it is the domestic ones. We cannot change the actions of a person with evil intent when they get their hands on a gun, but what we can do is initiate an extensive, accurate, and mandatory screening and licensing process which allows each person to access their right to own a gun if they should so choose.

You cannot legally drive without a driver's license that you earn by proving you have the skills and knowledge to be successful. You must also renew that license periodically. Some states make a similar requirement for those who wish to have a concealed carry permit. Extending that process to all gun ownership with minimal fees to process the paperwork seems like a common-sense compromise that could help to reduce the amount of violence that is present in U.S. society.

The status quo is not working. It is time to do something.

Author Bio
Natalie Regoli is a child of God, devoted wife, and mother of two boys. She has a Master's Degree in Law from The University of Texas. Natalie has been published in several national journals and has been practicing law for 18 years.

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17 Big Pros and Cons of the 2nd Amendment

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During the initial days of the United States as an independent nation, the founding fathers worked together to form a governing set of laws that would apply to all people. It would begin with the

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Should More Gun Control Laws Be Enacted?

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Should More Gun Control Laws Be Enacted?

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History of Gun Control Laws
Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, enslaved people, indentured servants, and Native Americans; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned.

Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. Several colonies' gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. Read more history...

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

The Second Amendment is not an unlimited or individual right to own guns.

Further, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of militias to own guns, not the right of individuals to own guns. Former Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissenting opinion for District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, wrote, "the Framer's single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee 'to keep and bear arms' was on military use of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias," hence the inclusion of the phrase "well regulated militia."

Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, stated there is nothing about an individual right to bear arms in the notes about the Second Amendment when it was being drafted, discussed, or ratified; the US Supreme Court declined to rule in favor of the individual right four times between 1876 and 1939; and all law articles on the Second Amendment from 1888 to 1959 stated that an individual right was not guaranteed.
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Pro 2

More gun control laws would reduce gun deaths.

Approximately 50% of unintentional fatal shootings were self-inflicted; and most unintentional firearm deaths were caused by friends or family members.

Five women are murdered with guns every day in the United States. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 5,364 US soldiers were killed in action between Oct. 7, 2001 and Jan. 28, 2015; between 2001 and 2012 6,410 women were killed with a gun by an intimate partner in the United States.

Researchers found that a "general barrier to firearm access created through state regulation can have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide rates in the United States. Permit requirements and bans on sales to minors were the most effective of the regulations analyzed."

Gun licensing laws were associated with a 14% decrease in firearm homicides, while increases in firearm homicides were seen in places with right-to-carry and stand-your ground-laws.

More gun control leads to fewer suicides. When US gun ownership goes down, overall suicide rates drop; meanwhile, each 10 percentage-point increase in gun ownership is linked to a 26.9% increase in the youth suicide rate. In Indiana and Connecticut, after "red flag" laws to remove guns from people who may pose a threat were enacted, gun suicides decreased by 7.5% and 13.7% respectively, while suicides by other means did not decrease during the same time. A person who wants to kill him/herself is unlikely to commit suicide with poison or a knife when a gun is unavailable.

The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 31% of total accidental shooting deaths could have been prevented by installing safety devices on guns: 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks; and 23% of accidental shooting deaths by adolescents and adults per year could be prevented by loading indicators showing when a bullet was in the chamber ready to be fired.

Marjorie Sanfilippo, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Eckerd College who has researched children's behavior around guns, stated, "We put gates around swimming pools to keep children from drowning. We put safety caps on medications to keep children from poisoning themselves.... [B]ecause children are naturally curious and impulsive, and because we have shown time and again that we cannot 'gun-proof' them with education, we have a responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of children."
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Pro 3

The presence of a gun makes a conflict more likely to become violent.

The FBI found that arguments (such as romantic triangles, brawls fueled by alcohol or drugs, and arguments over money) resulted in 1,962 gun deaths (59.9% of the total).

An editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health noted, "gun-inflicted deaths [often] ensue from impromptu arguments and fights; in the US, two-thirds of the 7,900 deaths in 1981 involving arguments and brawls were caused by guns." A study published in the same journal found that "the weapons used [in altercations]... were those closest at hand." And thus, according to another study, "[r]ather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."

Common sense gun control laws can decrease the likelihood of a violent situation turning deadly. President Ronald Reagan and others did not think the AR-15 military rifle (also called M16s by the Air Force) should be owned by civilians and, when the AR-15 was included in the assault weapons ban of 1994 (which expired on Sep. 13, 2004), the NRA supported the legislation. A Mother Jones investigation found that high-capacity magazines were used in at least 50% of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012.When high-capacity magazines were used in mass shootings, the death rate rose 63% and the injury rate rose 156%.
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Pro 4

A majority of adults, including gun owners, support common sense gun control such as background checks, bans on assault weapons, and bans on high-capacity magazines.

According to a Feb. 20, 2018 Quinnipiac Poll, 97% of American voters and 97% of gun owners support universal background checks. 67% support a nationwide ban on assault weapons, and 83% support mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases.

As much as 40% of all gun sales are undocumented private party gun sales that do not require a background check (aka the "gun show loophole").

53% of all adults surveyed approve of high-capacity magazine bans. 89% of adults with a gun in the home approve of laws to prevent the purchase of guns by the mentally ill, and 82% approve of banning gun sales to people on no-fly lists.

77% of Americans support requiring a license to purchase a gun.

Don Macalady, member of Hunters against Gun Violence, stated, "As a hunter and someone who has owned guns since I was a young boy, I believe that commonsense gun legislation makes us all safer. Background checks prevent criminals and other dangerous people from getting guns."

Many would like to see the U.S. enact more laws like other countries, citing the fact that countries with restrictive gun control laws have lower gun homicide and suicide rates than the United States. Both Switzerland and Finland require gun owners to acquire licenses and pass background checks that include mental and criminal records, among other restrictions and requirements. In 2007 Switzerland ranked number 3 in international gun ownership rates with 45.7 guns per 100 people (about 3,400,000 guns total). In 2009 Switzerland had 24 gun homicides (0.31 deaths per 100,000 people) and 253 gun suicides (3.29 deaths per 100,000 people). Finland ranked fourth in international gun ownership rates with 45.3 guns per 100 people (about 2,400,000 guns total). In 2007 Finland had 23 (0.43 deaths per 100,000 people) gun homicides and 172 gun suicides (4.19 deaths per 100,000 people).
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Con 1

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects individual gun ownership.

The Second Amendment of the US Constitution reads, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Lawrence Hunter, Chairman of Revolution PAC, stated, "The Founders understood that the right to own and bear laws is as fundamental and as essential to maintaining liberty as are the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and the other protections against government encroachments on liberty delineated in the Bill of Rights."
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Con 2

Gun control laws are discriminatory and infringe on citizens' rights

Current gun control laws are frequently aimed at inner city, poor, black communities who are perceived as more dangerous than white gun owners. Charles Gallagher, Chair of Sociology at LaSalle University, stated that some gun control laws are still founded on racial fears: "Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1."

Background checks and micro-stamping are an invasion of privacy. Background checks require government databases that keep personal individual information on gun owners, including name, addresses, mental health history, criminal records, and more. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worried that Senator Harry Reid's 2013 proposed background check legislation (the bill failed 54-46) would have allowed the government to keep databases of gun purchases indefinitely, creating a "worry that you're going to see searches of the databases and an expansion for purposes that were not intended when the information was collected." Micro-stamping similarly requires a database of gun owners and the codes their personal guns would stamp on cartridge cases. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote that they would oppose any legislation that infringes "on the American people's constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance."

Gun control laws infringe upon the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety. The police cannot protect everyone all of the time. 61% of men and 56% of women surveyed by Pew Research said that stricter gun laws would "make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families." Nelson Lund, Professor at George Mason University School of Law, stated, "The right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself is a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life" and "many [gun control laws] interfere with the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals." A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, a gun control advocate, carried a concealed gun when her life was threatened and her home attacked by the New World Liberation Front in the 1970s.

Gun control laws, especially those that try to ban "assault weapons," infringe upon the right to own guns for hunting and sport. In 2011, there were 13.7 million hunters 16 years old or older in the United States, High-powered semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are used to hunt and in target shooting tournaments each year. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, "So-called 'Assault weapons' are more often than not less powerful than other hunting rifles. The term 'assault weapon' was conjured up by anti-gun legislators to scare voters into thinking these firearms are something out of a horror movie... [T]he Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, both labeled 'assault weapons,' are the rifles most used for marksmanship competitions in the United States. And their cartridges are standard hunting calibers, useful for game up to and including deer." According to a Feb. 2013 Pew Research report, 32% of gun owners owned guns for hunting and 7% owned guns for target or sport shooting.
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Con 3

Gun control laws simply do not work.

Gun control efforts have proved ineffective. According to David Lampo, Publications Director of the Cato Institute, "there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates." Banning high-capacity magazines will not necessarily deter crime because even small gun magazines can be changed in seconds.The "gun show loophole" is virtually nonexistent because commercial dealers, who sell the majority of guns at shows and elsewhere, are bound by strict federal laws. According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, most state-level gun control laws do not reduce firearm death rates, and, of 25 state laws, nine were associated with higher gun death rates.

Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people). The country has only one legal gun store (the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales), compared to at least 63,709 legal gun stores and pawn shops in the United States as of Feb. 10, 2014. Mexico's gun store is on a secure military base and customers must present a valid ID, go through a metal detector, and turn over cellphones and cameras to guards. To actually buy a gun, customers have to show proof of honest income, provide references, pass a criminal background check, prove any military duties were completed with honor, and be fingerprinted and photographed. If allowed to purchase a gun, the customer may buy only one gun (choosing from only .38 caliber pistols or lower) and one box of bullets. Between 2006 and 2010, Mexico's one gun shop sold 6,490 guns, yet as of 2012, Mexicans own about 15,000,000 guns, or about 13.5 guns per 100 people.

The main reason gun control doesn't work is because laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws. Of 62 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012, 49 of the shooters used legally obtained guns. Collectively, 143 guns were possessed by the killers with about 75% obtained legally. A Secret Service analysis found that of 24 mass shootings in 2019 at least 10 (42%) involved illegally possessed guns.

The logical conclusion is that gun control laws do not deter crime; gun ownership deters crime. A study in Applied Economics Letters found that "assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level" and "states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murders." While gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, the murder rate decreased. Journalist John Stossel explained, "Criminals don't obey the law... Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these [illegal] weapons now have a much easier job... As the saying goes, 'If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.'"

More gun control is not needed; education about guns and gun safety is needed to prevent accidental gun deaths. 95% of all US gun owners believe that children should learn about gun safety. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute, Inc (SAAMI), stated, "Whether in the field, at the range or in the home, a responsible and knowledgeable gun owner is rarely involved in a firearms accident of any kind." According to Kyle Wintersteen, Managing Editor of Guns and Ammo, studies show that "children taught about firearms and their legitimate uses by family members have much lower rates of delinquency than children in households without guns" and "children introduced to guns associate them with freedom, security, and recreation-not violence." [82] [85] [154]
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Con 4

Gun control laws give too much power to the government and may result in government tyranny and the government taking away all guns from citizens.

57% of people surveyed by Pew Research in Feb. 2013 said that gun control laws would "give too much power to the government over the people."

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre stated, "if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it [the Second Amendment] there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny."

Concurring, Alex Jones, radio host, stated, "The Second Amendment isn't there for duck hunting, it's there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs... 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!"

Marco Rubio (R-FL), US Senator, speaking about gun control laws during his 2016 presidential campaign, stated, "If God forbid, ISIS visits our life, our neighborhood, our school, any part of us, the last thing standing, the last line of defense could very well be our ability to protect ourselves."
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Did You Know?

1. A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer, and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer.

2. The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks.

3. The Centers for Disease Control listed firearms as the #12 cause of all deaths between 1999 and 2015, representing 1.3% of total deaths. They were also the #1 method of death by homicide (67.3% of all homicides) and by suicide (51.9% of all suicides).

4. Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people).

5. Carrying a concealed handgun in public has been permitted in all 50 states since 2013, when Illinois became the last state to enact concealed carry legislation.

6. Five women a day are killed by guns in America. A woman's risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute.

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Proponents say the Second Amendment is not an unlimited right to own guns. Opponents say the amendment protects individual gun ownership.

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"We're Not Asking For A Ban, We're Asking For A Compromise"

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"We're Not Asking For A Ban, We're Asking For A Compromise"

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"We're Not Asking For A Ban, We're Asking For A Compromise"

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Mya Middleton: "Guns have become the voice of America & the government is becoming more negligent"

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Mya Middleton: "Guns have become the voice of America & the government is becoming more negligent"

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Mya Middleton: "Guns have become the voice of America & the government is becoming more negligent"

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A Parkland Teacher's Homework For Us All

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A Parkland Teacher's Homework For Us All

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A Parkland teacher’s homework for us all

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Diane Wolk-Rogers teaches history at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, site of a horrific school shooting on Valentine’s Day 2018. How can we end this senseless violence? In a stirring talk, Wolk-Rogers offers three ways Americans can move forward to create more safety and responsibility around guns -- and invites people to come up with their own answers, too. Above all, she asks us to take a cue from the student activists at her school, survivors whose work for change has moved millions to action. “They shouldn’t have to do this on their own,” Wolk-Rogers says. “They’re asking you to get involved.”

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Starbucks vs. Dunkin': What's the Difference?

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Starbucks vs. Dunkin': What's the Difference?

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Starbucks vs. Dunkin': An Overview

Starbucks Corp. ( SBUX) and Dunkin' Brands are the two largest eatery chains in the U.S. that specialize in coffee. Both companies offer similar coffee options-although different food options-and both have similar overall strategies. Nonetheless, there are key differences in their business models related to scale, store ownership, and branding.

Despite being founded 20 years after Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks grew aggressively and is a substantially larger company. Starbucks generated over $23.5 billion in 2020, while Dunkin' Brands' 2019 annual revenues were $1.3 billion (Dunkin' was sold to Inspire Brands in 2020 and no longer reports stand-alone financial statements).

Starbucks has a larger footprint, with over 30,000 locations worldwide, compared to Dunkin' Brands' 13,000 locations.

Starbucks has expanded beyond the U.S. more extensively. Dunkin' Brands has a substantial international presence, though many of its international locations are Baskin-Robbins ice cream stores rather than Dunkin' Donuts stores.

Dunkin' Donuts' international revenue contributes only a small part to total sales, while over 26% of Starbucks' revenues are generated outside the U.S. Dunkin' has announced aggressive international and domestic expansion plans with the hope of challenging its main competitor's footprint, but the difference in scale stems from variations in expansion strategy.

Key Takeaways

Starbucks brands itself primarily as a beverage provider that offers a more typical coffee house dining experience. Starbucks' locations are designed with the comfort of customers in mind. Free Internet access and inviting decor are meant to offer a more enticing option for those looking for a place to read, relax, or chat with friends. This also makes going to Starbucks a potential social activity, turning the store into a destination rather than a simple distribution location. This appeals to customers seeking a premium experience.

Typically, such customers have higher disposable incomes and are more willing to pay extra for higher quality materials. In economic downturns, people with lower disposable incomes are more likely to alter their consumption habits than people with larger financial cushions. While Starbucks is undeniably impacted by the macroeconomic environment, it is firmly established with a more resilient and less price-sensitive customer base, which helps to dampen the blows brought on by economic cycles.

Starbucks has also shifted focus to include more products aimed at afternoon and evening customers. These include small plates and sandwiches as well as wine and beer. Both companies have doubled down on strategic tech initiatives like mobile ordering and delivery, explaining Dunkin' Donuts' partnering with Alphabet Inc.'s ( GOOG) navigation app Waze.

Just like Dunkin', in mid-2018, Starbucks reorganized management. Starbucks announced Howard Schultz's departure from the company in 2018. Myron E. Ullman was appointed the next chair of the Starbucks board of directors, and Mellody Hobson was appointed vice-chair. In March 2021, Ullman retired and Hobson succeeded him as chair.

Dunkin' Donuts markets itself primarily as a coffee seller that also offers donuts and food, a fact made apparent by a coffee cup prominently featured on the company's logo and executive management's explicit assertion that Dunkin' Donuts is a beverage company. Despite building an identity as a coffee seller, food is still an important element of Dunkin' Donuts' offering.

Dunkin' serves a variety of hearty breakfast sandwiches, such as the power breakfast sandwich and the sourdough breakfast sandwich. As of 2021, the menu features healthy options, such as avocado toast, as well as offering Stevia as a substitute for sugar, and oat milk.

Dunkin' Donuts' interiors are designed to be aesthetically different from Starbucks stores, with the former often resembling fast food stores in furnishings and decor.

David Hoffman was named CEO of Dunkin' Brands in 2018. In 2016, Hoffman joined Dunkin' Brands as president of Dunkin' Donuts U.S. He led the company's U.S. business and directed the coffee chain's new concept store. Hoffman replaced Nigel Travis, 68, who retired from his role. Travis began as CEO in 2009. Travis currently serves as chairman of the board.

Key Differences

Nearly all of Dunkin' Brands' locations are franchises. Licensed Starbucks stores are disproportionately located outside the U.S.

Company-operated stores have different operational and capital expense structures from franchised locations. Cost of goods sold (COGS) and store operating expenses are a much larger percentage of sales for Starbucks than Dunkin'. Because COGS is so much more prominent in Starbucks' expense structure, its profits are more severely impacted by changes in coffee bean prices. Starbucks also has a higher capital expense burden than Dunkin' Donuts, which is not obligated to purchase kitchen equipment for franchise locations.

Starbucks has built a more premium brand than Dunkin' Donuts. Starbucks offers a more extensive menu and more product customization, which is reinforced by writing each customer's name on the side of their cup. The company offers a comfortable and quiet environment with free wireless internet access, encouraging customers to stay to socialize, work, study, browse media, or listen to music while consuming their Starbucks products. Taken together, these factors form a more premium experience and command a higher price point.

Dunkin' Donuts has more competitive pricing, focusing on the middle class. In company filings and earnings conference calls, Dunkin' Donuts' management has described its intent to be the lowest cost provider in the market while maintaining quality above an acceptable minimum.

Because Starbucks operates its own stores, it has tighter margins than Dunkin' Donuts. Dunkin' Donuts has typically had a lower capital expense burden than Starbucks.

Who Are Starbucks' Main Competitors?

The main competitors of Starbucks are McDonald's, Dunkin', Tim Hortons, Costa Coffee, Caffe Nero, Caffe Ritazza, to name but a few.

Is Dunkin' Cheaper Than Starbucks?

Yes, in general, the coffee at Dunkin' is cheaper than the coffee at Starbucks. This is primarily due to the difference in the cost of goods sold (COGS), with Starbucks having a higher COGS, which is passed on to the consumer through higher prices.

Does Dunkin' or Starbucks Have Stronger Coffee?

Starbucks has stronger coffee than Dunkin', with an average of 267 milligrams of caffeine in a cup of coffee versus 220 milligrams of caffeine in a cup of Dunkin's coffee.

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Starbucks vs. Dunkin': What's the Difference?

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Starbucks Corp. ( SBUX) and Dunkin' Brands are the two largest eatery chains in the U.S. that specialize in coffee. Both companies offer similar coffee options-although different food options-and both have similar overall strategies. Nonetheless, there are key differences in their business models related to scale, store ownership, and branding.

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