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It's one of the most polarizing sports debates ever, and a classic case of old school versus new school. Some fans say denying MJ's status as a sports icon, and once you have a honorific title-it's yours, right? But some think that James at 32-years-old has accomplished more than MJ did at the same age. topping Michael Jordan's legacy is impossible, but others argue LeBron James is actually the Who do you think is the GOAT? 🏀 greatest NBA player of all-time. There's no

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Greatest NBA player of all-time: LeBron James or Michael Jordan?

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It's one of the most polarizing sports debates ever, and a classic case of old school versus new school. Some fans say topping Michael Jordan's legacy is impossible, but others argue LeBron James is actually the greatest NBA player of all-time. There's no denying MJ's status as a sports icon, and once you have a honorific title-it's yours, right?

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Is rap music good for our society?

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Debate.org is a dynamic social community where you can voice your opinion on today's hottest issues.

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Bet I can beat anyone in a debate about this.

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Moving with missionary zeal, Nathan Thompson swept into a brewpub here bearing a battered globe under his arm with the words "this is a scam" scrawled on the side.

He dropped the defaced orb like a vanquished enemy on a table amid pints of beer.

Thompson, the 31-year-old host of the Official Flat Earth Globe & Discussion group on Facebook, was guest of honor at the night's flat Earth meet-up. Clad in a green jumpsuit festooned with flat Earth maps, he worked the room hard all the while proclaiming Earth is less a big blue marble than a big blue pancake.

"This is not a conspiracy theory," he said. "This is a conspiracy fact."

With more people rejecting traditional sources of information and the internet giving rise to a variety of alternative worldviews, the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories is enjoying a renaissance and Colorado is the epicenter.

Many of the most popular flat Earth videos come out of Colorado, host of next year's Flat Earth International Conference along with the Colorado International Flat Earth Film Festival.

Mark Sargent, a software analyst from Boulder now living in Seattle, is the primary organizer of the movement and has made more than a thousand videos. He believes Colorado's open-mindedness accounts for its prominent position among believers.

Back in 2015, when he typed "flat Earth" into YouTube he'd get 50,000 hits. Now it's more than 18.7 million, beating out Lady Gaga and closing in on Donald Trump at about 21.3 million. Sargent said he suspects millions of believers remain "in the closet" to avoid ridicule.

"My channel broke 10 million views in December," he said. "This is my full-time job now."

Sargent, 49, became a believer after watching videos and realizing he could "no longer prove the globe."

The flat Earth revival, he said, can be explained in large part by YouTube, increased skepticism of authority and the message of hope it conveys.

Yet millenniums later that still doesn't sit well for some.

One of the nation's first meet-ups dedicated to the flat Earth cause convenes weekly at the Purple Cup Cafe in Fort Collins. For many, it's a safe space to discuss matters others might scoff at.

John Vnuk started it in 2016 and soon received more than 200 calls from people eager to know more.

"I suspect there are more people open to the idea of flat Earth then we think," he said. "We had a multitude of engineers attend our meeting ... who just would rather have a peaceful life with full employment than join the battle."

At a recent meeting, Nathan Nichols, 39, rattled off "proofs" for a tabular Earth. He said it looks curved from high altitudes because of wide-angle camera lenses. Ships disappear over the horizon because of the limits of human vision, not a spherical world.

Some members believe Earth is surrounded by a wall of ice holding back the seas while others suspect it's an infinite plane. Circumnavigating the world, they explain, is simply traveling in a big circle.

"I don't know the motivation for hiding the truth," Nichols said. "The sobering part of this is that you have been lied to and continue to be lied to."

As conspiracies go, this one is remarkably nonpartisan, said Joseph Uscinski, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami and author of the book "American Conspiracy Theories."

"Just like some have a left- or right-wing worldview, some people have a conspiratorial worldview where they think every institution is a liar," he said. "These people are living in the matrix, they are brains in a jar where everything they see and hear is absolutely fake."

The Los Angeles-based Independent Investigations Group, which looks into claims of the paranormal and pseudoscience, plans a test in the coming weeks at the Salton Sea hoping to convince a group of flat Earthers. They will fire a laser eight feet above the water to a target on the other side.

"If the Earth is flat the laser will stay at eight feet the whole way," said Spencer Marks, an investigator with the group. "If it's curved, it will descend toward the surface of the water."

Marks has debated flat Earthers including Thompson, but he's not a scientist. In fact, few scientists have weighed in.

"Science doesn't even get their arguments out there," Sargent said. "They try to beat us with math but people don't understand it. It might as well be static, so they listen to me."

David Falk, assistant professor of astronomy at Los Angeles Valley College, thinks that's a mistake.

"The serious science community feels it's so basic that they don't want to waste their time debunking it," he said. "But this is a scary thing.... The danger isn't that people don't believe the Earth is round, it's the lack of scientific literacy."

Back at the Golden pub, Bob Knodel, a 57-year-old engineer whose "Globebusters" series has more than 2.6 million views on YouTube, held forth on the flat Earth universe.

"The sun is about 3,419.5 miles away by my calculations. It's not a burning ball of hydrogen gas, it is electrostatic energy," he said. "We don't know how it's powered."

Brian Gegan, 55 and not a flat Earther, wandered over.

"So you believe the Earth is flat and stationary?" he asked.

"Gravity has never been proven," Thompson said.

Gegan asked why it would be hidden.

"They want to dissuade you from the idea of a God," Knodel said. "Beyond that, as a way to control your mind. They want us to think that we aren't special, but we are."

Gegan walked away unconvinced.

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The Earth is round, and other myths, debunked by the flat Earth movement (you read that right)

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Moving with missionary zeal, Nathan Thompson swept into a brewpub here bearing a battered globe under his arm with the words "this is a scam" scrawled on the side. He dropped the defaced orb like a vanquished enemy on a table amid pints of beer.

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Researchers from Yale and Stanford write that the concept of combining is obsolete.

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Should milk be consumed?

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Growing up, my parents made me drink a glass of milk with dinner. I remember, even back then, despising having to drink it. As I got older, and started to protest having to drink the awful liquid, my parents would make me sit at the dinner table until it was done. No dessert, no TV, just sitting in silence until the milk was consumed. Finally, after a very long while, I would toss back the milk as fast as I could and go to the fridge for water to mask the disgusting aftertaste left in my mouth. Back then, my passion of hating milk only stemmed from how unpleasant I found the taste. However, as I got older and started to think about the concept as a whole, I began to realize how disgusting and screwed up drinking milk actually is.

Before I get into the health "benefits" of drinking milk, let me lay out for you the bigger picture of what we are actually doing. Everyone knows, as babies, we have to drink our mother's breast milk (or formula) until our bodies are ready to process real foods. It's just the same for any other animal; piglets drink from their mothers until they are old enough, chimps feed from their mother's milk supply until they are old enough, and calves drink from their mother until they are old enough. Not only are we the only animals that drinks milk past infantry, but we are also the only animals that drink the milk from other animals. Do you all understand this? When you drink the milk of a cow you are literally playing the part of a calf until you are finished. I can't get my mind to look past that fact. Not only does it confuse me, it is so cringe-worthy in my eyes that I can feel my skin crawling.

Now, lets talk about all the health factors that come with consuming milk. Ever since we were kids we've been taught that milk is essential to having healthy, strong bones. Remember the "Got Milk?" ads we would see hanging up in our school's cafeterias? It seems like everywhere we looked there would be a new celebrity sporting the infamous white milk mustache. I hate to break it to you, but the hoopla about dairy is just a marketing campaign by the American Milk Industry -- a powerful one at that. The truth? Milk doesn't have all the benefits that people claim it has. In fact, a study done by Dr. Willett shows us otherwise. Dr. Willett teaches us six important things about dairy:
1. Dairy doesn't give you stronger bones.
If you do any extra research on this, you will see that dairy actually increases fracture risk.

2. The lower the dairy intake, the stronger the bones.

If you want stronger bones, try exercising and vitamin D. Don't rely on a liquid to give you your strength.

3. Calcium isn't as effective as we think when it comes to protecting bones.

You can intake all the calcium in the world, and it would still mean nothing if you don't have the sufficient amount of vitamin D in your body.

4. Dairy can increase the risk of cancer.

I get it, basically everything these days gives you cancer. However, studies have shown that calcium can increase prostate cancer by at least 30 percent.

If you're going to milk for your calcium, you're looking in the wrong place. You can find calcium in leafy greens and seafood. Check out this list for more options.

Ever heard of someone being lactose-intolerant? They still seem just as healthy as the person next to them, don't they?

If those facts aren't enough to make you question drinking milk, maybe the way milk is produced will. Imagine how women make milk. They produce the milk to feed to their offspring, correct? When the baby comes, the milk the mother creates is used to nourish the baby into health. It's the same concept with cows, or it should be. Dairy cows in the industry are in a constant state of lactation. They are constantly being impregnated in order for the dairy industry to get enough milk to fill all of America; when in reality, the cows milk should be going straight to her baby. Dairy cows produce around 20,000 pounds of milk a year. In case you're wondering, that's 10x more than they should be producing naturally. If you don't realize how extensive this is on the cows health, a human would need to jog for six hours a day just to achieve a work-rate relatively close. In a normal world, dairy cows can live up to 25 years, but in the industry they're lucky to last three. Dairy cows are kept in horribly poor conditions, and their calves get it almost worse, all so we can have their milk (keyword: their, not our).

I have more family and friends that love milk than those who don't, so I understand the hype around it. What I don't understand is how you can know all of these facts, know the concept of what you're doing, and can still drink milk without batting an eyelash. If you love milk, and aren't sure how you can live without it, try soy or almond milk.

"Milk is nature's perfect food -- but only if you're a calf." -- Dr. Mark Hyman

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The Disgusting Truth About Milk And Why We Shouldn't Drink It

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Growing up, my parents made me drink a glass of milk with dinner. I remember, even back then, despising having to drink it. As I got older, and started to protest having to drink the awful liquid, my parents would make me sit at the dinner table until it was done.

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Is "Pro-Choice Vegan" Logical?

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In my last column here, I discussed the paradoxical nature of violent activism in the pursuit of nonviolent ends. In particular, the issue before us was whether a pro-life or pro-animal-rights activist could, logically and ethically, utilize violent methods for protecting vulnerable victims (animals and fetuses) from third-party violence. In this column, I take up a different paradox. The question here is whether it is morally consistent to be pro-choice on the abortion issue while simultaneously being an ethical vegan on the animal issue. Can a person defend the right to abortion without compromising her dedication to innocent life manifested in her commitment to ethical veganism?
Beating Hearts
In our book, Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights, Michael C. Dorf and I address some of the common puzzles, themes, and challenges that animate and confront both the pro-life and animal rights movements. Underlying the book is the potential for tension between the two movements. One can tell a coherent story, of which there are certainly adherents, such as Matthew Scully, in which one is opposed to gratuitous violence against living beings, including both human fetuses and nonhuman animals, and accordingly makes the choice to be both a pro-life activist and an ethical vegan, as Matthew Scully does. In general, however, these two movements contain little overlap. Anecdotal observations suggest that pro-life advocates tend not to have a commitment to animal rights or veganism and that vegans tend to be pro-choice rather than pro-life. One might regard this distance between the two movements as a puzzle, one that pro-life vegans must find frustrating and difficult to understand.
Changing Perspectives
As pro-choice vegans, Professor Dorf and I do believe that one can coherently take a pro-choice position on abortion while also living out a commitment to animal rights. But how? Our initial thought about this question was that if our reflections led us to conclude that one ought to be pro-life if one is to be a morally consistent vegan, then we were prepared to follow that route. As we gave the issues more thought, however, we realized that the analogy that drove our concern about inconsistency was potentially flawed or at least incomplete.

The analogy that most naturally arises in thinking about animal rights and fetal rights is that between the innocent and defenseless nonhuman animal-such as a cow on a kill line in a slaughterhouse, after her milk productivity has dropped to "unacceptable" levels-and the innocent and defenseless fetus (or embryo) waiting unsuspectingly to be removed from the safety of the womb and aborted inside the walls of a clinic. This analogy can be a compelling one, especially if we are considering the morality of abortion from the point of view of the pregnant woman. For her, the choice to terminate a pregnancy does involve the voluntary extraction and killing of a vulnerable embryo or fetus living inside her body. And as we elaborate in our book, this decision might, in some circumstances, be an unethical one, comparable to the decision to terminate the life of an innocent animal by consuming the flesh or bodily secretions of animals.

There is, however, another perspective from which to view the abortion dilemma. It is not just the case of a woman deciding whether to terminate or carry a pregnancy to term. It is also the case of a government (or nongovernmental actors) deciding whether to block the woman who wants to have an abortion, whether to make it difficult or impossible for her to terminate her pregnancy, or whether to allow the woman to carry out the choice that she has made. Stated differently, the abortion dilemma involves two primary actors with ethical obligations: the woman who wishes to terminate and the government (or powerful non-governmental actor(s)) that plans to stand in the woman's way and prevent her from doing what she wishes to do.

Once we switch perspectives to the government, we realize that what the government is doing-in addition to attempting to rescue a fetus-is interfering in a substantial and highly intrusive fashion with a woman's bodily integrity. The woman wishes to be free of an entity that is occupying the inside of her body, posing health risks to her, causing potentially great discomfort, and diverting the work of her bodily systems toward its own survival and growth. To stand in the way of her choice is to compel the woman to carry all of these burdens inside her body against her will. If the woman were carrying a parasite inside her body that was making her ill in some of the ways that pregnancy makes people ill, we would consider it outrageous for the government to block her from obtaining the medicine needed to stop the parasite from taking over her body.

Changing perspectives in this way allows us to attend to two relevant facts about the abortion dilemma that might have been obscured by the pure fetus/animal analogy. The first fact is that abortion is not simply an act of violence against a fetus or an embryo; it is also an act of ending the internal occupation of an unwilling Good Samaritan who wishes to be free of an intensely demanding physical status that is in important respects unique to pregnancy. Unlike someone who decides to eat a piece of dairy cheese or a hamburger, then, the woman who decides to terminate her pregnancy does not have an easy alternative option (like rice and beans or a delicious veggie burger) but must go through months of internal occupation and then the excruciating pain of labor or surgery. She must choose either to commit an act of violence or to be a Good Samaritan; she has no "bystander" option whereby she can fail to save the fetus but also refrain from doing anything violent to that fetus.

A second relevant fact that emerges when we change perspectives is that there is an analogy to be drawn not only between a fetus and a nonhuman animal but between an unhappily pregnant woman and a nonhuman animal. Female animals-especially those involved in producing reproductive "food" products like dairy yogurt, cheese, and milk, and ovulatory products like omelets and eggs-are subject to brutal and relentless reproductive servitude, pain, distress, and ultimately slaughter as part of the production process. This is one of the reasons that ovo-lacto vegetarianism so betrays the female animals. Likewise, when the government seeks to compel an unwilling woman to carry her pregnancy to term, despite her objections, it is forcibly placing her in the role of a reproductive slave. Like the dairy cow who has been forcibly impregnated, the pregnant woman who wishes to be "unpregnant" again-to restore her pre-pregnancy physical state-is subject to force that converts her from an autonomous individual into an involuntary incubator on behalf of the state. In thinking about the pro-life position, then, it is important to keep in mind the role of state (or non-governmental) physical coercion necessary to keeping a woman in a state of pregnancy against her will, a kind of coercion that mirrors what we do to animals to farm them for their flesh and especially for their secretions (like fluid breast milk).

To be sure, the level of coercion involved in animal farming is far more extensive and thorough than anything that a pro-life advocate would propose for pregnant women. For one thing, many of the pregnant women who wish to terminate their pregnancies initially became pregnant through consensual sex. Farmed animals, by contrast, virtually always become pregnant through a highly invasive process of forced insemination, a process that itself violates the intimate boundaries of the animal and can cause injury. For another thing, the pregnant woman who is forced to take her pregnancy to term generally has the option of keeping her baby and nursing him or her. This contrasts greatly with the fate of a dairy cow who gives birth and has her baby taken from her so that the calf's rightful breast milk-his baby food-can be diverted to human use while the calf is slaughtered as veal.

Notwithstanding these differences, however, there is still tremendous coercion involved in keeping a woman pregnant against her will, given all of the physical impositions and internal burdens involved. The analogy between her and a farmed animal therefore comes to seem at least as plausible as the analogy between her fetus and the same farmed animal.
Procuring Death versus Ending Internal Occupation
To crystalize the mandatory Good Samaritan feature of compelled pregnancy, consider an important difference between two features of abortion: the killing of the fetus and the termination of the woman's internal occupation. Prior to viability-the point at which the fetus can (at least in theory) survive outside the womb-terminating the woman's pregnant status will have the inevitable consequence of also killing the fetus. Yet the right to bodily integrity that the woman asserts is most saliently a right to the first and not to the second. What this means is that if and when technology has progressed to the point that a woman can end her state of pregnancy without killing her fetus, her entitlement might rightly narrow to being able only to stop being pregnant but not to terminate the life of the fetus, particularly once the fetus has become a sentient being and therefore vested with its own entitlement to continue living free of violence. It is easy to conflate an interest in killing the fetus with an interest in ending one's pregnancy so long as it is impossible to do one without also doing the other, but the two are conceptually distinct, and there is a much stronger case for the latter, a matter of restoring bodily integrity, than for the former, a matter of destroying an unwanted fetus or embryo.
Maybe Room for Compromise
Ultimately, I suspect that pro-life vegan individuals will remain so, notwithstanding the analogy I have drawn here between the pregnant woman and the animal. Sure, they will concede, much is required of the woman who carries a pregnancy to term, but what is truly required, at the core, is that she refrain from killing her baby. The pro-life advocate focuses on the violence of abortion, in other words, rather than on the "Good Samaritanship" of those who do not-or cannot-abort.

In answer to this point, I would offer the suggestion that perhaps we can cabin the overwhelming number of abortions that take place prior to fetal sentience-prior to the point at which a fetus is capable of having feelings like pleasure and pain, or emotions. Most women who choose to terminate their pregnancies do so early in the process, long before the fetus has begun to have subjective experiences and therefore long before the act of killing the fetus might rightly qualify as true "violence" against "someone" rather than something.

When we combine the woman's interest in being free of a highly intrusive internal occupation with the fact that most aborted fetuses have not yet attained "sentience,"' there is perhaps some room for consensus among pro-life and pro-choice advocates who can all agree that post-sentience (somewhere north of 23-30 weeks gestation) abortions raise serious ethical issues from the point of view of the woman contemplating a termination. To so recognize is not to agree that such abortion should be illegal (which pro-choice individuals would likely reject), but it is perhaps to agree that early abortions ought to be treated more generously than later ones and even that measures that delay abortion (perhaps to a point that crosses the sentience line) ought especially to be avoided.

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Is "Pro-Choice Ethical Vegan" an Oxymoron?

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In my last column here, I discussed the paradoxical nature of violent activism in the pursuit of nonviolent ends. In particular, the issue before us was whether a pro-life or pro-animal-rights activist could, logically and ethically, utilize violent methods for protecting vulnerable victims (animals and fetuses) from third-party violence.

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Are there any topics that are just too offensive to be joked about?

The comedian Joan Rivers, who died in 2014, once said, "I started thinking about jokes while I was walking uptown on 9/11." Is 9/11 too serious a topic for comedy? What about rape? Cancer? Hitler or the Holocaust? Why or why not?

A 2014 article about a satirical student magazine at San Diego State University included these descriptions of the magazine's off-color content:

The cover featured an orgy of naked women with koala heads, clutching beer bottles, injecting illicit substances and vomiting. Inside was a list of "Top 5 Ways to Pick Up a Girl in a Burka," a four-step instruction guide entitled "How Thou Shalt Use Thine Bible Pages to Roll One Holy Joint," and in lieu of horoscopes, there were "Whore-o-Scopes."

...Issues are peppered with jokes about homosexuals, Jews, Latinos, African-Americans, cancer patients and injured orphans. "Zimmermanslaughter" mocked the killing of the black teenager Trayvon Martin at the hands of a neighborhood watch coordinator.

And in a recent article about Margaret Cho, Ruth La Ferla describes a comedian who considers nothing about her personal life too private for a punch line:

"I can't think of a thing that should be hidden," Margaret Cho said on a blustery Sunday in early March.

It was the morning after her wildly kinetic performance at the Gramercy Theater, and she was feeling brash. "My sexuality or experiences I've had that amused me, I'm willing to share," she said.

That she did. Bright-eyed and pink-cheeked, swaddled against the elements in a kaleidoscopically patterned scarf and a hat shaped like a cinnamon bun, she offered, as she does onstage, the embarrassing minutiae of her day-to-day life.

In life, as in the show, nothing - not her age (she is 46 and "I don't get a period all the time," she said), not her recent divorce, nor the tattoos that crawl serpentlike all over her frame - is too private, too sacred or too humiliating to be turned into a punch line.

That includes the public upbraiding she endured for what some saw as her racist impersonation of the North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un at the Golden Globes in January. "I'm not playing the race card. I'm playing the rice card," she tweeted soon after that cameo. And she slyly taunted her young, racially mixed audience the other night, saying, "People want to tell Asian people how they feel about race because they're too scared to tell black people."

Students: Read both articles, then tell us ...

- Do any of the examples from these articles strike you as topics that shouldn't be joked about? Why or why not? If not those topics, are there others that should be off limits to comedy?

- If there is a line, what is it? Is it less about the topic than whether or not a joke is actually funny?

- What role can comedy play in helping us confront difficult topics? Can you think of any examples of comedians or jokes that do this successfully, in your view?

- How should school magazines like the campus satirical paper The Koala balance freedom of the press and their right to test the line between funny and offensive with the fact that their audience is an "increasingly diverse" student body?

- The article about The Koala points out that people who are teenagers today have grown up with " 'Family Guy' and comedians like Sarah Silverman and Sacha Baron Cohen [who] have plumbed domestic violence, AIDS victims and children with special needs for comedic material." Do you like this kind of humor? Do you enjoy the work of comedians like Margaret Cho who consider nothing too private? How do you think this kind of comedy has affected you?

- In a review of recent books about comedy, Bruce Handy writes about one author, Eric Kaplan, that he "stands up for certain rape jokes, cancer jokes and Holocaust jokes ... as ways to grapple with the contradictions of being human and with the meanings - if there are any - behind life's cruelties. It's more than the commonplace notion of humor neutralizing our fears or being a safety valve for aggression. By laughing at something ostensibly inappropriate, Kaplan argues, we honor the awfulness of whatever it is we are laughing at and also acknowledge our distance from it. The disconnect between our horror at suffering and our relief that we're not the ones suffering is what's funny; laughing about it helps bridge that gulf - an honest expression of tangled, conflicting emotions that might elude politer discourse. Put another way, some of the darkest jokes are profoundly empathetic." Do you agree? Why or why not?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Are There Topics That Should Be Off Limits to Comedy?

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Are there any topics that are just too offensive to be joked about? The comedian Joan Rivers, who died in 2014, once said, "I started thinking about jokes while I was walking uptown on 9/11." Is 9/11 too serious a topic for comedy? What about rape? Cancer? Hitler or the Holocaust?

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Flat Earth Proof

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Rapper B.o.B. has caused a furore by tweeting that the Earth is in fact flat, and you only need to look at the evidence to come to the same conclusion. Obviously, prominent scientists have openly mocked this claim, showing the many ways in which it is ludicrous, no matter how many people insist otherwise. They're right though; sadly. B.o.B. is wrong. His nonsense claims, such as the idea that Earth's curvature should be visible at certain distances but isn't, are just that: nonsense. His comments and insistent statements are little more than childish naivety. In truth, the conspiracy goes much, much deeper than that.

For example, the Earth really is flat. As in totally flat, like a sheet of glass. The definition of flat is "having a level surface; without raised areas or indentations". So how can you have tall buildings and mountains if the Earth is flat? You can't. Q.E.D. It would be like saying a hedgehog is flat, which, barring an unfortunate encounter with a heavy goods vehicle, it clearly isn't.

Some might take issue with this, based on the flimsy evidence that they can see buildings, hills, trees, mountains and things like that everywhere, and may even be in or on them right now. This is just another example of how blinkered people are. If you look closely, the clues are everywhere.

There's no such thing as a mountain, they're just optical illusions caused by light refracting off all the mind-altering chemicals in the air. Photograph: PR

For instance, what's the tallest supposed mountain on Earth? Everest. Except it isn't. The name is a giveaway; it's clearly a morphing of "never rest", because if you wanted to go to the biggest mountain you'd literally never rest, because it isn't actually there. What about all those people who have climbed it, you say? Well, consider all the people who have died supposedly doing so. How do you die climbing something that isn't there? You can't. They were obviously killed to protect the conspiracy, whereas those who "survived" were willing to play ball.

And if that isn't clear enough, pretty much everyone who attempts to climb Everest takes oxygen with them. Why would you do that when there's oxygen all around us, in the air? Wherever they're going, it isn't on Earth. You know where you do need oxygen, though? THE MOON! That's where they're going. So-called mountaineers are being sent to the moon in order to fake climbing Everest. This is why Nasa had to fake the moon landing with astronauts, because it was already full of mountaineers and they couldn't risk exposing that conspiracy. See how it all adds up?

Some might still object, because they're currently sitting in a tall building. They're not though, they only "think" they are. In truth, everyone is breathing in a potent mix of hallucinogens that are constantly in the air around us, and these cause us to perceive buildings and tall things where there are none. How did these hallucinogens get in the air? Well, that's what chemtrails are actually for.

Good evening, your majesty. Photograph: Chris Davis/Amphibian and Reptil/PA

Don't worry, these hallucinogenic compounds aren't provided by evil "Big Pharma"; they're actually secreted by the shape-shifting lizards that rule society. Why do you think lizards are in charge in the first place? They provide the secretions that keep the population in line, believing in things like the Earth is round and buildings exist. The few times people have actually tried to make a tall building like the World Trade Centre, it is destroyed by the government.

Some refer to " false flags" at times like this. In truth, all flags are false; they're non-existent tall structures, so are just figments of our collective imagination.

This leads us on to other considerations though, like how thick is the Earth? It may be totally flat, but nobody said it's two-dimensional. It must have a thickness, because we can go underground or underwater. Unlike mountains, the oceans are clearly real, because otherwise where did Atlantis go?

The deepest part of the ocean we know about is the Mariana trench, a full 7 miles down. This means the Earth is at least 7 miles thick, and probably a lot more so, because that's a lot of water on top of it and it would need to be solid enough to keep it all in, lest all of the seas leak out of the bottom of the world. This clearly isn't happening, even if you do ignore the nonsense that is rising sea levels due to global warming. How can you have global warming without a globe to warm? Hoisted by your own petard there, scientists!

Maybe the world is as thick as it is wide, and is actually a cube? Scientists scoff at this notion, arguing that gravity would mean the atmosphere would be much thicker at the centre of the each surface and nearly barren at the poles. But have you noticed how the atmosphere is much more humid at the so-called "equator" yet the poles are practically lifeless? Coincidence? OBVIOUSLY NOT!

When you follow this train of logic, it becomes clear that the only feasible conclusion is that Earth is indeed flat. Flatter than anyone has ever expected.

Either that, or the human brain has a habit of looking for patterns in innocuous or coincidental occurrences, ascribing great significance to any connection it can find and trying to make sense of them despite the absence of any concrete evidence. But seriously, that's a bit of a far-fetched claim isn't it?
Dean Burnett covers the neurological mechanisms leading to conspiracy theories and more in his debut book The Idiot Brain, He is on Twitter: @garwboy
The Idiot Brain by Dean Burnett (Guardian Faber, £12.99). To order a copy for £7.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.

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Why the Earth is actually 100% flat | Dean Burnett

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Dean Burnett: Rapper B.o.B. has been criticised for publicly insisting the Earth is flat. You may think his claims are ludicrous, but the truth is: they don't go far enough

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Tragically, predictably, infuriatingly, we're again mourning a shooting - this time at YouTube's headquarters - even as the drive for gun safety legislation has stalled in Washington. Polls show that nine out of 10 Americans favor basic steps like universal background checks before gun purchases, but the exceptions are the president and a majority in Congress.

Usually pundits toss out their own best arguments while ignoring the other side's, but today I'm going to try something new and engage directly with the arguments made by gun advocates:
You liberals are in a panic over guns, but look at the numbers. Any one gun is less likely to kill a person than any one vehicle. But we're not traumatized by cars, and we don't try to ban them.
It's true that any particular car is more likely to be involved in a fatality than any particular gun. But cars are actually a perfect example of the public health approach that we should apply to guns. We don't ban cars, but we do work hard to take a dangerous product and regulate it to limit the damage.

We do that through seatbelts and airbags, through speed limits and highway barriers, through driver's licenses and insurance requirements, through crackdowns on drunken driving and texting while driving. I once calculated that since 1921, we had reduced the auto fatality rate per 100 million miles driven by 95 percent.

Sure, we could have just said "cars don't kill people, people kill people." Or we could have said that it's pointless to regulate cars because then bicyclists will just run each other down. Instead, we relied on evidence and data to reduce the carnage from cars. Why isn't that a model for guns?
Because of the Second Amendment. The Constitution doesn't protect vehicles, but it does protect my right to a gun.
Yes, but courts have found that the Second Amendment does not prevent sensible regulation (just as the First Amendment does not preclude laws on defamation). There is no constitutional objection to, say, universal background checks to obtain a gun. It's crazy that 22 percent of guns are obtained without a check.

We all agree that there should be limits. No one argues that there is an individual right to own an antiaircraft gun. So the question isn't whether firearms should all be sacrosanct but simply where we draw the line. When more Americans have died from guns just since 1970 (1.4 million) than in all the wars in American history (1.3 million), maybe it's worth rethinking where that line should be.
Whoa! You're inflating the gun violence numbers by including suicides. Almost two-thirds of those gun deaths are suicides, and the blunt reality is that if someone wants to kill himself, he'll find a way. It's not about guns.

Actually, that's not true. Scholars have found that suicide barriers on bridges, for example, prevent jumpers and don't lead to a significant increase in suicides elsewhere. Likewise, almost half of suicides in Britain used to be by asphyxiating oneself with gas from the oven, but when Britain switched to a less lethal oven gas the suicides by oven plummeted and there was little substitution by other methods. So it is about guns.
No, it's more about our violent culture. The Swiss and Israelis have large numbers of firearms, and they don't have our levels of gun violence.
Yes, there's something to that. America has underlying social problems, and we need to address them with smarter economic and social policies. But we magnify the toll when we make it easy for troubled people to explode with AR-15s rather than with pocketknives.
You liberals freak out about guns. If you have a swimming pool or a bathtub, that's more dangerous to neighborhood kids than a gun is. Kids under age 14 are much more likely to die from drowning than from firearms. So why this crusade against guns, but not against bathtubs and pools?
Your numbers are basically right, but only because young children routinely swim and take baths but don't regularly encounter firearms. But look at the picture for the population as a whole: Over all, 3,600 Americans drown each year, while 36,000 die from guns (yes, including suicides). That's one reason to be talking more about gun safety than about pool safety.

Note also that a backyard pool isn't going to be used to mug a neighbor, or to invade a nearby school. Schools don't have drills for an "active pool situation." And while some 200,000 guns are stolen each year, it's more difficult to steal a pool and use it for a violent purpose.

Moreover, we do try to make pools safer. Many jurisdictions require a permit for a pool, as well as a childproof fence around it with self-locking gates. If we have permits and safe storage requirements for pools, why not for guns? What's wrong with trying to save lives?

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Opinion | How to Win an Argument About Guns

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Tragically, predictably, infuriatingly, we're again mourning a shooting - this time at YouTube's headquarters - even as the drive for gun safety legislation has stalled in Washington. Polls show that nine out of 10 Americans favor basic steps like universal background checks before gun purchases, but the exceptions are the president and a majority in Congress.

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"They are so direct in their messaging. They are so clear. They seem unflappable."

Dr. Damour, who has spent her career talking and listening to teenagers, said she believes the Parkland teens are showing the world the potential of their peer group. "Those of us who live with teenagers and are around them can see something that is different about this generation," she said.

There is still much to learn about the postmillennial cohort - social scientists haven't even agreed on when this generation begins, although there seems to be a consensus forming that the year 2000, give or take a few years, is a good place to start. But data collected from various health surveys already show that today's teens are different from previous generations in many ways.

Many risky behaviors have dropped sharply among today's teens. Cigarette smoking among teens is at a historic low since peaking in the mid 1990s. Alcohol use has also declined significantly - the number of teens who have used alcohol in the past 30 days is down by half since the 1990s. Teen pregnancy rates have hit historic lows, and teens over all are waiting longer to have sex than their parent's generation. Teen driving fatalities are down about 64 percent since 1975. Some of that is attributed to safer cars, but teen crashes have declined between 10 and 30 percent in states with tiered licensing systems, and teen drunken driving has dropped while teen seatbelt use has increased.

While most health researchers celebrate these changes in teen health, some scientists think the trends suggest a lower level of maturity among today's teens. Perhaps teens are safer simply because their reliance on social media and smartphone use means they are getting out less. In September, the journal Child Development published a study by Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, noting that there is a decline in a number of "adult" activities among today's teens. In seven large, nationally representative surveys of eight million American adolescents from 1976 to 2016, fewer adolescents in recent years are having sex, dating, drinking alcohol, driving, working for pay and going out without their parents.

"The big picture is that they are taking longer to grow up," said Dr. Twenge, whose latest book is "iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy - and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood."

In an article in The Atlantic last fall titled "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?," Dr. Twenge argued that teens are more comfortable in their bedrooms or on smartphones or social media than at a party. While they are physically safer than past generations as a result, rates of teen depression and suicide are on the rise. "It's not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades," she wrote. "Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones."

But a number of social scientists and adolescent health researchers disagree with that conclusion. While teen depression and suicide rates are worrisome, there is no causal link to show those trends are the result of smartphones and social media. In fact, a literature review by Unicef researchers in December found that moderate use of digital technology tends to be beneficial for children's mental well-being, while no use or too much use is associated with a "small negative impact." The larger issues that affect a child's well-being are family functioning, social dynamics at school and socio-economic conditions, the report concluded.

Don Tapscott, author of "Grown Up Digital," said he believes today's teenagers are better communicators than any previous generation. "They didn't grow up being the passive recipients of somebody else's broadcast," he said. "They grew up being interactors and communicators. In the 1960s we had a generation gap. What we have today is a generation lap - they are lapping their parents on the digital track."

The clinical psychologist Wendy Mogel interviewed groups of middle school and high school students around the country in 2015 and 2016 for her new book, "Voice Lessons for Parents: What to Say, How to Say It and When to Listen." Dr. Mogel spoke with diverse kids from various regions and walks of life, but found herself consistently impressed by their thoughtfulness, how much they liked their parents, and how much they cared about the world around them.

"The press and general public like to see them as spoiled and not having to work hard for anything except grades and being very entitled," Dr. Mogel said. "But they're courageous, energetic, optimistic and really smart."

Neil Howe, a historian whose books include "Millennials Rising," said that unlike earlier generations, today's teens have accepted the structures of society and have learned to work within those boundaries. "They're very good at using rules to make their point, and they're absolutely excellent at negotiating with their parents, and negotiating in a reasonable way about how to bend these rules in a way that will make them more effective and give them more space," he said. "This is not a 'throw the brick through the window and burn stuff down' group of kids at all. They're working very constructively, arm-in-arm with older people they trust, to make big institutions work better and make them stronger and more effective."

Ms. Lythcott-Haims notes that the current crop of teenagers is the first generation to grow up with active shooter drills since kindergarten. "I think what we might have here is a generation that really defines itself by the markers of their childhoods," she said. "In addition to being marked by these gun violence tragedies, they came to consciousness with a black man in the White House and smartphones in their hands."

What does all this mean for the future of today's teens? All of the researchers agreed there is still much more to learn about this cohort, but what we know so far is promising.

"We are in the process of distilling the data and discerning who they are, but I am excited," said Ms. Lythcott-Haims. "We don't know who they will be in their 20s, but already they have agency, the sense of your own existence, your own right to make decisions and your own responsibility for outcomes and consequences. That's what we need to have to be mentally well. I think these folks could turn out not to be just leaders, but to be a generation that we look back on and end up calling one of the greatest."

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Are Today's Teenagers Smarter and Better Than We Think?

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"They are so direct in their messaging. They are so clear. They seem unflappable." Dr. Damour, who has spent her career talking and listening to teenagers, said she believes the Parkland teens are showing the world the potential of their peer group.

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Are Today’s Teenagers Smarter and Better Than We Think?  

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It has been one year and 28 days since my last tweet.

I deactivated my account shortly after President-elect Donald Trump tweeted, "North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!" on Jan. 2, 2017.

The tweet struck me as an unsettling portent of how Trump's presidency was likely to unfold: rash, petty, ostentatiously uninformed, with no regard for public safety or the mechanics of governance. The internet makes neighbors of us all, and my conscience demanded I put some virtual real estate between myself and the befuddled, racist mobster seemingly determined to dismantle and loot the republic. If seeding nuclear war wasn't a violation of Twitter's terms of service, then Twitter wasn't a service I wanted to endorse.

Exactly one year later, on Jan. 2, 2018, President Trump tweeted, "North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the 'Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.' Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"

How exquisite it would have been to be wrong.

Trump essentially daring Kim Jong-un (just a hop, a skip, and a Pacific away from my house in Seattle) to prove his nuclear capabilities is what finally pushed me over the edge, but the cliff itself was built of years of accumulated grievances with Twitter's culture of harassment and its leadership's torpid failure to fix it.

When you work in media, Twitter becomes part of your job. It's where you orient yourself in "the discourse" - figure out what's going on, what people are saying about it and, more important, what no one has said yet. In a lucky coup for Twitter's marketing team, prevailing wisdom among media types has long held that quitting the platform could be a career killer. The illusion that Twitter visibility and professional relevance are indisputably inextricable always felt too risky to puncture. Who could afford to call that bluff and be wrong? So, we stayed, while Twitter's endemic racist, sexist and transphobic harassment problems grew increasingly more sophisticated and organized.

Those of us who complained about online abuse were consistently told - by colleagues, armchair experts and random internet strangers - that we were the problem. We were too soft. We, who literally inured ourselves to rape threats and death threats so that we could participate in public life, were called weak by people who felt persecuted by the existence of female Ghostbusters. Meanwhile, Twitter's leadership offered us the ability to embed GIFs.

Those of us who pointed out that online harassment was politically motivated - compounded by race, gender and sexual orientation - as I did in 2013, for example, were accused of being "professional victims" trying to leverage our paranoid delusions to censor the internet. This defamation has never been retracted or atoned for even after the revelations that an army of Russian Twitter bots functions as the Trump administration's propaganda wing, and the "alt-right," essentially a coalition of anti-feminist, white-supremacist online harassment campaigns, recruits disaffected young men to Trumpism by framing the abuse of social justice activists as a team sport. Meanwhile, Twitter's leadership offered us 280 characters.

The social contract of the internet seems to insist that there's a nobility in weathering degradation. You can call me oversensitive, but the truth is I got far better than any human being should be at absorbing astonishing cruelty and feeling nothing. Undersensitivity was just another piece of workplace safety gear. The fact that we've learned to cope doesn't mean we shouldn't demand better.

Being on Twitter felt like being in a nonconsensual BDSM relationship with the apocalypse. So, I left.

To be clear, it's not brave to quit Twitter, or righteous (I'm still on Facebook, which is just a differently shaped moral stockyard), or noteworthy. Quitting Twitter is just a thing that you can do. I mention it only because there was a time when I didn't think it was a thing that I could do, and then I did it, and now my life is better.

I'm frequently approached by colleagues, usually women, who ask me about quitting Twitter with hushed titillation, as if I've escaped a cult or broken a particularly seductive taboo. Well, here's what my new life is like: I don't wake up with a pit in my stomach every day, dreading what horrors accrued in my phone overnight. I don't get dragged into protracted, bad-faith arguments with teenage boys about whether poor people deserve medical care, or whether putting nice guys in the friend zone is a hate crime. I don't spend hours every week blocking and reporting trolls and screen-grabbing abuse in case it someday escalates into a credible threat. I no longer feel like my brain is trapped in a centrifuge filled with swastikas and Alex Jones's spittle. Time is finite, and now I have more of it.

At the same time, I know this conversation is more complicated than that. I've lost a large platform to self-promote and make professional connections, which isn't something many writers can afford to give up (less established writers and marginalized writers most of all - in a horrid irony, the same writers disproportionately abused on Twitter). I get my news on a slight delay. I seethe at the perception that I ceded any ground to trolls trying to push me out. I will probably never persuade RuPaul to be my friend. Also, I loved Twitter. Twitter is funny and smart and validating and cathartic. It feels, when you are embroiled in it, like the place where everything is happening. (Scoff if you like, but the president of the United States makes major policy announcements there. This is the world now.)

I shouldn't have had to walk away from all that because for Twitter to take a firm stance against neo-Nazism might have cost it some incalculable sliver of profit. No one should. Sure, as in everything, global culture change would have been better. But I didn't have global culture change, and I'm better equipped to fight for global culture change now that I'm not locked in eternal whack-a-mole with a sea of angry boy-men, an unknown percentage of which are probably robots.

When you deactivate a verified Twitter account (nail-polish emoji), you have one year to log back in or your account - everything you ever tweeted, every reply in every thread - is permanently deleted. I always planned to log in and then immediately deactivate again, to re-up for another year. I figured I'd eventually reactivate, even if just for posterity. I was part of some important cultural conversations; I said some smart things before other people said them; I made some good jokes. One time the actor Michael McKean called me "doodlebug" in an affectionate manner because he liked one of my movie reviews. I wouldn't mind preserving that.

Last week I realized: I was late. I'd forgotten to log back in. A year had passed. It's all gone. It's like I was halfway through a difficult column and asked a thief to watch my laptop while I peed. It's like a great wind came and blew my problem novel into the river. It's like I ate a very good sandwich without taking a picture of it. Sometimes it is O.K. to just remember things.

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Opinion | I Quit Twitter and It Feels Great

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It has been one year and 28 days since my last tweet. I deactivated my account shortly after President-elect Donald Trump tweeted, "North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!" on Jan.

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The Oscars are here: the first Oscars since powerful men started falling to #MeToo, a Trump-era Oscars, a #TimesUp Oscars, an Oscars in the shadow of "Black Panther." Some big chairs will be empty. Some big secrets will stalk the red carpet, newly unleashed.

In an America where the ruling party seems willing to sacrifice many things - including decency and justice - to reassert white Christian masculinity as the tentpole of the universe, the best picture category offers a contrasting vision: a flaw-free indictment of that same colonial pathology ("Get Out"), a blazing affirmation of young womanhood ("Lady Bird") and an aching gay romance ("Call Me by Your Name"), among others.

Jordan Peele has the chance to become the first black person ever to win best director; Greta Gerwig would be only the second woman. Yance Ford, whose film "Strong Island" is up for best documentary feature, would be the first trans director to win an Oscar. Vulture reported last week that some older Academy voters refused to even watch "Get Out," calling it "not an Oscar film," a dismissal more air horn than dog whistle. Identity politics loom large over the 90th Academy Awards, as well they should.

TV and film are in the thick of an unprecedented sociopolitical reckoning, the first ever of such scale and ferocity, a microcosm of our ever-more-literal national culture war. But to make that reckoning stick, we have to look ahead and ask ourselves what we want of this new Hollywood, and look back to avoid repeating the past.

Hollywood is both a perfect and bizarre vanguard in the war for cultural change. Perfect because its reach is so vast, its influence so potent; bizarre because television and movies are how a great many toxic ideas embedded themselves inside of us in the first place.

When I was growing up, I didn't chafe at the shallow, exploitative representations of my gender that I saw on screen; I took notes. I added item after item to my mental lists of how to be a woman and the things I should yearn for and tolerate from men.

From makeover shows, I learned that I was ugly. From romantic comedies, I learned that stalking means he loves you and persistence means he earned you - and also that I was ugly. From Disney movies, I learned that if I made my waist small enough (maybe with the help of a witch), a man or large hog-bear might marry me, and that's where my story would end. "The Smurfs" taught me that boys can have distinct personalities, like being smart or grumpy, and girls can have only one (that personality is "high heels"). From "The Breakfast Club," I learned that rage and degradation are the selling points of an alluring bad boy, not the red flags of an abuser. From pretty much all media, I learned that complicated women are "crazy" and complicated men are geniuses.

That's essentially a random sample, and pulled from media I actually like. You could make a parallel list about race, sexuality, ability, poverty - every vector of identity that has historically been funneled through, for instance, the 82.4 percent of film directors who are white men ( according to a 2015 report by the Directors Guild of America).

Do you know how noise-canceling headphones work? (I don't really, but I'm going to embarrass myself for the sake of the metaphor.) They have a built-in microphone that measures the ambient noise around you, then generates an exact inversion of that sound wave and adds it to the mix in your headphones. When a frequency meets its opposite - when the peaks of one match up with the valleys of another - the result is called phase cancellation. The two waves cancel each other out. Silence.

What we could really use from Hollywood is about 100 years of phase cancellation.

We need new work that actively challenges and counterbalances old assumptions, that offers radical models for how to conceive of ourselves and how to treat each other. We need artists and studios fighting for diverse work made by diverse creators for diverse audiences because it's the right thing to do, not just because "Black Panther" is hurtling toward a possible billion-dollar worldwide box-office take. Capitalism won't germinate that kind of pure morality on its own, but we can choose it. If we really want to have this #MeToo reckoning - if we want to fix what's broken - those choices are part of it. The movement can't just disrupt the culture; it has to become the culture.

One of the most breathtaking things about #MeToo - just behind the iron-jawed fury of its deponents - is how swiftly and decisively it pulled conversations about sexual predation from the conceptual to the concrete. After decades of debates and doubts and dissertations and settlements and nondisclosure agreements and whisper networks and stasis and silence, all of a sudden, in one great gust, powerful men are toppling. Talk has become action. The seemingly untouchable have lost jobs, reputations and legacies overnight. Choices have consequences, even if you are Harvey Weinstein. This is new.

But in the rush of catharsis, it's important not to lose track of some of those old conceptual conversations, because we never came close to finishing them. We are not done talking about why so many men feel entitled to space, power and other people's bodies. We are not done talking about our culture's hostility toward women's sexual pleasure. We are not done talking about how to get justice for "imperfect" victims, and how to let go of perpetrators we love. We are not done talking about how to decide which abusers deserve a path to redemption, and what that path might look like. We are not done talking about the legal system. We are not done talking about sex. We are not done talking about race.

Unseating a couple (or a score, or even a generation) of powerful abusers is a start, but it's not an end, unless we also radically change the power structure that selects their replacements and the shared values that remain even when the movement wanes. Art didn't invent oppressive gender roles, racial stereotyping or rape culture, but it reflects, polishes and sells them back to us every moment of our waking lives. We make art, and it simultaneously makes us. Shouldn't it follow, then, that we can change ourselves by changing the art we make?

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Opinion | We Got Rid of Some Bad Men. Now Let's Get Rid of Bad Movies.

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The Oscars are here: the first Oscars since powerful men started falling to #MeToo, a Trump-era Oscars, a #TimesUp Oscars, an Oscars in the shadow of "Black Panther." Some big chairs will be empty. Some big secrets will stalk the red carpet, newly unleashed.

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"Everybody in my house showered in the morning," said Nate Martins, a writer from San Francisco. After the water heated up, "we'd all stack up like dominoes," he said.

"Washing the sleep off, that's something that I still do," he said - much to the chagrin of his wife, Natalie, who's a steadfast night showerer. "There have been times where she's asked me to shower before bed, especially when I've spent a lot of time on public transit."

For those who have a hard time waking up, a morning shower can make a big difference, said Dr. Janet K. Kennedy, a clinical psychologist and sleep expert in New York. It can boost alertness, she said, but she recommends a somewhat cooler, not cold, shower to avoid raising your body temperature dramatically.

The good and the bad for Team Night

For those who struggle with insomnia, Dr. Kennedy said she'd suggest showering at night, about 90 minutes before bed. "The body naturally cools down as bedtime approaches, in sync with the circadian rhythm," she said. "Showering artificially raises the temperature again and allows for a faster cool down, which seems to hasten sleep."

Showering is also a good way to unwind and release muscle tension, she said, which aids sleep.

But don't get carried away. Those long, steamy showers spent unpacking the day and draining the water heater could damage your skin.

Dr. Gary Goldenberg, a dermatologist in New York and a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, recommends a maximum of 5- to 10-minute showers in lukewarm water for most people. Sad, I know.

"Very hot showers tend to take the oil off your skin, and tend to irritate your skin," he said. "The longer you are in the water, the higher the chance it is going to dry your skin."

That goes for baths too, he said.

But let us not speak of the bath people.

There's a bonus to taking Dr. Goldenberg's advice: Short, cooler showers are kinder to the environment - as is capturing the water that's being wasted while you wait for it to heat up, said Mary Ann Dickinson, president of the Alliance for Water Efficiency. "There are products on the market to help people time their showers and to capture water," she said.

The alliance's water calculator can help you evaluate your water use.

While there's no intrinsic environmental benefit to showering in the morning or at night, some electricity providers like Con Edison in New York have reduced rates for night use. "If water is heated using electricity, there could be opportunity for lower electricity bills," Ms. Dickinson said.

Does the timing matter for cleanliness?

Dr. Goldenberg says that for most people, there's nothing inherently wrong with showering in the morning, at night or both.

But he knocked fans of night showers down a peg: We're not keeping our sheets as fresh as we think we are.

"Humans tend to perspire at night," Dr. Goldenberg said. "When you wake up in the morning, there's all this sweat and bacteria from the sheets that's just kind of sitting there on your skin."

So take a quick shower in the morning, he said, "to wash all of that gunk and sweat off that you've been sleeping in all night."

Not to mention, he added, that a lot of people are intimate at night. "There are so many reasons to shower in the morning," he said.

Dr. Goldenberg also stressed that most people don't need to use "real soap," like Dial or Lever 2000. A gentle, fragrance-free cleanser is best, he said.

And while some people, particularly those with shorter tresses, wash their hair daily to keep it from standing on end, there's no need to do so unless you have a particularly oily scalp, Dr. Goldenberg said.

If you have allergies or sensitive skin, or are concerned about the quality of your water, you may want to have it tested, said Phil Kraus, of Fred Smith Plumbing in New York. For example, New York City adds "quite a bit" of chlorine, an irritant, to its tap water, he said.

Why not the best of both worlds? (Or neither?)

One possible compromise: showering twice a day.

Caroline Bottger, a content marketing manager from New York, says that while she usually showers in the morning, she will sometimes shower twice, a decision influenced by her father, who grew up in the tropics and had that habit.

Doing so twice a day is generally fine for your skin and scalp, Dr. Goldenberg said, as long as both showers are quick and you don't have severe eczema or dermatitis.

If you go to the gym after work or if you work outside, "obviously you want to shower before you go to bed because there's a lot of sweat - bacteria can cause acne," he said. "And it stinks."

Heath Williams, an associate marketing director from Brooklyn, regularly showers twice a day, a habit he developed after college, when he was a schoolteacher.

"So many germs are floating around schools, and you're on feet moving around all day, so a shower after felt like a necessity," he said.

And for those contrarians, there's also a case for showering midday. If you live in an apartment building where the water temperature fluctuates wildly, you might benefit from showering at off-peak hours, said Mr. Kraus, the plumber.

I must confess, begrudgingly, that all this information may sway me to add a quick morning rinse to my routine. My reasoning about clean sheets and efficiency may not hold up to expert scrutiny. But one thing's for sure: Working in a big city and touching more surfaces every day than I care to remember, I will always shower before bed. Can't disappoint my mom, after all.

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Should You Shower in the Morning, or at Night? Yes

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"Everybody in my house showered in the morning," said Nate Martins, a writer from San Francisco. After the water heated up, "we'd all stack up like dominoes," he said. "Washing the sleep off, that's something that I still do," he said - much to the chagrin of his wife, Natalie, who's a steadfast night showerer.

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But these efforts don't touch the underlying problems, and in fact could make it harder for start-ups to compete with the giants.

If we're really serious about changing how social networks operate, far more radical interventions are required. Here are three possible ways to rescue social media from the market-based pressures that got us here.

Give Power to the People

In their book " New Power," which comes out next week, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms write about the struggle between centralized, top-down institutions, which represent "old power," and decentralized, bottom-up movements, which represent "new power."

Facebook, they write, is an example of a new power institution that serves old power interests. It harvests the creative output of billions of people and turns it into a giant, centralized enterprise, with most users sharing none of the economic value they create and getting no say in the platform's governance.

Instead, the authors ask, what if a social network was truly run by its users?

"If you're contributing economic value to something of this much social consequence, you should share in the value you're creating," Mr. Heimans told me.

Nathan Schneider, a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado, had a similar idea in 2016, when he proposed that Twitter users band together to buy the platform from its shareholders and convert it into a user-run collective, similar to the way a local credit union is run. People who made valuable contributions to the network, such as employees and power users, would receive bigger stakes and more voting power. And users would have a seat at the table for major decisions about the platform's operations.

It's exceedingly unlikely that Mark Zuckerberg, who has fought hard to keep control of Facebook, will ever convert the company into a user-owned and run collective. But Mr. Schneider believes that giving more control to responsible users could help restore trust in the network, and signal the kind of values Mr. Zuckerberg says he wants Facebook to represent.

"He could show that he takes democracy seriously enough to start with his own baby," Mr. Schneider said.

Create a Social Federation

Another radical approach would be to make social networks work more like email - so that independent apps could seamlessly work together with one another, across a common protocol.

Instead of one big Facebook, a federated social network would look like clusters of independent nodes - Mombook and Athletebook and Gamerbook - all of which could be plugged into the umbrella network when it made sense. Rather than requiring a one-size-fits-all set of policies that apply to billions of users, these nodes could be designed to reflect users' priorities. (A network for privacy hawks and one for open-sharing maximalists could have different data-retention rules, and a network for L.G.B.T. users and one for evangelical pastors could have different hate speech rules.) If a node became too toxic, it could be removed without shutting down the entire network.

"Email is the most resilient social network on the internet," Mr. Schneider said, "and the thing that allows it to adapt is that it's an open protocol, and people build apps on top of it, and we evolve how we use it."

Versions of this kind of network already exist. Mastodon, a decentralized Twitter-like social network, has gotten more than a million registered users since its debut in 2016. And various social networks based on the blockchain - the ledger system that underlies virtual currencies like Bitcoin - have sprung up in recent months.

To be sure, decentralized networks have their own problems. They're messy to administer, and they can still be gamed by bad actors. They can also fall prey to the same kind of privacy issues that Facebook is being criticized for. (In fact, part of the reason users are angry at Facebook right now is that the company's data infrastructure was too open, and made it overly simple for third-party app developers to take user information outside Facebook.)

None of this is a panacea. But experimenting with more decentralized models could give social media users a sense that platforms represented their interests, rather than those of a faceless corporation.

Put Expiration Dates on Social Graphs

A single friend of mine once remarked that the major difference among dating apps like OKCupid, Tinder and Bumble wasn't the way they were designed or the companies behind them - it was how long they had existed.

New apps, she said, were more likely to attract interesting and smart people who were actually looking for dates. Older apps, by contrast, were eventually overrun with creeps and predators, no matter how well built they were.

A similar theory might apply to social networks. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat all had plenty of issues in their early years, but they were by and large cleaner, with fewer types of exploitation and malicious behavior. Today, the enormous size and influence of these platforms have made them irresistible honey pots for bad actors, and many of our "social graphs" - Facebook's term for the webs of digital connections we create - are clogged with years' worth of clutter.

In a blog post last year, the venture capitalist Hunter Walk proposed an interesting idea: a legally mandated "start over" button that, when pressed, would allow users of social networks to delete all their data, clear out their feeds and friend lists, and begin with a fresh account.

I'd go even further, and suggest that social networks give their users an automatic "self-cleaning" option, which would regularly clear their profiles of apps they no longer used, friendships and followers they no longer interacted with, and data they no longer needed to store. If these tools were enabled, users would need to take affirmative action if they didn't want their information to disappear after a certain number of months or years.

Making social graphs temporary, rather than preserving them forever by default, would undoubtedly be bad for most social networks' business models. But it could create new and healthy norms around privacy and data hygiene, and it would keep problems from piling up as networks get older and more crowded. It might even recapture some of the magic of the original social networks, when things were fresh and fascinating, and not quite so scary.

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But these efforts don't touch the underlying problems, and in fact could make it harder for start-ups to compete with the giants. If we're really serious about changing how social networks operate, far more radical interventions are required. Here are three possible ways to rescue social media from the market-based pressures that got us here.

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NDONGA, Central African Republic - This remote village doesn't have an official school, and there's no functioning government to build one. So the villagers, desperate to improve their children's lives, used branches and leaves to construct their own dirt-floor schoolhouse.

It has no electricity, windows or desks, and it doesn't keep out rain or beetles, but it does imbue hope, discipline and dreams. The 90 pupils sitting on bamboo benches could tutor world leaders about the importance of education - even if the kids struggle with the most basic challenges.

"It's hard to learn without a paper or pen," Bertrand Golbé, a parent who turned himself into a teacher, acknowledged with a laugh. "But this is the way we have to do it.

"They never have had breakfast when they arrive," Golbé added. "They're hungry. It's difficult."

Yet the students do learn, here in one of the poorest countries in the world: They spoke French with me, and some were doing real geometry when I happened to drop in. One student, Doria Seleyanca, 13, said that his father had been killed in the warfare that has engulfed Central African Republic for 14 years, and his family doesn't have much. "I eat one meal a day," he explained stoically.

Doria said he wanted to grow up to be a teacher - and he knew that an education was the only ticket to a better life.

I'm on my annual win-a-trip journey, in which I take a university student with me on a reporting trip. My winner, Tyler Pager of Northwestern and Oxford Universities, has been visiting schools with me here in the Central African Republic - and they underscore the need for a new global focus on schooling.

"Tragically, aid to education has been falling since 2010," says Julia Gillard, a former Australian prime minister who now leads the Global Partnership for Education, an international effort to support schooling in poor countries.

The United States talks a good game about global education, but it has never made a huge commitment. President Barack Obama promised as a candidate to start a $2 billion global education fund, but nothing more was heard about it. As for President Trump, he actually wants to slash aid, although Congress boosted support for the Global Partnership.

The U.S. has invested enormously in the military toolbox to reshape the world, but it has systematically underinvested in the education toolbox. The trade-offs are substantial: For the cost of deploying one U.S. soldier abroad for a year, we can start at least 20 schools.

The paradox is that education has been a huge global success. Until the 1960s, a majority of humanity had always been illiterate; now, fewer than 15 percent of adults worldwide are.

But now we've run into something of a global crisis: 60 million elementary school-age children remain out of school, and tens of millions more go to school but don't learn a thing. That's because schools in poor countries frequently are abysmal, suffering from corruption and inefficiency. Teachers routinely don't show up - and are paid anyway - or are only barely literate themselves. Progress can't involve simply pouring more money into broken systems.

The World Bank found that only 0.3 percent of teachers in Mozambique have the minimum knowledge needed to teach, along with 0.1 percent of teachers in Madagascar. In Niger, it's just plain 0 percent.

In dysfunctional schools, students don't learn. In Uganda, only 10 percent of fourth graders can read a simple paragraph, the World Bank says. In Mozambique, fewer than half can add single-digit numbers. And in South Sudan, a girl is more likely to die in childbirth than to graduate from high school.

Yet done right, education can be transformative. The evidence suggests that it reduces extremism, empowers women, and promotes development; for the same reason terrorists blow up schools, we should build them.

Education is also a bargain: By my back-of-envelope calculations, for about one-half of 1 percent of global military spending, the world could vanquish illiteracy forever by ensuring that every child completes primary school.

If schools are often dreadful, the students are heroic. In the town of Boda, in a junior high school with 700 students and two functioning classrooms, we met an orphan named Lionelle Ngombe.

Lionelle had missed a year of school when she couldn't pay fees. Then the Catholic Church gave her a few dollars to start a "small business." So now every day, Lionelle sells peanuts in the street when she is not in school, to raise money for her school fees. Last year a teacher offered her money and good grades if she would sleep with him - but she refused and he backed off.

"I don't know if I can stay in school," she said gamely, "but I will try."

As world leaders drop the ball, Lionelle could teach them something basic: The best leverage we have to change the world is education.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: These Kids Could Tutor World Leaders. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opinion | These Kids Could Tutor World Leaders

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NDONGA, Central African Republic - This remote village doesn't have an official school, and there's no functioning government to build one. So the villagers, desperate to improve their children's lives, used branches and leaves to construct their own dirt-floor schoolhouse.

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PARKLAND, Fla. - My first interaction with Nikolas Cruz happened when I was in seventh grade. I was eating lunch with my friends, most likely discussing One Direction or Ed Sheeran, when I felt a sudden pain in my lower back. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of my 90-pound body; tears stung my eyes. I turned around and saw him, smirking. I had never seen this boy before, but I would never forget his face. His eyes were lit up with a sick, twisted joy as he watched me cry.

The apple that he had thrown at my back rolled slowly along the tiled floor. A cafeteria aide rushed over to ask me if I was O.K. I don't remember if Mr. Cruz was confronted over his actions, but in my 12-year-old naïveté, I trusted that the adults around me would take care of the situation.

Five years later, hiding in a dark closet inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, I would discover just how wrong I was.

I am not writing this piece to malign Nikolas Cruz any more than he already has been. I have faith that history will condemn him for his crimes. I am writing this because of the disturbing number of comments I've read that go something like this: Maybe if Mr. Cruz's classmates and peers had been a little nicer to him, the shooting at Stoneman Douglas would never have occurred.

This deeply dangerous sentiment, expressed under the #WalkUpNotOut hashtag, implies that acts of school violence can be prevented if students befriend disturbed and potentially dangerous classmates. The idea that we are to blame, even implicitly, for the murders of our friends and teachers is a slap in the face to all Stoneman Douglas victims and survivors.

A year after I was assaulted by Mr. Cruz, I was assigned to tutor him through my school's peer counseling program. Being a peer counselor was the first real responsibility I had ever had, my first glimpse of adulthood, and I took it very seriously.

Despite my discomfort, I sat down with him, alone. I was forced to endure his cursing me out and ogling my chest until the hourlong session ended. When I was done, I felt a surge of pride for having organized his binder and helped him with his homework.

Looking back, I am horrified. I now understand that I was left, unassisted, with a student who had a known history of rage and brutality.

Like many pre-teenage and teenage girls, I possessed - and still, to an extent, possess - a strong desire to please. I strive to win the praise of the adults in my life and long to be seen as mature beyond my years. I would have done almost anything to win the approval of my teachers.

This is not to say that children should reject their more socially awkward or isolated peers - not at all. As a former peer counselor and current teacher's assistant, I strongly believe in and have seen the benefits of reaching out to those who need kindness most.

But students should not be expected to cure the ills of our genuinely troubled classmates, or even our friends, because we first and foremost go to school to learn. The implication that Mr. Cruz's mental health problems could have been solved if only he had been loved more by his fellow students is both a gross misunderstanding of how these diseases work and a dangerous suggestion that puts children on the front line.

It is not the obligation of children to befriend classmates who have demonstrated aggressive, unpredictable or violent tendencies. It is the responsibility of the school administration and guidance department to seek out those students and get them the help that they need, even if it is extremely specialized attention that cannot be provided at the same institution.

No amount of kindness or compassion alone would have changed the person that Nikolas Cruz is and was, or the horrendous actions he perpetrated. That is a weak excuse for the failures of our school system, our government and our gun laws.

My little sister is now the age that I was when I was left alone with Mr. Cruz, anxious and defenseless. The thought of her being put in the same situation that I was fills me with rage. I hope that she will never know the fear that I have become so accustomed to in the past month: The slightest unexpected sound makes my throat constrict and my neck hairs curl. I beg her to trust her gut whenever she feels unsafe. And I demand that the adults in her life protect her.

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Opinion | I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends.

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PARKLAND, Fla. - My first interaction with Nikolas Cruz happened when I was in seventh grade. I was eating lunch with my friends, most likely discussing One Direction or Ed Sheeran, when I felt a sudden pain in my lower back. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of my 90-pound body; tears stung my eyes.

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I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends.  

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Opinion | Why conservatives are so mad about the Parkland students - The Washington Post

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Once again, those on the right are crying that they're the real victims.

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Opinion | Why conservatives are so mad about the Parkland students - The Washington Post

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A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains - The Washington Post

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The reaction to the March for Our Lives is exposing the starkly different ways the nation sees the Parkland students.

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A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains - The Washington Post

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"Look at this."

My friend stuck her phone under my nose. On it was a picture on Instagram of a couple we both know, a photo of one of them pursing her lips over a frothy cocktail in a dim bar, flash on. Underneath, the caption said something like, "Weekly Love Post #72: Fancy cocktails with bae #mygirlfriendisbetterthanyours #weekiversary #sorryshestaken."

"Blagahh," I said, doing my best vomiting noise and pushing the phone away. My friend cackled, delighted by how quickly she was able to irritate me. This couple celebrates their "weekiversary" every week, without skipping. Ever. They have been doing it for 72 weeks, which is about 17 months, which is nearly one and a half years. Make it stop.

It is so early in this couple's relationship and I'm already exhausted. So are most of our mutual friends. The responses on their weekiversary posts have dropped from dozens of "You two!!" and "Cutest couple ahhhhh!!" comments in the early days of their relationship to just a single comment from one of their moms. A lone tumbleweed of a comment, rolling through the dusty, echoing canyons of Shut Up You Guys National Park.

The members of this couple are nice in real life, and they are in love, and that is wonderful, but they are terrors on social media. The weekiversary posts are just the tip of the frozen-barf iceberg. There are also close, glistening photos of their home-cooked nightly dinners (kissy face #shesakeeper). There are unrelenting, near identical pictures of one of them napping next to a cat (heart-eyes #allmine). The content is nauseating and compelling; an endless highlight reel of two people who are strangely uninterested in keeping private, small joys in their relationship private.

And it's not just them. I have coupled friends who post daily #whyiloveher pictures with paragraphs dedicated only to their partner (and their 2,000 followers), plus 15 hashtags underneath all that. I know friends in relationships who turn staying in and ordering pizza into a whole thing. It's not just ordering pizza, it's OMG best boyfriend ever!!<3<3 Pizza Date Night! Happy Tuesday babe I love you sooo much I couldn't imagine my life without you! #soinlove.

It creeps me out. Why do people perform their relationships online? Who is it for? I don't understand the point of regularly writing deeply personal declarations of love, even if it's platonic friendship love, for thousands of strangers to see. Do people do it to mark territory? To make their person feel good? To show others that someone is worthy of love, but - hold up - you've already chosen them?

Our real lives and online lives are merging; they're starting to feel indistinguishable. Even regular, noncelebrity people cultivate their own brands. Is a relationship real if it's not flaunted on Instagram? Is the new definition of a commitment-phobe someone who chooses to keep relationships offline?

Then I'm a commitment-phobe. Daily love posts make me want to throw my phone in the street. Public-proposal videos cause me to cover my head and emit feral howling noises. If you have to keep reminding everyone of how happy you are, something's not right. Happy people don't need to announce over and over how happy they are. Happy people just ... are. Your friends? They know when you're in a healthy and loving relationship just by seeing you and knowing you. You don't need to declare it every time you go online. These constant #relationshipgoals posts doth protest too much.

I get especially weirded out by people who seem interested in cultivating "fans" of their relationship. While it's cute and flattering to have people make comments like "y'all are goals" and "adopt me" on a picture of you and your lover, I think it creates social pressure to stay in relationships that might actually be unhealthy. One of my good friends stayed with her evil ex for more than a year after she knew she needed to leave, worrying about "letting people down."

She had relationship fans. Lots of them.

"I just feel so stupid," she told me, in tears. "Everyone thinks we're perfect. I don't want to disappoint people."

Let's take a step back from that. As my mom would say, "Turn the spotlight off, honey." Your relationship and/or breakup is not part of the public domain, unless you invite and encourage that. No couple is perfect, and no one knows the private things that happen between the well-edited photos you've posted with good lighting on vacation days with your partner. All couples are a mess sometimes. How weird is it to encourage people to envy you as you play the role of someone in a happy relationship?

Look, I'm not a monster. I feel happy and excited when my friends are in loving partnerships. I'm in one, too! And it's great! I don't hate all cutesy posts about partners; a few here and there make me coo out loud when I'm lying on the couch scrolling through my social media feeds. "Awww," I'll say to the empty room. "Look at them." And I will tap that "like" button with genuine feeling and search through my emojis for just the right sparkly pink heart and gay rainbow and flame icon.

I love love. Just not, you know, every single time I unlock my phone.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR3 of the New York edition with the headline: Are You Really In Love if It's Not on Instagram?. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opinion | Are You Really in Love if It's Not on Instagram?

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"Look at this." My friend stuck her phone under my nose. On it was a picture on Instagram of a couple we both know, a photo of one of them pursing her lips over a frothy cocktail in a dim bar, flash on.

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Are You Really in Love if It’s Not on Instagram?  

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This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive the newsletter each weekday.
"My kids cried for three weeks, every class, every day," said Alexandra Price, an English teacher from Western High School in Davie, Fla., who spoke to the two of us at Saturday's march in Washington. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, she said, is "like our sister school. We play them in sports." Price wants to see the minimum age to buy a gun raised to 21, and she also wants to see bump stocks banned.

Michaela Kirvan, a senior who helped organize a walkout at her all-girls Catholic high school in Washington, said that she sees gun control as a pro-life issue. "Saying that you're pro-life means protecting life through all of its forms and all of its stages," she said. "It's a living, breathing human being that's being targeted."

Sharon Burns is a former Army combat medic from North Carolina whose 22-year-old son committed suicide in 2009 with a gun she owned. She understands that the Second Amendment is enshrined in the Constitution but, as she points out, it includes the word, regulated. "Everybody needs to go through a background check."

Mark Soukup, a 61-year-old former member of the National Rifle Association from Gap Mills, W. Va., uses a gun to hunt. "Guns do have a place, but they're efficient killing machines," Soukup told us. "I shouldn't be able to use my guns until I've passed some kind of test that proves I'm a responsible gun owner. I'm plenty willing to do that. Whatever it takes, really, to save people's lives."

Katie Graham is a high school senior from Columbus, Ohio, whose 17-year-old friend was shot and killed last year. "I've never been to any kind of rally or march before," Graham said. "If we want change, we have to make it happen. And this is us making it happen."

Keyona Smith, a junior at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, who wore a Black Lives Matter button to the march, said simply: "I just want a solution. Whatever it takes to get a solution."

If you haven't read this op-ed in The Times by Steve Israel, a former member of Congress, please do. He makes a crucial point: The solution that the marchers want almost certainly depends on winning elections.

The college-graduation gap. "Even as the college-attendance gap between rich and poor has shrunk, the gap in the number of rich and poor college graduates has grown. That shouldn't be happening." There's more - including a chart that may tell the story better than any words can - here.

This column is based on a new study, which unlike some others focuses on wealth (an individual's assets minus debts) rather than income. It's important to look at both, but a lot of social-science research ends up focusing on income, because it's often easier to study.

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This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive the newsletter each weekday. "My kids cried for three weeks, every class, every day," said Alexandra Price, an English teacher from Western High School in Davie, Fla., who spoke to the two of us at Saturday's march in Washington.

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Aerial video captured seas of people - in front of Trump International Hotel in New York; in a central square in Tokyo; along the streets of Boston; at a rally in downtown Fort Worth, Tex.; and crammed into a park less than a mile from Stoneman Douglas High.

Delivered in soaring speeches, emotional chants and hand-painted signs, the protesters' messages offered angry rebukes to the National Rifle Association and politicians who have left gun laws largely intact for decades. A sign in Washington declared "Graduations, not funerals!" while another in New York said "I should be learning, not protesting." Crowds in Chicago chanted "Fear has no place in our schools" as they marched.

Celebrities, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, the "Hamilton" star, and the pop singers Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus, performed in Washington, where politicians and adult activists were largely sidelined in favor of the fresh-faced students offering stories of fear and frustration, but also hope for change.

The most powerful, and impassioned, moments came from the surviving students of the Parkland shooting, who declared themselves angry, impatient and determined to stop the slaughter.

"Today, we march," Ms. Tarr said. "We fight. We roar. We prepare our signs. We raise them high. We know what we want, we know how to get it and we are not waiting any more."

An 11-year-old girl from Virginia, Naomi Wadler, captivated her audience as she declared "Never again!" on behalf of black women and girls who have been the victims of gun violence.

Calls like Naomi's stood in stark contrast to action on Capitol Hill and at the White House in the hours before the rallies. President Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that took no significant new steps on gun control: It did nothing to expand background checks, impose additional limits on assault weapons, require a higher age for rifle purchases or curb the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines.

The spending legislation, which was viewed as the last opportunity this year for Congress to enact major new gun restrictions before the midterm elections in November, included only some school safety measures and modest improvements to the background check system.

Organizers at national gun control groups, who provided logistical support and public relations advice as the students planned the Washington rally, said they believed that the students would not become disillusioned by the lack of immediate action in Congress. They noted that rallies took place in 390 of the country's 435 congressional districts.

"The mass shooting generation is nearing voting age," said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a national group that advocates tougher gun laws. "They know the midterms are six months away, and they plan to make sure that they vote and they get others to register to vote. They are absolutely poised to turn this moment into a movement."

Gun rights organizations largely stayed silent on Saturday, following vigorous efforts since the Parkland shooting to squash any movement toward significant gun control legislation. A spokesman for the N.R.A. declined repeated requests for comment.

On the eve of the march, Colion Noir, a host on NRATV, an online video channel produced by the gun group, lashed out at the Parkland students, saying that "no one would know your names" if someone with a weapon had stopped the gunman at their school.

"These kids ought to be marching against their own hypocritical belief structures," he said in the video, adding: "The only reason we've ever heard of them is because the guns didn't come soon enough."

Small counterprotests took place in a few cities. In Salt Lake City, several hundred people gathered near a high school, some carrying signs with messages like "AR-15's EMPOWER the people." Brandon McKee, who wore a pistol on his belt, brought his daughter, Kendall, 11, who held a sign that said "Criminals love gun control."

"I believe it's their goal to unarm America, and that's why we're here today," Mr. McKee said of the Washington marchers. In Boston, about 20 protesters favoring gun control confronted a small clutch of Second Amendment supporters in front of the State House. The two sides quickly got into a shouting match.

The pro-gun protests were swamped in size and enthusiasm by those marching for gun control, many of whom traveled for many hours to attend the rallies in cities across the country. Sebastian Jennings, 18, said he spent 36 hours taking a bus to Washington from western Arkansas. Tour buses lined the streets.

Security was tight in Washington, where military trucks and guards blocked almost every intersection near the rally amid a huge police presence, and in other cities where marches and rallies forced the closing of major roads.

In towns like Dahlonega, Ga., smaller rallies sought to demonstrate a desire for new gun restrictions even in rural, Republican-leaning communities where gun ownership is common and support for the Second Amendment is strong.

"We're going to be the generation that takes down the gun lobby," Marisa Pyle, 20, said through a red megaphone to a group of several hundred people gathered in front of the Dahlonega Gold Museum.

Around the world, Americans living abroad gathered to honor those who have died in school shootings and to echo the call for gun control.

Protesters in Rome jammed the sidewalk across from the American Embassy, next to the upscale Via Veneto, raising their voice in chants - "Hey hey, ho ho, the N.R.A. has got to go," and waving signs with messages like "A gun is not fun" and "Am I next?" many made by high school students at an international school.

About 150 to 200 people in Berlin gathered in solidarity in front of the Brandenburg Gate, just steps from the American Embassy. Many carried hand-painted signs, among them: "Arms should be for hugging," "Bullets aren't school supplies" and "Waffeln statt Waffen" (Waffles instead of weapons).

One of the largest rallies outside Washington was at a Florida park not far from Stoneman Douglas High School. During that event, 17 students from the school silently took the stage to represent their friends who had been killed.

Anthony Montalto, the brother of Gina Rose Montalto, one of those killed, held a sign that said: "My sister could not make it here today. I'm here for her."

"Turn this moment into a movement," Sari Kaufman, a sophomore at Stoneman Douglas, implored the sea of students, parents and teachers. She urged her classmates to vote out of office politicians who receive money from the N.R.A. "They think we're all talk and no action."

But the largest rally, by far, was in Washington, where stage risers and giant television monitors were set up in the shadow of the Capitol - the focus of much of the anger from students throughout the day.

One protester carried a sign that said "If the opposite of pro is con, then the opposite of progress is Congress."

Most Republican and Democratic members of Congress had already left the city to return to their home districts for spring break. Mr. Trump spent Saturday afternoon in Florida, at the Trump International Golf Club, less than an hour north of Parkland. A White House spokeswoman said in a statement, "We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today."

City officials had prepared for the biggest march since about a half-million women gathered on the day after Mr. Trump's inauguration, declaring a new political movement aimed at resisting the president and his policies.

On Saturday, officials with Metro, the region's subway system, said more than 207,000 rides had been taken on the system by 1 p.m., about half of the number by that time during the Women's March.

A team of crowd science researchers led by G. Keith Still of Manchester Metropolitan University in England estimated that about 180,000 people attended the rally. They examined photographs, video and satellite imagery to estimate the crowd density in different areas of the demonstration. The number is less than half of the 470,000 that Dr. Still estimated had attended the Women's March in Washington in 2017.

Even so, the streets of Washington were packed on Saturday. Teenagers climbed on each other's shoulders to reach the bare limbs of trees, where they climbed higher. And each student who spoke drew a cheer that matched, and even eclipsed, the applause given to the musical performers.

Edna Chavez, 17, a high school senior from Los Angeles, said she had lost her brother to gun violence: "He was in high school when he passed away. It was a day like any other day. Sunset down on South Central. You hear pops, thinking they're fireworks."

"Ricardo was his name. Can you all say it with me?" she asked. The crowd said his name over and over again, as Ms. Chavez smiled through tears.

Naomi Wadler, the 11-year-old student, introduced herself with a soft "hi" and said she represented the black women who have been victims of gun violence.

"People have said that I am too young to have these thoughts on my own," she said. "People have said that I am a tool of some nameless adult. It's not true. My friends and I might still be 11, and we might still be in elementary school, but we know."

She added, "And we know that we have seven short years until we, too, have the right to vote."

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Students Lead Huge Rallies for Gun Control Across the U.S.

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Aerial video captured seas of people - in front of Trump International Hotel in New York; in a central square in Tokyo; along the streets of Boston; at a rally in downtown Fort Worth, Tex.; and crammed into a park less than a mile from Stoneman Douglas High.

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Students Lead Huge Rallies for Gun Control Across the U.S.  

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While millions of Americans found this weekend's nationwide marches for gun control inspiring, many others are giving them a skeptical eye - and not just Second Amendment advocates. How could a bunch of teenagers have the wherewithal to make change in America's deadlocked politics? After all, they're just kids.

Older people have long grumbled about the young in politics, dismissing them as "baby politicians" or "beardless boys" in the early years of this country. But when American politics were at their darkest, in the late 19th century, it was young people who broke a partisan divide and helped save democracy. Maybe they can do it again.

Democracy, as a rule, has a labor problem. Someone has to do the hard, unpaid work of persuading millions of citizens to participate. For much of our history, enthusiastic young people did that labor for free. Even today, visit any campaign headquarters and you will find a sea of youthful volunteers phone-banking and poster-making. But while young people have long done an outsize portion of the political work, they were rarely allowed to pick the issues politics addressed.

It was only when adult politicians seemed stalled and issueless that a generation of young people stepped up to lead.

For much of the first century of American politics, young people operated as unpaid foot soldiers of partisan political armies. In a popular, loud, dirty system there was plenty of unglamorous work to be done. For every enormous rally or rowdy election, there were people still too young to vote working behind the scenes, handing out ballots and emptying spittoons, toasting allies' speeches and cracking rivals' skulls.

The one thing young people were not supposed to do, for much of the 1800s, was to champion themselves. They were referred to as "generous and unsophisticated" - worker bees to be directed by the older and wiser. As one 16-year-old antislavery activist in Maine complained, when he tried to talk politics with voters many laughed at his "childish enthusiasm and coolly reminded me that I was a boy."

Even among youthful activists, many felt conflicted about whether they should "originate opinions" or merely carry them out. Young men and women were raised to revere their democracy, did they really have a right to guide it yet? During an 1831 rally against what they called the "slimy mark" President Andrew Jackson was leaving on the country, young men in Baltimore nonetheless worried that they were "overstepping the modesty which befits our age."

When young men and women did play a role in their nation's politics, it was often over the resistance of older Americans. When young African-Americans in Philadelphia in 1838 fought to keep black Pennsylvanians' right to vote, they had to justify themselves even to their own community. Dismissed as "inexperienced, hasty, immature" by their elders, young black Philadelphians published newspaper statements directed at the city's black elite, announcing " we will not be put down."

This was an age that could not afford to "put down" the young. Over the second half of the 1800s, American politics darkened. The succession of Civil War, Reconstruction and the Gilded Age was marked by bitter partisanship, endemic corruption, appalling violence and a general sense that democracy was failing. Adults seemed to be stuck, recycling the same partisan issues over and over.

And they insisted that the young follow their lead. As an established Minnesota politico told one rising 25-year-old: Don't think, just follow the party's platform, just "swallow it down."

But in the final years of the 19th century, a sudden burst of young people demanded new issues - their issues. Tired of, as one Coloradan put it, "rotten old hulks who monopolize the offices and dwell upon the past," a generation of young men and women denounced their leaders and with them, partisanship. They demanded political reform, labor reform and social reform, and declared that they would withhold their votes from any party that didn't respond. "The ratio of party feeling and self-interest is rapidly changing," declared one sharp-tongued New Yorker in 1898, adding that "the younger generation hates both parties equally."

Politicians saw the change and chased after those young voters. Soon, The Washington Post was begging: "Don't sneer at them as 'boys,' when they drop into your ward meetings, don't make them do all the work of the campaign."

In the new century, young people's "self interest" helped kill extreme polarization by forcing both parties to pursue the same set of demands. Youthful independent voters emerged as a decisive third force, with just enough influence to swing close elections. Politicians scrambled after them, beginning the Progressive Era, passing laws protecting workers, cleaning up cities and championing the young.

Women played a key role in this shift. Because they could not vote, they were less corrupted by partisanship. Women in their 20s worked to refocus American public life toward social concerns. They built schools - nearly one a day between 1890 and 1920 - and fought child labor. The aggressive crusader Florence Kelley wrote that protecting young people is "the noblest duty of the Republic," an act of "self preservation" that enables the next generation to champion itself.

This is the key to understanding youth politics. Young people cannot be truly selfish, because they cannot be permanently young. Youth is temporary, its gains are passed on. In the late 19th century, young people built institutions that helped protect 20th-century young people. The high school seniors marching over the weekend will hopefully make their schools safer well after they have graduated. If anyone should be choosing the issues in politics, it should be the young, for they "have a longer future to provide for."

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Opinion | Can Teenagers Save America? They've Done It Before

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While millions of Americans found this weekend's nationwide marches for gun control inspiring, many others are giving them a skeptical eye - and not just Second Amendment advocates. How could a bunch of teenagers have the wherewithal to make change in America's deadlocked politics? After all, they're just kids.

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Can Teenagers Save America? They’ve Done It Before  

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When Paul Kugelman was a kid, he had no shortage of friends. But as he grew older and entered middle age, his social world narrowed.

"It was a very lonely time. I did go to work and I did have interactions at work, and I cherished those," he says. "But you know, at the end of the day it was just me."

Kugelman's story isn't unusual: researchers say it can be difficult for men to hold on to friendships as they age. And the problem may begin in adolescence.

New York University psychology professor Niobe Way, who has spent decades interviewing adolescent boys, points to the cultural messages boys get early on.

"These are human beings with unbelievable emotional and social capacity. And we as a culture just completely try to zip it out of them," she says.

This week on Hidden Brain, we look at what happens when half the population gets the message that needing others is a sign of weakness and that being vulnerable is unmanly.
Resources:
This episode refers to the Harvard Study of Adult Development, Niobe Way's book, Deep Secrets,and research on suicide rates and social interaction.
The Hidden Brain radio show is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Parth Shah, Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, and Matthew Schwartz. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain.

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Guys, We Have A Problem: How American Masculinity Creates Lonely Men

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When Paul Kugelman was a kid, he had no shortage of friends. But as he grew older and entered middle age, his social world narrowed. "It was a very lonely time. I did go to work and I did have interactions at work, and I cherished those," he says.

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It sounds like the beginning of an uncomfortable joke: Four brown kids of Pakistani descent - from Karachi, Dubai, London and Augusta, Ga. - walk into a Hooters on a recent Saturday afternoon.

They order cheese fries, mozzarella sticks and a plate of fried pickles that will later give the Londoner (me) a wild bout of indigestion. Waitresses in the company's trademark orange shorts flit about, taking orders and smiling at families with children. Burly men in baseball caps clink pints of gold libation. Football plays on one flat screen TV, but is muted for the golf tournament that plays on another.

In truth, this expedition wasn't a joke, but more of a fascinating ethnographic adventure. My friends and I didn't plan on eating at Hooters initially. We go to Princeton, where two of us are international students, and that Saturday, we craved the spicy curries and fluffy flatbreads of our pre-college lives. A new biryani joint had opened up at a strip mall not far from campus, so we took an Uber over to check it out.

Across the parking lot, we spotted a branch of the famous restaurant chain, complete with a Hooters owl and a sign in the window that read: "Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined."

"Let's just go in for appetizers," one friend suggested, lingering by the entrance as she looked longingly at a hamburger through the glass. "We have to eat here at least once before we graduate. It's so American."

As children, we were reared on American TV: chick-flicks, Disney and coming-of-age dramas from the early 2000s. We knew all about Fourth of July barbecues and fireworks set off in red, white and blue. We wanted to see this world - the America of a country song.

Our afternoon at Hooters was, therefore, strangely rewarding. We marveled at the awkward dates, flannel shirts, frosty beer steins and greasy mozzarella sticks. John Denver played over the speakers. The atmosphere was flirtatious but also, paradoxically, mundane. This was quintessential America, we thought, straight out of the movies - a star-spangled feast for the senses. And we had found it mere miles away from our ivy-covered campus.

At Princeton, international students attend a separate orientation on acclimating to life in the United States. We were given logistical information and taught some cultural know-how, but the thing that stuck out most to me was a flowchart graphic that depicted the lulls and peaks of how we might experience the novelty of this country.

Those who are freshly arrived experience the highs of an initial honeymoon period, when everything from the Dunkin' Donuts in the dining hall to clothes dryers (not as common where I grew up) are inspiring and exciting. Then there are the lows of homesickness, when international students inevitably long for familiarity - and, in my case, samosas.

Adapting to life at Princeton was generally smooth for me. Aside from the standoffish immigration officers that stamp my passport with raised eyebrows, and East Coast winters that still do not agree with me, I am in a state of relative bliss in the United States, tucked between leather-bound stacks at the library, immersed in the luxury of reading and thinking. Of course, it's not like I live on an island divorced from reality. In today's political climate, my international friends and I are all constantly confronted by the harshness of the news cycle. As a young Muslim, as a non-American, I know that the comforts of a college campus like mine cannot be underestimated.

These are strange times we live in, but mostly, you wouldn't really know it from inside the academic bubble, and fortunately so. I love my campus - its pretty pathways lined with orange leaves in the fall, its creaky chairs and Gothic windows in the lecture rooms, its embrace of everything intellectual and of diversity. But that doesn't mean I don't want to see the America of loud Fourth of July parties, a country that, like Hooters, is both crass and, oddly, family-friendly.

Now when I want to get away from Locke or Voltaire, I know where to go. That afternoon at Hooters, slightly nauseated from the deep-fried pickles, I had one thought running through my mind: Here I am, finally. America.

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Opinion | Going to Hooters and Seeing America

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It sounds like the beginning of an uncomfortable joke: Four brown kids of Pakistani descent - from Karachi, Dubai, London and Augusta, Ga. - walk into a Hooters on a recent Saturday afternoon. They order cheese fries, mozzarella sticks and a plate of fried pickles that will later give the Londoner (me) a wild bout of indigestion.

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The N.C.A.A. is embroiled in scandal yet again. Last week, federal prosecutors charged several coaches, an agent and a sports apparel executive with, essentially, illegally profiting off branding opportunities for basketball players.

That shouldn't really surprise anyone. This scandal isn't truly about corrupt coaches and shoe salesmen. It's about the lengths to which the N.C.A.A. goes to control every dollar and branding opportunity associated with college athletics.

An illegal economy has operated behind high-level college athletics for a long time. Its root cause is that universities with powerhouse sports teams like U.C.L.A., Ohio State and Texas receive nearly $20 million a year from brands like Adidas or Nike, while the athletes wearing the Adidas or Nike apparel are expected to compete purely for the love of the game.

College basketball players are worth a lot of money, but they aren't legally allowed to make it. So the schools, coaches, agents and shoe companies make the money instead - all in the name of "amateurism."

It's clearly time to revise the rules of the N.C.A.A. in favor of the students. But as simply paying the players seems to be a non-starter, let's begin by reforming the association's bylaw that prevents college athletes from promoting any personal creative endeavor if they even mention that they participate in a sport.

Here's an example from Macalester College, where I am president. Our school is fortunate to have as a student a young man (whose name I can't mention) who has published a book (whose title I can't cite). The book has nothing whatsoever to do with athletics, but among his many activities at the college, he participates in an intercollegiate sport (which, of course, shall remain unspecified).

Most people not associated with the N.C.A.A. would consider this an impressive diversification of skills and interests. But N.C.A.A. bylaw 12.5.1.3, otherwise denoted as "Modeling and Other Nonathletically Related Promotional Activities," specifies that, in promoting the book, no reference can be made to the individual's "involvement in intercollegiate athletics."

What does this mean in practice? It means that the author's book biography cannot state that he participates in a college-level sport. It means that, in publicizing the book to students or alumni, the college cannot mention that the author is a student athlete. It even means that the student cannot mention the book on his Facebook page because his Facebook profile shows photos of him engaging in the unspecified sport.

Presumably this rule was written to prevent a college athlete, whether from a Division I sports juggernaut or a Division III college like Macalester, from making piles of money after revealing he is an intercollegiate athlete. The N.C.A.A. wants to prevent some Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback or some one-and-done power forward at the University of Kentucky from writing a book or modeling a sweater in order to profit from his collegiate athletic celebrity.

Of course, the reasonable response to this concern is: What's wrong with a person profiting from his own accomplishments and celebrity? Isn't that more or less the way it's supposed to work? But the N.C.A.A., not content with the billions in TV and merchandising revenue it already takes in, is determined to leave no spare change under the couch cushions.

Lest you think I exaggerate, look up the case of the two athletes at the University of Iowa who started a T-shirt screening business and were threatened with ineligibility by the N.C.A.A. because their website mentioned that they met because they were both - brace yourself - swimmers. Or the more recent case of a cross-country runner at Texas A&M who was threatened with ineligibility for posting a YouTube video about a water bottle company he started.

The most repugnant aspect of this N.C.A.A. rule is that it runs directly counter to the optimal American college education. We want students to have multiple interests, multiple facets to their personal and academic lives, and to explore openly how those various identities play out. We want a student athlete to think - and talk - about what it means to be an athlete and an author, or an athlete and an entrepreneur, or an athlete and an artist. But a student who designs and sells greeting cards and mentions on her Facebook page that she is a softball player risks losing her athletic eligibility. That is shameful. Bylaw 12.5.1.3 has got to go.

Given all of the stereotypes about student athletes as prizing sports over academics, one would think that the N.C.A.A. would be enthusiastic about opportunities to shatter those. But given the choice between doing so and inadvertently allowing an athlete to profit from even the most tangential connection to his or her own athletic efforts, the N.C.A.A. has decided to force students to disguise who they are.

For those few students who star in Division I, it is an invitation to enter into a sad but unsurprising underground economy. For Division III athletes, the hypocrisy is a dispiriting act of silencing. For anyone who cares about fairness, it is a disgrace.

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Opinion | How the N.C.A.A. Cheats Student Athletes

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The N.C.A.A. is embroiled in scandal yet again. Last week, federal prosecutors charged several coaches, an agent and a sports apparel executive with, essentially, illegally profiting off branding opportunities for basketball players. That shouldn't really surprise anyone. This scandal isn't truly about corrupt coaches and shoe salesmen.

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Sociologists who surveyed undergraduate syllabuses from 2004 and 2010 found that in 2004, 14 percent addressed issues related to classroom etiquette; six years later, that number had more than doubled, to 33 percent. This phenomenon crosses socio-economic lines. My colleagues at Stanford gripe as much as the ones who teach at state schools, and students from more privileged backgrounds are often the worst offenders.

Why are so many teachers bent out of shape because a student fails to call them "Professor" or neglects to proofread an email? Are academics really that insecure? Is this just another case of scapegoating millennials for changes in the broader culture?

Don't dismiss these calls for old-fashioned courtesy as a case of fragile ivory tower egos or misplaced nostalgia. There is a strong liberal case for using formal manners and titles to ensure respect for all university professionals, regardless of age, race or gender. More important, doing so helps defend the university's dearest values at a time when they are under continual assault.

It's true that the conventions that have, until recently, ruled higher education did not rule from time immemorial. Two centuries ago, students often rejected expectations of deference. In 1834, Harvard students rebelled when some of their classmates were punished for refusing to memorize their Latin textbook. They broke the windows of a teacher's apartment and destroyed his furniture. When the president of the college cracked down and suspended the entire sophomore class, the juniors retaliated by hanging and burning him in effigy and setting off a rudimentary explosive in the campus chapel.

Later in the 19th century, etiquette manuals proliferated in bookstores, and Americans began to emphasize elaborate social protocols. As colleges expanded and academic disciplines professionalized, they mimicked the hierarchical cultures of the German research universities, where students cowered before "Herr Professor Doktor."

The historian John Kasson has noted that back then, formal etiquette was not aimed at ensuring respect for all. It was, in part, a system to enforce boundaries of race, class and gender at a time when the growth of cities and mass transit forced Americans into close quarters with strangers. Codes of behavior served "as checks against a fully democratic order and in support of special interests, institutions of privilege and structures of domination," he writes in his book "Rudeness and Civility. "

But today, on the other side of the civil rights revolution, formal titles and etiquette can be tools to protect disempowered minorities and ensure that the modern university belongs to all of us. Students seem more inclined to use casual forms of address with professors who are young, nonwhite and female - some of whom have responded by becoming vocal defenders of old-fashioned propriety.

Angela Jackson-Brown, a professor of English at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., told me that "most of my students will acknowledge that I'm the first and only black teacher they've ever had." Insisting on her formal title is important, she said: "I feel the extra burden of having to go in from Day 1 and establish that I belong here."

When Professor Jackson-Brown began teaching in the 1990s, most students respected her authority. But in recent years, that deference has waned (she blames the informality of social media). "I go out of my way now to not give them access to my first name," she said. "On every syllabus, it states clearly: 'Please address me as Professor Jackson-Brown.' "

She linked this policy to the atmosphere of mutual respect that she cultivates in her classes. These days, simply being considerate can feel like a political act. "After this recent election, I've had several female students come to me and say, 'I'm noticing differences in how men are treating me.' It's heartbreaking," she said. "We're trying to set standards for them that they may not see outside the classroom, places where you'd think there would be decorum."

This logic resonates with some students. "Having these titles forces everyone to give that respect," Lyndah Lovell, a graduating senior at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., said. "They know they have to use these manners with everyone. Even if the underlying thoughts of prejudice will still be there to some extent, you give these thoughts less power."

Insisting on traditional etiquette is also simply good pedagogy. It's a teacher's job to correct sloppy prose, whether in an essay or an email. And I suspect that most of the time, students who call faculty members by their first names and send slangy messages are not seeking a more casual rapport. They just don't know they should do otherwise - no one has bothered to explain it to them. Explaining the rules of professional interaction is not an act of condescension; it's the first step in treating students like adults.

That said, the teacher-student relationship depends on a special kind of inequality. "Once I refer to them as I would my best friend, I eliminate that boundary of clarity," Ms. Lovell told me. She recalled how awkward she felt when the head of the research lab where she worked asked undergraduates to call him Willy. "All my friends were saying: 'Oh, man, do we do this? He has a Ph.D. He's a professor. Is it O.K. to do this?' Sometimes I do, but he's a great mentor, and it's confusing. A lot of us like to preserve that distance."

Alexis Delgado, a sophomore at the University of Rochester, is skeptical of professors who make a point of insisting on their title. "I always think it's a power move," she told me. "Just because someone gave you a piece of paper that says you're smart doesn't mean you can communicate those ideas to me. I reserve the right to judge if you're a good professor."

But she ruefully recalled one young professor who made the mistake of telling the class that he didn't care if they used his first name. "He didn't realize how far it would go, and we all thought, this is awkward," she said. "I had no desire to be friends. I only wanted to ask questions."

During office hours, we have frank conversations about career choices, mental health crises and family tribulations. But the last thing most students want from a mentor is the pretense of chumminess.

Ms. Lovell said the very act of communicating more formally helps her get some distance on a personal problem. "When I explain my difficulties and struggles, I try to explain in a mature way," she said. "I want to know: How would someone older than me think through this?"

The facile egalitarianism of the first-name basis can impede good teaching and mentoring, but it also presents a more insidious threat. It undermines the message that academic titles are meant to convey: esteem for learning. The central endeavor of higher education is not the pursuit of money or fame but knowledge. "There needs to be some understanding that degrees mean something," Professor Jackson-Brown said. "Otherwise, why are we encouraging them to get an education?"

The values of higher education are not the values of the commercial, capitalist paradigm. At a time when corporate executives populate university boards and politicians demand proof of a diploma's immediate cash value, this distinction needs vigilant defense.

The erosion of etiquette encourages students to view faculty members as a bunch of overeducated customer service agents. "More and more, students view the process of going to college as a business transaction," Dr. Tomforde, the math professor, told me. "They see themselves as a customer, and they view knowledge as a physical thing where they pay money and I hand them the knowledge - so if they don't do well on a test, they think I haven't kept up my side of the business agreement." He added, "They view professors in a way similar to the person behind the counter getting their coffee."

But if American culture in general - including many workplaces - has become less formal, are professors doing students a disservice by insisting on old-fashioned manners?

When Anna Lewis left a Ph.D. program in English to work at a technology firm, she had to learn to operate in a different culture. Yet she has noticed that the informality of the tech industry can mislead new millennial employees.

"They see they can call everyone from the C.E.O. down by their first name, and that can be confusing - because what they often don't realize is that there's still a high standard of professionalism," she told me. "At the intern level, these things are basic, but they require reminders: show up to meetings on time; be aware that you, yourself, are fully responsible for your work schedule. No one is going to tell you to attend a meeting." In other words, young graduates mistake informality for license to act unprofessionally.

"There is some value in being schooled in more formal etiquette, developing personal and professional accountability, a work ethic and a level of empathy, which is very much valued in the tech industry," Ms. Lewis said.

Here's an analogy: We should teach students traditional etiquette for the same reason most great abstract painters first mastered figurative painting. In order to abandon or riff on a form, you have to get the hang of its underlying principles.

That means that professors should take the time to explain these principles, making it clear that learning how to write a professional email and relate to authority figures is not just preparation for a job after graduation. The real point is to stand up for the values that have made our universities the guardians of civilization.

And if you're going to write an angry email telling me how wrong I am, I beg you: Please proofread it before you hit "send."

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Opinion | U Can't Talk to Ur Professor Like This

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Sociologists who surveyed undergraduate syllabuses from 2004 and 2010 found that in 2004, 14 percent addressed issues related to classroom etiquette; six years later, that number had more than doubled, to 33 percent. This phenomenon crosses socio-economic lines.

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A few weeks ago, I called an Uber to take me to the Boston airport for a flight home for the holidays. As I slid into the back seat of the car, the warm intonations of the driver's accent washed over me in a familiar way.

I learned that he was a recent West African immigrant with a few young children, working hard to provide for his family. I could relate: I am the daughter of two Ethiopian immigrants who made their share of sacrifices to ensure my success. I told him I was on a college break and headed home to visit my parents.

That's how he found out I go to Harvard. An approving eye glinted at me in the rearview window, and quickly, we transcended the boundaries of rider and driver. I became his daughter, all grown up - the product of his sacrifice.

And then came the fateful question: "What do you study?"

I answered "history and literature" and the pride in his voice faded, as I knew it might. I didn't even get to add "and African-American studies" before he cut in, his voice thick with disappointment, "All that work to get into Harvard, and you study history?"

Here I was, his daughter, squandering the biggest opportunity of her life.

He went on to deliver the age-old lecture that all immigrant kids know. We are to become doctors (or lawyers, if our parents are being generous) - to make money and send money back home. The implicit demand, made across generations, which my Uber driver laid out explicitly, is simple: Fulfill your role in the narrative of upward mobility so your children can do the same.

I wasn't offended. If anything, I'm used to these kinds of conversations by now.

They're very similar to the ones many college students face from their families over the holidays. At some point during the festivities, a relative's friendly question - "How are you doing?" - morphs into the more treacherous, "What are you going to do with that degree?" It's part of the nature of college breaks. They are a time to procrastinate on papers and postpone mental breakdowns. For those of us who are fortunate enough to travel home, they are a time to trade dining hall food for home-cooked meals. But college breaks also mean being on the hot seat.

I used to feel anxious and backed into a corner by the questioning. But now that I'm a junior in college, the routine inquiries have lost their edge. No, I still don't have a boyfriend. Yes, I should probably gain a little weight.

For the children of immigrants, going to a school like Harvard is a community event. My parents, aunts, uncles and all of their friends take pride in my accomplishments and that's wonderful. They also take a certain degree of ownership, and that can be a little exhausting.

But it's because they are wrapped up in my future, however it pans out. They sacrificed a lot for me and they are anxious to see me succeed. That the phenomenon extends to perfect strangers is part of the charm.

There are the Uber drivers who dish out well-intentioned advice, free of charge. The dining hall worker with the same name as my mother who persistently asks how I'm doing. And the African-American woman who stopped me in a campus bookstore, and after asking if I went to Harvard, gave my hand a little squeeze.

I'm grateful for their support. This holiday season, I've promised myself I won't huff and get annoyed at their inquiries. I won't defensively respond with "but I plan to go to law school!" when I get unsolicited advice. I'll just smile and nod, and relish the warmth of the occasion.

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Opinion | Home From Harvard, Back in the Holiday Hot Seat

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A few weeks ago, I called an Uber to take me to the Boston airport for a flight home for the holidays. As I slid into the back seat of the car, the warm intonations of the driver's accent washed over me in a familiar way.

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It was my first year as a public policy graduate student at the University of Texas, Dallas, and I was taking all my classes at night so I could work during the day. Every evening, after class got out around 10, I had to walk through the sprawling parking lots to get to my car. I dreaded that time of day. I would pray that no one was lurking in dimly lit areas or behind cars, and I'd try not to think about the campus police alerts I'd seen about sexual assaults in the area.

I had survived such an assault myself when I was a child. The incident left me acutely aware of the realities of being preyed upon just because you are physically smaller and less likely to protect yourself. I know what it means to feel defenseless.

Now my only means of protection was a rape whistle. I would hold it in one hand and my phone in the other, the numbers 9-1-1 pre-dialed and my finger on the call button. As I neared my car, I would start to jog. It scared me to think that even if I dialed the number and blew the whistle, by the time anyone got to the scene it might be too late. When I got to my car, I'd get in, lock the doors and look behind me to make sure no one was in the back seat.

This was in 2015, around the time the Texas Legislature began debating, and ultimately passing, a so-called campus carry bill. I grew up in a Democratic, immigrant household in a suburb outside of Dallas, where guns and gun policy were never discussed, so I hadn't paid much attention when similar bills failed in 2011 and 2013. But that year something changed. I was 25 years old, commuting alone, and as a minority woman, I felt particularly vulnerable.

I started fighting for students' rights to carry concealed weapons for selfish reasons: I wanted to be able to protect myself. But I quickly found a network of women who felt the same way I did, and we began to advocate for our safety together. I eventually became the Southwest director of Students for Concealed Carry, and am now the founder of the self-defense nonprofit Empowered, which will open its first chapter this fall, at the University of North Texas. (I have also appeared in ads for the National Rifle Association, but I am not employed by the organization.)

When I started advocating for concealed carry on campus, I was not a "gun enthusiast" or a member of any Second Amendment organizations. I had only recently been taught to shoot by a concerned local firearms instructor who had heard about a scare I had with a cyberstalker.

But from the minute I put my hands around a Ruger LC9 pistol, the gun I regularly carry with me now, I felt more in control. I felt empowered to be holding a tool that could protect me physically, and I was determined to learn how to use it responsibly. It was a relief to know that I could shoot if I had to, even though I would never use my gun unless it was a last means of self-defense. I got my concealed carry license a year ago.

In addition to Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin all now allow students with concealed carry permits to carry guns inside the buildings of college campuses. I have learned that there are a lot of misconceptions about these bills. In Texas, only concealed handgun license holders who are 21 years old or older can carry firearms on campus. The rule applies only to public schools, and those schools can also set aside gun-free zones in whatever locations they choose.

Still, I regularly encounter liberals who fear irresponsible gun use and think that college kids (even if they are 21) can't be trusted with firearms. I understand that fear is a powerful motivator on both sides of this issue. But I fiercely resent being told that I can't protect myself according to my rights as an American.

The Justice Department estimates that one in five women are assaulted during college. This number does not surprise me, although plenty of my fellow conservatives take issue with it. I have met so many women through my gun advocacy who felt helpless in the face of sexual assault before they carried a weapon - they felt that no one would listen to them, that they didn't have any options. It is a huge failing of the conservative movement not to take this seriously. Even if the one out of five statistic is imprecise, isn't one assaulted woman bad enough?

Female gun ownership isn't a matter of political affiliation. I've met women across the political spectrum who own guns for self-defense or for shooting recreationally. In particular, black women have become a lot more interested in gun ownership and shooting classes.

The rights and values of gun-owning women aren't being addressed by either political party. While conservatives aren't paying enough attention to sexual assault, liberals are actively hurting women's access to self-defense. Many liberals - including many female professors my organization approached as potential sponsors for Empowered - don't support a woman's "right to choose" when it comes to her own self-defense. They can't get behind a vision of female empowerment that doesn't match their own.

Contrary to popular belief, there is a place for young, pro-Second Amendment women in modern feminism. And there is a place for them on college campuses.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated an aspect of Texas law allowing people to carry a gun on public college campuses. People who have obtained their gun licenses from certain other states do not have to undergo training with a Texas-certified instructor to carry a firearm on campus. It is not the case that anyone who does so must get training in Texas.

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It was my first year as a public policy graduate student at the University of Texas, Dallas, and I was taking all my classes at night so I could work during the day. Every evening, after class got out around 10, I had to walk through the sprawling parking lots to get to my car.

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On Campus

Credit... Charlotte Ager

Today's college students desperately want to change the world, but too many think that living a meaningful life requires doing something extraordinary and attention-grabbing like becoming an Instagram celebrity, starting a wildly successful company or ending a humanitarian crisis.

Having idealistic aspirations is, of course, part of being young. But thanks to social media, purpose and meaning have become conflated with glamour: Extraordinary lives look like the norm on the internet. Yet the idea that a meaningful life must be or appear remarkable is not only elitist but also misguided. Over the past five years, I've interviewed dozens of people across the country about what gives their lives meaning, and I've read through thousands of pages of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience research to understand what truly brings people satisfaction.

The most meaningful lives, I've learned, are often not the extraordinary ones. They're the ordinary ones lived with dignity.

There's perhaps no better expression of that wisdom than George Eliot's "Middlemarch," a book I think every college student should read. At 700-some pages, it requires devotion and discipline, which is kind of the point. Much like a meaningful life, the completion of this book is hard won and requires effort. The heroine of the novel is Dorothea Brooke, a wealthy young gentlewoman in a provincial English town. Dorothea has a passionate temperament and yearns to accomplish some good in the world as a philanthropist. The novel's hero, Tertius Lydgate, is an ambitious young doctor who hopes to make important scientific discoveries. Both hope to lead epic lives.

Both Dorothea and Tertius end up in disastrous marriages - she to the vicar Mr. Casaubon, he to the town beauty Rosamond. Slowly, their dreams wither away. Rosamond, who turns out to be vain and superficial, wants Tertius to pursue a career lucrative enough to support her indulgent tastes, and by the end of the novel, he acquiesces, abandoning his scientific quest to become a doctor to the rich. Though conventionally "successful," he dies at 50 believing himself a failure for not following through on his original life plan.

As for Dorothea, after the Reverend Casaubon dies, she marries her true love, Will Ladislaw. But her larger ambitions go unrealized. At first it seems that she, too, has wasted her potential.

Tertius's tragedy is that he never reconciles himself to his humdrum reality. Dorothea's triumph is that she does.

By novel's end, she settles into life as a wife and a mother, and becomes, Eliot writes, the "foundress of nothing." It may be a letdown for the reader, but not for Dorothea. She pours herself into her roles as mother and wife with "beneficent activity which she had not the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself."

Looking out her window one day, she sees a family making its way down the road and realizes that she, too, is "a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining." In other words, she begins to live in the moment. Rather than succumb to the despair of thwarted dreams, she embraces her life as it is and contributes to those around her as she can.

This is Eliot's final word on Dorothea: "Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

It's one of the most beautiful passages in literature, and it encapsulates what a meaningful life is about: connecting and contributing to something beyond the self, in whatever humble form that may take.

Most young adults won't achieve the idealistic goals they've set for themselves. They won't become the next Mark Zuckerberg. They won't have obituaries that run in newspapers like this one. But that doesn't mean their lives will lack significance and worth. We all have a circle of people whose lives we can touch and improve - and we can find our meaning in that.

A new and growing body of research within psychology about meaningfulness confirms the wisdom of Eliot's novel - that meaning is found not in success and glamour but in the mundane. One research study showed that adolescents who did household chores felt a stronger sense of purpose. Why? The researchers believe it's because they're contributing to something bigger: their family. Another study found that cheering up a friend was an activity that created meaning in a young adult's life. People who see their occupations as an opportunity to serve their immediate community find more meaning in their work, whether it's an accountant helping his client or a factory worker supporting her family with a paycheck.

As students head to school this year, they should consider this: You don't have to change the world or find your one true purpose to lead a meaningful life. A good life is a life of goodness - and that's something anyone can aspire to, no matter their dreams or circumstances.

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Opinion | You'll Never Be Famous - And That's O.K.

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On Campus Today's college students desperately want to change the world, but too many think that living a meaningful life requires doing something extraordinary and attention-grabbing like becoming an Instagram celebrity, starting a wildly successful company or ending a humanitarian crisis. Having idealistic aspirations is, of course, part of being young.

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I taught my first class at Columbia University's M.F.A. program this month, and even though I've been teaching college writing since 1993, I initially felt a little intimidated by the school's regal campus. That, and regretful.

I enjoyed going to college at the University of Michigan, an hour from home, but my secret humiliation is: I was the type of mediocre student I now disdain. As a freshman, I cared about my friends, my boyfriend and my poetry. Or, I cared about what my boyfriend thought of my friends, what my friends thought of him, and what they thought of my poetry about him. Here's what I wish I'd known and done differently:

A'S ARE COOL AND COME WITH PERKS As a student, I saw myself as anti-establishment, and I hated tests; I barely maintained a B average. I thought only nerds spent weekends in the library studying. Recently I learned that my niece Dara, a sophomore at New York University with a 3.7 G.P.A. (and a boyfriend), was offered a week of travel in Buenos Aires as part of her honors seminar. I was retroactively envious to learn that a 3.5 G.P.A. or higher at many schools qualifies you for free trips, scholarships, grants, awards, private parties and top internships. At 20, I was too busy freaking out when said boyfriend disappeared (after sleeping with one of said friends). Students certainly don't need to strive obsessively for perfection, but I should have prioritized grades, not guys.

SHOW UP AND SPEAK UP If a class was boring or it snowed, I'd skip. My rationale was that nobody in the 300-person lecture hall would notice and I could get notes later. Attendance barely counted. When I went, I'd sit quietly in back. Yet as a teacher, I see that the students who come weekly, sit in front, and ask and answer questions get higher grades and frankly, preferential treatment. After 15 weeks, I barely know the absentees or anyone Snapchatting the term away on their iPhones. It's not just that these students flush $300 down the toilet every time they miss my class; participating can actually lead to payoffs. I reward those who try harder with recommendations, references, professional contacts and encouragement.

CLASS CONNECTIONS CAN LAUNCH YOUR CAREER As an undergrad, I rarely visited my professors during office hours. I didn't want to annoy teachers with what I considered triviality. Besides, I thought I knew everything already. In graduate school, on the other hand, I went to the readings of a professor I admired. Eventually, I'd go to his office just to vent. Once, after I complained about a dead-end job, he recommended me for a position at The New Yorker, jump-starting my career.

But it's not just your professors who will help your life trajectory. Several classmates of mine from graduate school wound up working as editors at other publications, and they have since hired me for freelance work. Years later, I've helped students and colleagues where I teach, at the New School and New York University, land jobs, get published and meet with editors and agents.

PROFESSORS ARE PEOPLE, TOO As a teacher, I've kept all the letters, cards and poems of gratitude I've been sent. It's nice to be appreciated, and it makes a lasting impression. After one of my intro sessions, a freshman from Idaho blurted out: "Awesome class! It's like you stuck my fingers in a light socket." I laughed and invited her to speed walk with me around the local park - an activity I take part in nightly as a sort of active office hours - and we workshopped ideas that led to her first book. And when a student confided she was dying to take another class with me but had lost her financial aid, I let her audit. In retrospect, I should have been more open with the instructors I admired.

FIND YOUR PROFESSORS ON SOCIAL MEDIA I answer all emails, and while I may not accept all friend requests, I respond to students who follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. More important, social media is where I post about panels, job openings and freelance work. Checking out students' social media feeds also allows me to see new sides of their personalities. Naked beer pong photos may not impress, but witty posts and original ideas do. Several students have developed book projects from their blogs and Instagram pages, and I promote their work, charities and events on my own social media feeds. You never know if the college president or your professor might retweet or repost your work.

YOU CAN SOCIALIZE BETTER SOBER Drinking and smoking eased my social anxiety and seemed like fun. Until I couldn't stop. Getting clean - smoke-toke-alcohol-free - led to a huge upswing in my life. Instead of partying, I'd do movie nights, dancing, yoga, aerobics classes and readings with friends and dates. I was surprised to see that my work greatly improved, as did my relationships. I know many students who get into big trouble when they are under the influence, and I still worry about what I missed, wasting so much time wasted.

YOU'RE NOT STUCK Don't be afraid to ask for emotional support. It was a graduate school professor who recommended my first therapist to me: She was a fantastic listener who charged on a sliding scale. Therapy can be cheap, fun and easily available - not to mention lifesaving.

And if it turns out you're in the wrong school, don't worry. A third of college students transfer before graduating. If you're unhappy or not thriving at your school, take the long view. I couldn't have made it in Manhattan as an undergraduate, but four years later, graduate school at New York University offered me a chance to live in my dream city. It took me only three decades of work to make it to the Ivy League - to teach one class, at least.

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Opinion | College Advice I Wish I'd Taken

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I taught my first class at Columbia University's M.F.A. program this month, and even though I've been teaching college writing since 1993, I initially felt a little intimidated by the school's regal campus. That, and regretful.

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Educational achievement, on the other hand, follows a different trend. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, over the same period (2000 to 2016), the percentage of young people with a high school diploma or its equivalent passed 90 percent for the first time. In the same period, the portion of graduates seeking and obtaining both two- and four-year degrees increased consistently, and the percentage of people ages 25 to 29 with postgraduate degrees jumped to 9 percent from 5.

And this cohort of young Americans hasn't only put in the classroom work - to say nothing of extracurricular activities and internships. This cohort of young Americans has also taken on incomprehensible amounts of debt in order to do it.

Despite what we've heard, money isn't a reward America hands out for hard work. Not only is more education not leading to higher wages, there isn't even a positive correlation between the two. If anything, the flood of human capital puts employers in a position to offer workers a shrinking slice of the pie and get more in return. Kids are getting conned. I got conned, too.

If enough students manage to master cutting-edge job skills, it will be great for the "economy," but as workers they will find themselves rewarded with lower wages. The dynamic may seem counterintuitive but not totally unexpected. In the '70s, the economist Gary Becker theorized that employers would shift the costs of developing human capital onto workers, from paid on-the-job training to unpaid schooling. He figured that, though they need skilled labor, corporations would be disinclined to pay for training since other companies could then lure away "their" human capital.

As training left the factory and the office for the classroom, it also meant that work could be shifted to children, who are mostly not eligible for wage labor but can, it turns out, do a whole lot of school. If firms want workers who can speak Mandarin or code Python, why should they pay trainees to learn when they can scare kids into training themselves? Within this system, all an individual kid can do is try to put a sufficient number of their peers between themselves and poverty.

There are some winners, but the real champions are the corporate owners: They get their pick from all the qualified applicants, and the oversupply of human capital keeps labor costs down. Competition between workers means lower wages for them and higher profits for their bosses: The more teenagers who learn to code, the cheaper one is.

The struggle for success has heavy financial and psychological costs for the participants. Constant competition has affected how young Americans see themselves in relation to the world. That's why the United States has measured huge increases in youth anxiety and depression, as well as a sharp decline in social trust. If kids are told to find comfort in the idea that they are sacrificing their mental health now for security in adulthood, they are being tricked once more.

At the end of their journey into adulthood they aren't reimbursed for their efforts. And in this winner-take-all economy, most of them just lose. They can't increase the size of Harvard's freshman class just by working harder; all they can do is drive one another to anxiety, depression, paranoia and exhaustion. That, and save money for their future bosses.

It doesn't have to be this way. The kids don't have to keep getting conned.

This system may work for a small number of bosses and shareholders, but it's not in the interest of education in a broad, exploratory sense - and it's clearly not in the interests of young people themselves. But even though older adults are ostensibly worried about the kids, policymakers will never scale back academic competition, and most educators and parents are understandably loath to tell children, "Don't work so hard."

If change is going to come, it should come from students, in the classroom.

As individuals, students have no choice but to compete. But together, there's no telling what kind of power they could exercise. They face an age-old collective action problem, but they are smart. Schools can't run without students, and the economy can't run without schools; their work matters, and they can withdraw it.

Unions aren't just good for wage workers. Students can use collective bargaining, too. The idea of organizing student labor when even auto factory workers are having trouble holding onto their unions may sound outlandish, but young people have been at the forefront of conflicts over police brutality, immigrant rights and sexual violence. In terms of politics, they are as tightly clustered as just about any demographic in America. They are an important social force in this country, one we need right now.

It's in students' shared interest to seek later start times for the school day to combat the epidemic of insufficient sleep among high schoolers. It's in their shared interest to improve their mental health by reducing competition. They could start by demanding an end to class rank or a cap on the number of Advanced Placement courses each student can take per year. It's in their shared interest to make life easier and lower the stakes of childhood in general. Only young people, united, can improve their working conditions and end the academic arms race.

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Opinion | Competition Is Ruining Childhood. The Kids Should Fight Back.

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Educational achievement, on the other hand, follows a different trend. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, over the same period (2000 to 2016), the percentage of young people with a high school diploma or its equivalent passed 90 percent for the first time.

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Mission statements don't necessarily make it easier for students to understand the nuts and bolts of admissions, but they are absolutely vital. A school's admissions policy must flow from its mission.

But by and large, colleges aren't doing a good enough job explaining to applicants how admissions choices stem from their policy. While most colleges list some of the factors they consider in admission - such as leadership and involvement in extracurricular activities - they need to go further to explain how applicant characteristics are assessed and weighted.

Admissions officers will readily point out that complete transparency is not possible - and that's true. Colleges that explicitly state their preferences for under-represented racial groups, for example, risk running afoul of the Supreme Court, and in some cases, state prohibitions.

But right now, the guidance they do give is far too opaque. Consider some of the questions Harvard says it uses to consider applicants: Where will you be in one, five or 25 years? What sort of human being will you be in the future? Are you a late bloomer? Do you have reserve power to do more?

To be clear, these aren't questions for the candidates themselves to answer. They are among the questions that the admissions officers ask themselves about prospective students based on their applications.

Applicants, for their part, are left to wonder how Harvard admissions officers might infer the answers and what the right answers might be. And further, how important are these questions relative to more traditional factors, such as grades, test scores and extracurricular activities?

Likewise, the University of California lists intellectual curiosity as a desirable applicant characteristic. That seems reasonable, but how is it evaluated? The university also considers disabilities, difficult personal and family situations, and low income, among other criteria. How much do these factors count? Do students score points for a parental divorce or a childhood illness?

Even those who have a role in making decisions can find this frustrating. A former Berkeley applications reader wrote several years ago that because of the lack of explicit rules for judging candidates, "the process of detecting objective factors of disadvantage becomes tricky."

Sociological research suggests that the fuzzier the admissions criteria, the greater the disadvantage suffered by low-income students and others who are less familiar with university culture. Thus, admissions officers seeking to diversify their freshman classes would benefit from being more transparent about their expectations.

How could admissions offices be more open about how they choose? They could start by publishing vignettes to illustrate how admissions decisions are made, spell out why certain kinds of applicant profiles do or don't make the grade, and describe how they identify talented students who fall short in terms of grades or test scores. Descriptions of the kinds of complex deliberations conducted by real admissions committees would be enlightening to both applicants and their families.

Colleges don't need to tell all. But a more comprehensive explanation of what drives their choices would go a long way toward lifting the veil from a system that many regard as an impenetrable mystery.

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Opinion | Why Applying to College Is So Confusing

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Mission statements don't necessarily make it easier for students to understand the nuts and bolts of admissions, but they are absolutely vital. A school's admissions policy must flow from its mission. But by and large, colleges aren't doing a good enough job explaining to applicants how admissions choices stem from their policy.

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20 Years After the Shooting on the Playground  

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There's one group who understands all of this: my classmates from the playground, my fellow survivors. We call ourselves the Westside Warriors. It's with them, on our class Facebook page, that I feel least alone when new tragedies occur and where I can visit Paige in vivid color just as she was. I imagine that most alumni pages are saved for hilarious pictures of bad hair and weird jeans or used to swap stories about how crazy 10th-grade homecoming was. We don't share stories like that. We share pictures of the classmates we lost. We talk about how hard it is to turn off the TV after the newest deadly event. We communicate to keep the memorial garden, our old school playground, manicured. We collect condolence gifts to send to the newest victims as if we're the ambassadors of grief. It's what was done for us. Most important, the Facebook page is our refuge every March.

This March 24 will mark the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Westside Middle School. It's also the chosen date of the March for Our Lives rally, part of the movement led by students to do something about gun violence.

I had already been dreading this March. Not only was I to mourn the 20th anniversary of our shooting, but also the Las Vegas shooting, from last fall, and Sutherland Springs, Tex., immediately following, in November - the sadness of each shooting attached itself to my own. The Facebook page had been steadfast, though, there for anniversaries, other shootings or just the down days, and we members help each other get through. I imagined on the 20th anniversary that we would come together and indulge in our grief as always. We would post and text and email and call, carrying the torch for our sweet, sad, little day.

Then 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

So, this March 24 - 20 years after the shooting on our playground - will no longer be about just us. My immediate reaction to hearing about the March for Our Lives was anger and indignation, because now Paige's memory would be one mixed in with so many.

I called a friend from the playground, and we talked it through and agreed to march. And it felt good to have something to do on that terrible day, a day when it's normally hard to even get out of bed. We now had a plan. We would be together in Washington, standing on our grown-up feet and remembering Westside while walking for everyone who's experienced this. And I thought the Warriors would agree; I thought that would be the clear consensus.

That's why my breath was taken away by a post to the Facebook group that denounced the march entirely. Some members were upset that the day was being taken from us, but many were even more upset about the agenda of the event. They thought it was purposely planned to drive a political point home, one that they did not agree with.

People posted that the organizers were "against all guns," that they chose "our day of remembrance" for their political agenda. People talked about arming teachers, increasing security, running "lockdown drills."

I understand that some people make an argument for preparedness over prevention, but it is an argument that I can't accept. If my classmates think back to 1998, I imagine they'll remember our teachers were white as sheets and frozen with fear. I personally had to shove a grown woman aside in order to dial 911 because she was in understandable shock. One teacher was able to pull a student to cover and safety, but that was the most she could do. She couldn't have fought off our attackers and I don't think it would have been right to ask her to. No person knows how he or she would react in a time like that, so the idea of arming teachers lends itself to a false sense of security.

Beyond my lack of confidence in the practicality of arming teachers as a solution, the discussion made me incredibly sad. It meant we accept this as our new norm. Westside was the beginning of an epidemic. It was jarring to find a group of survivors - my former classmates - as divided as our country. It felt like they were responding with jaded, grown-up brains instead of the honest, childhood hearts we had when we were younger.

I cannot accept that more guns will solve the issue of more shootings. Some of my classmates wrote that they "don't want to be lumped into the gun debate," but you cannot talk about a shooting without talking about guns.

They send journals to the newest survivors, encouraging them to write their feelings and begin their healing. But this is a generation that has grown up with many platforms to voice their opinions, and they're not satisfied with hiding their thoughts in a journal tucked away on a shelf. Standing up, speaking out and marching may be part of their therapy. One of the comments to our Facebook thread read: "It's just all different than ours was. These people have a serious agenda: to get rid of guns." That's true. It is different than ours. These victims are helping themselves by fighting for common-sense gun laws to save the future.

Each March 24 is harder for me than the last because, as an adult, I'm able to better define how horrific the shooting really was. In less than 10 minutes on that playground, my classmates and I gained a deeper understanding of evil and fear than most people experience in their entire lives. I can't trade the Warriors for a group that agrees with me, but I can march this weekend in Washington to ensure that in 20 years Emma González won't be writing to remind you of her story and her friends. She'll be writing to commemorate the day we stood up and said never again.

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marjory stoneman douglas high school (parkland  fla)

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Opinion | 20 Years After the Shooting on the Playground

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There's one group who understands all of this: my classmates from the playground, my fellow survivors. We call ourselves the Westside Warriors. It's with them, on our class Facebook page, that I feel least alone when new tragedies occur and where I can visit Paige in vivid color just as she was.

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Want to know a funny thing? This is a very stressful time in my life, too. I sit next to a colleague whose mother is my age. My jeans are snug. My eyebrows are balding. And I have a child who's a junior in high school, which means that everywhere I go, people want to talk about one thing: college.

"Have you started looking at schools? How many A.P. courses is she taking? Does she excel in a sport? Is she a leader? A volunteer? The valedictorian?"

Depending upon my answers, the conversation splits, Choose Your Own Adventure-style, in one of two directions. If I demur, I land in the chapter about how sad it is that our kids are so overstressed. If I play along, we arrive at, "Have you guys made your list yet?"

I hate this question. "We" aren't going through the "college process"; my daughter is.

One night my husband and I have dinner with friends who just got back from Japan. As we're falling asleep, my husband says, "What does it say about me that I'd rather talk about Hiroshima than college?"

I love my town, which we chose for its good schools and down-to-earth families. This is not a suburb where people care about your car or your lawn. But people do care where your kid is going to college. I care too, but I also want to make sure my daughter can take care of herself when she gets there. Does she know how to fry an egg? Manage money? Speak up in a crowded room? I may not be able to help with trigonometry, but I can show her these things. I can teach her how to drive.

After a two-month hiatus, I lose my cool with my daughter one night on the way to swim practice. Buckling my seatbelt, I hiss: "Next time you're driving. I'm sick of being your chauffeur."

She shrugs: Fine/I'm tired/Julia's mom never yells.

"You know, in the long run, it doesn't matter how you do on the SAT," I say. "It matters whether you know how to parallel park. Driving is a life skill. You need to practice."

She leans back and closes her eyes, looking the way she did as a baby dozing in my arms. Somehow in the heat of the moment, I forgot how she was hunched over "The Grapes of Wrath" when I went to bed at midnight; that she's about to swim three miles and her hair will freeze afterward.

From the locker room, she texts: "I'm doing my best. You know that, right? I'm under an insane amount of pressure."

I almost type, I am too - but then I realize, my stress is not her problem, just as her SAT isn't mine. Instead I send a row of hearts.

The next time I'm with someone who wants to talk about liberal arts versus Big Ten, I say: "Wait, hold on. How's the driving going?"

My friend bursts out laughing: "It's a total nightmare! She doesn't stop for pedestrians!"

Both conversations - college and driving - are stand-ins for the real subject that's keeping us up at night: Our kids are leaving home in a year. No more books all over the table, no more late-night cups of tea. I don't want to spend our remaining time obsessing about where my daughter is going to college. Except for the tuition (deep breath), the destination is beyond my control.

My daughter's driving test is four weeks away. We - I mean she - hasn't mastered parallel parking, but she has navigated New Jersey's highways with aplomb befitting her middle name (Grace, like that of half the girls her age). When we arrive at a four-way stop, she waits for three cars to go in clockwise order. Then she slowly presses her foot on the gas. She says, "My turn," and I know it is, and the knowing keeps me from barking at her to go faster.

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Opinion | Stop Asking About My Kid's College Plans

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Want to know a funny thing? This is a very stressful time in my life, too. I sit next to a colleague whose mother is my age. My jeans are snug. My eyebrows are balding. And I have a child who's a junior in high school, which means that everywhere I go, people want to talk about one thing: college.

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Stop Asking About My Kid’s College Plans  

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As Mr. Leland told me, "These people totally changed my life. They've given up distractions that make us do stupid things and instead focus on what's important to them. To a person, they don't worry about things that might happen. They worry when it happens, and even then they don't worry. They just deal with it. At whatever age we are, we can choose to adapt to whatever happens. We have influence over whether we let things knock us out."

After reading the books, I have a new way of looking at myself: as a "good-enough" aging adult who continues to pursue and enjoy a variety of activities commensurate with the limitations imposed by inevitable changes in body and mind that accrue with advancing years.

Never mind that words or spelling may temporarily escape me. I can always ask Google or Siri to fill in the blanks. I love the story in Dr. Agronin's book about the renowned pianist Arthur Rubinstein "who dealt with age-induced declines in his skills by selecting a more limited repertoire, optimizing his performance through extra practice, and compensating by altering his tempo during certain sections to highlight the dynamics of a piece."

Dr. Agronin writes with reverence for Dr. Gene D. Cohen, a founding father of geriatric psychiatry who "saw not only what aging is, but what aging could be; not what we accomplish in spite of aging, but because of aging." In Dr. Cohen's model of creative aging, people have the potential to see possibility instead of problems; aging itself can be a catalyst for rich new experiences, offering a way to renew passions and reinvent oneself.

There are activities I once loved that I can no longer do, or necessarily want to do, like tennis, skiing and ice skating. But I can still walk, cycle, swim, and frolic with my dog, activities that have resulted in many unexpected pleasures and new friends. I can accompany my grandsons to museums and delight in their knowledge of the Impressionists they studied in a high school art class. When I gave them tickets to join me at the opera, one said with a grin, "I guess I'll get some culture."

I already know that if and when my physical abilities become further curtailed, I can still enjoy meaningful conversations with these boys, who are all-too-quickly becoming young men. They may know how to reset my cellphone or find hidden channels on my television, but I can help them put their life experiences in perspective and support a decision to leave their comfort zone and take risks that offer growth potential.

As one of Dr. Agronin's youngest informants said, even when physical decline and losses restrict one's options, there remains the capacity to appreciate and approach each day with a sense of purpose. "It's all about how you frame what you have," she told him.

He cites the concept of "positive aging" developed by Robert D. Hill, a psychologist in Salt Lake City, that is "affected by disease and disability, but not contingent upon avoiding it." Rather, it is "a state of mind that is positive, optimistic, courageous, and able to adapt and cope in flexible ways with life's changes."

Or, as Dr. Cohen found, creativity is not limited to young people. At any age, it can open people up to new possibilities and add richness to life. According to Dr. Cohen, creativity can benefit aging by strengthening morale, improving physical health, enriching relationships and establishing a legacy.

Dr. Agronin cites two notable examples: Henri Matisse - "the man who rose from the dead" after cancer surgery in 1941 - who created cutouts when he could no longer paint, and Martha Graham, who reinvented herself as a choreographer when she could no longer dance.

When we become unable to pursue the roles and passions of our younger years, Dr. Agronin says, we can tap into our past for strength and inspiration. We can try something new that is either an extension of what we did before or that takes us in a new direction.

And, as Mr. Leland found, there is no room for regrets in happy aging. Although I never won a Pulitzer Prize, in many ways, the "awards" I've gotten from thousands of grateful readers who've been helped by my writings over the last half-century are so much more meaningful. These readers inspire me to continue doing what I do best - providing people with health- and lifesaving information and inspiration based on the best scientific evidence currently available.

Citing the work of Laura L. Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, Mr. Leland writes that "older people, knowing they face a limited time in front of them, focus their energies on things that give them pleasure in the moment," not on a future that may never be.

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happiness is a choice you make: lessons from a year among the oldest old (book)

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the end of old age: living a longer  more purposeful life (book)

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Finding Meaning and Happiness in Old Age

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As Mr. Leland told me, "These people totally changed my life. They've given up distractions that make us do stupid things and instead focus on what's important to them. To a person, they don't worry about things that might happen. They worry when it happens, and even then they don't worry.

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Finding Meaning and Happiness in Old Age  

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Then came Michel Foucault and critical race theorists and the rest, and the argument that society is structured by elites to preserve their privilege. Beliefs and culture are part of the structure elites use to preserve that inequality. This led, in the common parlance, to the assumption that your beliefs are determined by your group's privilege or lack of privilege, by where your group is within the power structure.

Now we are at a place where it is commonly assumed that your perceptions are something that come to you through your group, through your demographic identity. How many times have we all heard somebody rise up in conversation and say, "Speaking as a Latina. ..." or "Speaking as a queer person. ..." or "Speaking as a Jew. ..."?

Now, when somebody says that I always wonder, What does that mean? After you've stated your group identity, what is the therefore that follows?

We've shifted from an emphasis on individual judgment toward a greater emphasis on collective experience. I notice that even in my own line of work. When I started, it was very important for opinion writers to never think of themselves as a Republican or a Democrat. We were individual inquirers, not polemicists for some political team. Over the years, many people stopped making that distinction.

Today, group labels matter a lot. When you read discussions of op-ed writers you see that we're often not thought of as individual thinkers, but as spokesmen who are here to represent a point of view. People get upset when a certain group is not represented on the page.

I'm searching for a line here, a distinction. Under what circumstances should we embrace the idea that collective identity shapes our thinking? Under what circumstances should we resist collective identity and insist on the primacy of individual discretion, and our common humanity?

On the one hand, the drive to bring in formerly marginalized groups has obviously been one of the great achievements of our era. When you put together a panel discussion or a work team, even on a subject like oncology, you don't want to have a bunch of white males sitting up there. We know that something valuable will be lost.

Wider inclusion has vastly improved public debate. For example, in the 1990s, African-Americans strongly supported tougher criminal justice laws. Now opinion has shifted and a majority of African-Americans strongly oppose them. That shift, born out of a direct and unique experience, reveals that, say, mandatory minimum sentencing laws have had harsh unintended effects.

But other times, group identity seems irrelevant to many issues. How does being gay shape your view of U.S.-Russian relations or breaking up big tech? How does being Latina influence how you read a black writer like St. Augustine?

And there are other times when collective thinking seems positively corrupting. Why are people's views of global warming, genetically modified foods and other scientific issues strongly determined by political label? That seems ridiculous.

I'm a columnist and I'm supposed to come to a conclusion, but I'm confused.

Our whole education system is based on the idea that we train individuals to be critical thinkers. Our political system is based on the idea that persuasion and deliberation lead to compromise and toward truth. The basis of human dignity is our capacity to make up our own minds. One of the things I've learned in a lifetime in journalism is that people are always more unpredictable than their categories.

But the notion that group membership determines opinion undermines all that. If it's just group against group, deliberation is a sham, beliefs are just masks groups use to preserve power structures, and democracy is a fraud. The epistemological foundation of our system is in surprisingly radical flux.

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Then came Michel Foucault and critical race theorists and the rest, and the argument that society is structured by elites to preserve their privilege. Beliefs and culture are part of the structure elites use to preserve that inequality.

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It's the boys who fail. Whether born to a rich family or a poor one, in an impoverished neighborhood or wealthy one, black boys lag behind their white peers as adults. Black boys who grow up rich are twice as likely as their white counterparts to end up poor. And of those black boys who start life poor, nearly half will remain so in adulthood, while more than 2 in 3 of their white peers will escape the poverty of their youth.

Black women may surpass their white counterparts in individual income, but they lag in household income. The men who would be their husbands are missing - incarcerated, unemployed, unable to be the partners that women want. Or the parents that children need.

And so the failings of one generation fall upon the next, as the trajectories of black boys are shaped by the absence of black fathers. Looking beyond the usual focus on how individual children are affected by the presence of their fathers, Mr. Chetty and his colleagues found that the presence of black fathers in the community powerfully shapes boys' trajectories. Black fathers are a social resource.

The two-parent families that don't form perpetuate African-Americans' disadvantage across generations. The economic predicament of black men, which disconnects them from their children, threatens to ripple across families and generations.

All of which raises the question: How do African-Americans in the 21st century confront the prospect of being indefinitely left behind?

The cycle that the research documents had a beginning and it can have an end. A s black women began to take advantage of the opportunities opened by the civil rights movement, black men were hit first with deindustrialization - the loss of well-paying blue-collar jobs throughout large swaths of our nation - and then with a surge in incarceration unlike anything a democratic nation had ever seen. Black children bore the brunt of their parents' suffering. Many well-meaning Americans remained oblivious to a national tragedy.

Black men's disadvantage has shaped not only how they are perceived but the meaning of race as well. Racial disparities - in incarceration, unemployment, school failure - fuel racial bias, which ensnares black boys, rich and poor alike. Boys like my own go from cute and cuddly to strong and manly, and so become a threat in the eyes of many. The bias, subtle yet pervasive, compounds the disparities by undermining the relationships and hope that one needs to get, and stay, ahead. And so the cycle continues.

But it need not. We can disrupt the cycle of black disadvantage. What we've lacked is the will to do so. We act as though economic inequality is inevitable, relegating poor children of all races to schools to which most parents would never choose to send their own children, schools often in neighborhoods where most would never choose to live. We segregate ourselves by race and class, and accept the inequality of opportunity that doing so breeds.

So many Americans profess to be blind to race, which ensures only that it will remain salient. So many worry more about appearing to be racist than working to remove the enduring taint of slavery and segregation.

We will find a way to undo intergenerational racial disparities when we find the will. And to find the will, we need to recognize what's at stake: The conditions that challenge us imperil the future of black boys and black families and the viability of the American dream itself.

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Opinion | An End to the Class vs. Race Debate

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It's the boys who fail. Whether born to a rich family or a poor one, in an impoverished neighborhood or wealthy one, black boys lag behind their white peers as adults. Black boys who grow up rich are twice as likely as their white counterparts to end up poor.

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The nation's premier leadership training grounds, like Harvard Business School and West Point, are particularly good places to explore attitudes about leadership. At Harvard Business School, an institution that one graduate described to me as "the spiritual capital of extroversion," grades are based half on class participation, and first years do most of their studying in mandatory groups called learning teams. Students are expected to be relentlessly social outside of class, too. "I go out at night like it's my job," one student told me.

At West Point, where I had the honor of addressing a group this week, the cadets were thoughtful about the traits good leaders possess - and how easy it is to prioritize them incorrectly. "I think we tend to get it backwards," one cadet told me. "We become so focused on becoming leaders that we see that development as an end in itself and therefore become less eager to truly get behind something and have a purposive direction in which to lead."

Many of this nation's finest leaders have been extroverts - but plenty have not. Jim Collins, in his study of the best-performing companies of the late 20th century, found that they were all led by chief executives known primarily for their fierce will and dedication - and were often described with words like "reserved" and "understated."

"The one and only personality trait the effective ones I have encountered did have in common," wrote the author and management consultant Peter Drucker on leaders, "was something they did not have: they had little or no 'charisma' and little use either for the term or what it signifies."

One such extraordinary leader is the former Marine commandant and self-described introvert Gen. Charles C. Krulak. In an interview last week, General Krulak told me that he wasn't the kind of leader who was "out there waving a banner and riding a white charger." He didn't visit the officers' club very often, preferring to stay in on weekends. And he stepped back before making decisions, often excusing himself from a meeting to consider his options in solitude.

He knew that his style made him appear less social, less aggressive than the Marine Corps norm. But he believed that in the long run he'd be judged by the soundness of his decisions and the strength of his character. When he volunteered, during the Vietnam War, to rescue a platoon trapped under sniper fire in an open rice paddy, no one cared how many jokes he'd cracked or beers he'd drunk on his last R & R.

Introverted leaders often possess an innate caution that may be more valuable than we realize. President Clinton's extroversion served him well but may have contributed to conduct that almost derailed his presidency. It's impossible to imagine the cautious and temperate Mr. Obama mired in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Would it be better if Mr. Obama palled around with more senators, attended more cocktail parties, cut a schmoozier figure? Sure. P.R. is part of a politician's job. And as the personality psychologist Brian Little says, we all need to act out of character occasionally, for the sake of work or people we love.

But on the long list of attributes of a successful president - or of any leader - an outgoing persona is low on the list. The charisma of ideas matters more than a leader's gregarious charms.

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Opinion | Introverts Make Great Leaders, Too

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The nation's premier leadership training grounds, like Harvard Business School and West Point, are particularly good places to explore attitudes about leadership. At Harvard Business School, an institution that one graduate described to me as "the spiritual capital of extroversion," grades are based half on class participation, and first years do most of their studying in mandatory groups called learning teams. Students are expected to be relentlessly social outside of class, too.

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Is the Earth Flat?

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In 1492, Columbus set sail for the New World based on the assumption that Earth was round. Why not? After all, according to historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, "no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat."

But nearly 500 years later, an American man was planning a voyage based on the exact opposite assumption. Mike Hughes, a 61-year-old limo driver, was going to launch himself into space to prove that Earth is flat. Mechanical complications and the federal government shot that idea down, however. (For now at least.)

Hughes isn't alone in his theory. Thousands of people - from musicians to football players - believe Earth is flat, and that the world's elite are duping citizens around (across?) the globe with a " globularist " conspiracy.

How is that possible?

Many cultures in world history conceptualized the physical world in ways that didn't include a spherical Earth. The ancient Chinese believed Earth to be a flat square, and that only the heavens were spherical. In multiple Indian models of the physical world, Earth was comprised of four continents surrounding a mountain. And the ancient Norse peoples pictured Earth as a disc floating in the middle of a sea inhabited by a giant serpent .

These ideas, however, were first challenged as early as 2,500 years ago. In the 4th century BC, Aristotle provided some of the first evidence showing that Earth was round: ships disappear hull first when sailing over the horizon, Earth casts a round shadow on the moon during lunar eclipses, and different constellations are visible at different latitudes.

Aristotle's evidence would be corroborated and elaborated upon extensively over the following millennia. But it seems that nothing - not even GPS technology or manned space flights - can convince some people that Earth is round.

In the modern era, the Flat Earth movement started in 1956 with a young British man named Samuel Shenton. Inspired by an 1881 book titled Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe, Shenton founded the Flat Earth Society. A year later the Soviets launched Sputnik 1., rendering the plausibility of his theory questionable, to say the least. Shenton died believing Earth was flat. The next leader, Charles K. Johnson, passed away in 2001, leaving the dwindling organization with just 3,500 members. Then the Internet breathed new life into this ancient worldview.

So what exactly do modern Flat Earthers believe? There isn't one exclusive Flat Earth model, but the Flat Earth Society's website provides a general outline on what seems to be the community's consensus.
The World Is Disc-Shaped
According to Flat Earthers, the world is a disc with edges beyond which no one knows what exists.

"The earth is surrounded on all sides by an ice wall that holds the oceans back. This ice wall is what explorers have named Antarctica," reads the Flat Earth Society's FAQ. "Beyond the ice wall is a topic of great interest to the Flat Earth Society. To our knowledge, no one has been very far past the ice wall and returned to tell of their journey. What we do know is that it encircles the earth and serves to hold in our oceans and helps protect us from whatever lies beyond."

Some believe an infinite plane lies beyond the wall. Some believe you'd fall into outer space if you crossed it, which seems to be a tough feat - estimates vary, but the average proposed height of the wall seems to be something like 150 feet.
The Moon and the Sun are the Same Size
Flat Earthers believe the moon and the sun are the same size - a relatively tiny 32 miles in diameter - and that they orbit around the North Pole.

Gravity Doesn't Exist
Our understanding of gravity largely depends on Earth being a spherical object - that explains why objects maintain essentially the same weight across the globe. But Flat Earthers disagree: "Objects simply fall," reads the society's website. Flat Earthers have a few theories as to why objects fall, but they seem pretty confident that the common conception of gravity isn't the ticket: "What is certain is sphere earth gravity is not tenable in any way shape or form."
The Moon Landing Was Faked and Astronauts Are Lying
The U.S. was so caught up in the Space Race, Flat Earthers claim, that it faked the moon landing and only later discovered that Earth was indeed flat. The government then decided to perpetuate this lie, for a multitude of reasons. As for the astronauts in the space shuttles?

"Most Flat Earthers think Astronauts have been bribed or coerced into their testimonies," the Flat Earth Society's website reads. "Some believe they have been fooled or are mistaken."

Easy Ways To Prove Earth Is Round
Want to find out for yourself that Earth is round without launching yourself into space on a homemade rocket? One of the coolest and cheapest ways is to attach a camera onto a high-altitude balloon and let it rise until the curvature of the planet is visible to the naked eye.

You can also observe the constellations from different parts of the world. You'll soon notice that different stars are visible from different vantage points, as Aristotle pointed out in the 4th century BC. This implies that Earth is round - that or all of the stars in the universe are orbiting around Earth at a fixed speed.

If all else fails, take a note from Aristotle and go to the harbor - you'll notice that ships disappear hull first.

what-do-you-make-of-rising-fundamentalism

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Understanding the (Really Ridiculous) Core Tenets of the Flat Earth Hypothesis

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In 1492, Columbus set sail for the New World based on the assumption that Earth was round. Why not? After all, according to historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, "no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat."

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So what about abortion? How should governments restrict or regulate the abortion services offered by medical professionals or facilities? Because this is an issue about good medicine, we need to focus on health risks and outcomes instead of personal ethics. There is broad agreement that medical professionals and facilities should be able to offer services or remedies that are lifesaving and health-preserving for their patients, and they should be prohibited from doing so when the health risks of those services outweigh their health benefits. Given what we now know about the safety of abortion procedures at different stages of pregnancy, and the risks posed by pregnancy and childbirth, what justifications can be offered for restricting abortion services?

It is true that abortion procedures commonly used a century ago were highly dangerous for patients. With advances in medicine, though, the procedures in use today pose fewer risks to a woman's life or health than pregnancy or childbirth itself. A 2012 study of abortion in the United States published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, concluded: "Legal induced abortion is markedly safer than childbirth. The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion."

There is a lot packed into that statistic, but we often forget that pregnancy and childbirth pose health risks, which vary for women depending on their age, health status, projected need for a cesarean section, number of previous pregnancies and the spacing between them, and so on. Given these risks, access to legal abortion is, in general, life- and health-preserving for women. Our public debates need to consider the state's interest in protecting women's health and the limits of state power in interfering with the decisions we make about how best to preserve our own health or protect our own lives.

A recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concludes that "The clinical evidence clearly shows that legal abortions in the United States - whether by medication, aspiration, D & E, or induction - are safe and effective. Serious complications are rare. But the risks of serious complication increases with weeks' gestation." This means that state laws and policies that unnecessarily delay the scheduling of an abortion procedure hinder, rather than help, the government in pursuing its interest in protecting women's health.

The state also has an interest in protecting fetal human life, even if fetuses are not legal persons, but this state interest needs to be balanced against others. Nevertheless, our courts have determined repeatedly that, until the last third or so of a pregnancy, the state's interest in protecting women's health and decisional privacy outweighs its interest in protecting fetal life. Yet, why do these interests need to be rebalanced in the last part of pregnancy?

First, performing an abortion in the last months of pregnancy is medically more complicated and poses a higher degree of risk than one performed earlier. Moreover, a pregnant woman in the late stages of a healthy pregnancy has already endured most of the bodily burdens of a pregnancy, and thus the health benefits of an abortion at that stage may not outweigh the risks.

Second, given the viability of the fetus in the late stages of pregnancy, an abortion - a medical procedure in which the fetus's death is an unavoidable outcome - imposes on the medical staff the act of performing a procedure in which a viable fetus will die. It is only reasonable to order a medical team to do this when such a procedure is medically necessary. Alternatively, attempting to induce a premature live birth that is not medically necessary, should a woman request this, would likely injure a viable fetus and endanger its postnatal health and life. Because an abortion is a medical service, and not something a woman decides or does by herself, her right to decisional privacy in this matter is not absolute.

Given these considerations, governments have a compelling interest in restricting abortions in late stages of a healthy pregnancy, but they have an equally compelling interest in ensuring that legal and safe abortions are available to women, without burdensome restrictions, before the last third or so of a pregnancy.

If, in the future, a public consensus on the question of when human personhood begins (in particular, one that agrees that a human person could exist before any complex psychological properties have developed), then we would need to recognize that there is more than one "patient" involved in an abortion. We are not there yet. To get there, the minority who believe this would have to convince the rest of us of this metaphysical, or religiously based, assertion. Until they do, we need to focus on the more manageable and relevant question of how to regulate a medical service or procedure that is sought by millions of women.

When there is a lack of public consensus on a moral question, our public policies need to reflect the principles on which there is broad agreement. In a liberal democracy, we don't need to resolve many difficult questions of individual morality in order to have defensible public policies - policies that are justified by our commitment to democratic decision making, liberty and equality. State officials who appeal to their own beliefs on questions of individual morality, in order to justify their policy decisions, are violating values more fundamental to our society.

Questions like "Is homosexuality immoral?" or "Is abortion immoral?" suggest that entire groups of people that pursue activities necessary to securing their basic human needs are possibly morally compromised, and are thus insulting; they also encourage civic leaders and their constituents to take up rigid and extreme views based on their own personal convictions, and to be morally arrogant toward others who don't share their views.

Raising these questions in the midst of heated public debate about access to abortion services or to civil marriage makes it seem as if we are hopelessly divided as a society in ways that render the policy questions irresolvable. Yet questions about individual moral behavior or personal ethics, which still generate wide disagreement based on religious diversity, are not really all that relevant to the issue of lawmaking. In short, what a good society does is based on a different set of considerations and principles than what a good person does.

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So what about abortion? How should governments restrict or regulate the abortion services offered by medical professionals or facilities? Because this is an issue about good medicine, we need to focus on health risks and outcomes instead of personal ethics.

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HANOVER, N.H. - I am a junior in high school, and I regularly shoot guns, for target practice and hunting. Going to school can be hard because most kids don't understand how I live. It can be uncomfortable to be a gun-owning teenager right now, when high schools have become the centers of gun control protests. But there are many of us around the country.

I own firearms not only because I think they are cool, but also because they are considered a tool in my family. I have been brought up around guns all my life. Yes, I have used AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, and old Civil War rifles, too. I live on a farm where I hunt wild game and butcher animals humanely. Some kids at my school don't understand why I hunt; they think that it is cruel and that raising beef cattle and chickens is bad. Sometimes I get the feeling these kids are afraid of me because I own firearms.

There was a walkout at my school last week. It was meant to honor the students who died in the school shooting in Florida, but it was also about protesting firearms. I didn't join in. I feel horrible about the kids who were killed or hurt, but firearms aren't the problem - people are.

I think people who use guns in mass shootings are using those guns to seek help. There are other ways to get help, but the people who do these things have probably asked for help or have shown signs that they need it but were let down by the adults around them.

Many of the young people protesting guns right now seem to have very little knowledge about gun rules and regulations. Guns can be used safely. My family and I talk frequently about firearms and how they should be used. I have a younger brother, and we teach him the rights and wrongs of firearm safety - and, of course, never to use guns to hurt people.

It's hard to talk about guns, as well as about hunting and farming, at school because no one there knows much about those three topics. They've been told not to touch or talk about guns, and some of the kids think it is just absolutely wrong for people to own them. That is their opinion, and I respect it and am open to talking about it. But even if people try to be nice, they don't really want to debate it.

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Opinion | Why I Didn't Join My School's Walkout

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HANOVER, N.H. - I am a junior in high school, and I regularly shoot guns, for target practice and hunting. Going to school can be hard because most kids don't understand how I live. It can be uncomfortable to be a gun-owning teenager right now, when high schools have become the centers of gun control protests.

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Many respondents who took the quiz through the myPersonality app authorized it to access their Facebook profile data, and that of their friends - access that was allowed by the social network at the time. That allowed researchers to cross-reference the results of the quiz - numeric Ocean scores - with the users' Facebook "likes," and build a model from the correlations they found between the two. With that model, the researchers could often make precise guesses about subsequent users' personalities using only a list of their likes, no 100-question quiz necessary.

One of the studies the Psychometrics Centre produced, published in 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was built on the "likes" and Ocean scores of more than 70,000 respondents who took the myPersonality quiz on Facebook. It found that a person who liked the movie "Fight Club," for example, was far more likely to be open to new experiences than a person who liked "American Idol," according to a review of data provided to The New York Times by Michal Kosinski, an author of the 2015 study and a computer science professor at Stanford University.

What Your Facebook Likes Say About Your Personality

Researchers at Stanford University and Cambridge University's Psychometrics Centre built a model that could assess a person's personality using Facebook "likes" alone. The model can use the likes to score a person's openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

In that study, the researchers compared the accuracy of their model with personality assessments made by the respondents' friends. The friends were given a 10-question version of the myPersonality quiz and asked to answer based on their knowledge of the respondents' personalities.

Based on a sample of more than 32,000 participants who were assessed by both the model and one or two friends, the researchers found that the model, using just 10 likes, was more accurate than a work colleague. With 70 likes, it was more accurate than a friend or roommate; with 150, more accurate than a family member; and with 300, more accurate than a spouse.

The model, the researchers said, was particularly adept at "predicting life outcomes such as substance use, political attitudes, and physical health." The real-world efficacy of the approach, however, has been called into question.

When Cambridge Analytica approached the Psychometrics Centre about using its models, the center declined. Cambridge Analytica then turned to Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology professor at Cambridge University who was familiar with the center's work. Dr. Kogan developed a Facebook app called "thisisyourdigitallife," a quiz similar to myPersonality, and used it to harvest data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles. Of those, 30 million contained enough information to generate personality models. Only 270,000 users authorized Dr. Kogan's app to access their data, and all were told their information was being used for academic research.

Cambridge then pitched its services to potential political and commercial clients, ranging from Mastercard and the New York Yankees to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Facebook has now banned Cambridge Analytica from its platform, as well as its parent company and Dr. Kogan. In Facebook's eyes, Dr. Kogan's infraction was not collecting the data, but giving it to Cambridge Analytica.

"Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels that governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did not subsequently abide by our rules," Facebook's deputy general counsel said in a statement on March 16.

By handing over that information to a private company, Facebook said Dr. Kogan violated its terms of service.

Facebook in 2015 changed its policies, including altering rules about how third-party apps can access information about users' friends. But user data collected through such apps over the years probably remains in the wild, not to mention the models that can continue to be used to target people around the world.

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How Researchers Learned to Use Facebook 'Likes' to Sway Your Thinking

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Many respondents who took the quiz through the myPersonality app authorized it to access their Facebook profile data, and that of their friends - access that was allowed by the social network at the time.

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How Researchers Learned to Use Facebook ‘Likes’ to Sway Your Thinking  

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Should High Schools Drop Football Because it is too Dangerous?

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The Times reports, "Over the weekend, concerns about player safety intensified when Evan Murray, the star quarterback at Warren Hills Regional High School in New Jersey, collapsed on the field after a hit and died soon after." In fact, he is the third high school player to die directly from injuries in a game this season. Even compared to college football, high school players are significantly more likely to suffer catastrophic injuries.

Should high schools drop football because too many players are getting injured?

In " As Worries Rise and Players Flee, a Missouri School Board Cuts Football," Ken Belson writes:

MAPLEWOOD, Mo. - Students and families at Maplewood Richmond Heights High School are looking forward to homecoming, the highlight of the autumn school calendar for decades. But for the first time, the centerpiece event will be soccer, not football.

The school board in Maplewood, a St. Louis suburb, disbanded the high school's football team in June, even though it reached the state championship game five years ago. A decade ago, such a move would have seemed radical. But concerns are growing about football players' safety, and soccer and other sports are gaining popularity.

"Over all, it was, 'Can we field a team that is competitive and safe for the kids to perform?' " said Nelson Mitten, the president of the Maplewood Richmond Heights School Board, who said players' injuries last season included a broken ankle, a torn anterior cruciate ligament and a significant head injury. "Whenever you have anything like that, you have to be a responsible board and discuss what we can do to make sure we can field a team."

The viability of football at the high school level remains unquestioned in most communities in the United States. But situations like the one in Maplewood are becoming more familiar.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us ...

- Should high schools drop football because too many players are getting injured? Are teenage brains not meant for such a hard-hitting sport?

- Do high schools have a greater degree of responsibility to keep students safe than either the N.F.L. or colleges because players are younger?

- Do you think more safety measures, such as newer equipment or full-time athletic trainers, would better protect students? Or would those changes be too expensive? And would they work?

- The number of male high school football players has fallen in the past five years. Do you think high school football will lose its cultural dominance in many communities? Will it be replaced by other sports, like soccer or even lacrosse? Will flag football ever take the place of tackle football?

- Or is football so firmly rooted in American culture, and so popular among young people, that it will overcome any concerns about injuries?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. All comments are moderated by Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

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Should High Schools Drop Football Because Too Many Players Are Getting Injured?

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The Times reports, "Over the weekend, concerns about player safety intensified when Evan Murray, the star quarterback at Warren Hills Regional High School in New Jersey, collapsed on the field after a hit and died soon after." In fact, he is the third high school player to die directly from injuries in a game this season.

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Is technology helping or hurting teens?

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Teachers who were not involved in the surveys echoed their findings in interviews, saying they felt they had to work harder to capture and hold students' attention.

"I'm an entertainer. I have to do a song and dance to capture their attention," said Hope Molina-Porter, 37, an English teacher at Troy High School in Fullerton, Calif., who has taught for 14 years. She teaches accelerated students, but has noted a marked decline in the depth and analysis of their written work.

She said she did not want to shrink from the challenge of engaging them, nor did other teachers interviewed, but she also worried that technology was causing a deeper shift in how students learned. She also wondered if teachers were adding to the problem by adjusting their lessons to accommodate shorter attention spans.

"Are we contributing to this?" Ms. Molina-Porter said. "What's going to happen when they don't have constant entertainment?"

Scholars who study the role of media in society say no long-term studies have been done that adequately show how and if student attention span has changed because of the use of digital technology. But there is mounting indirect evidence that constant use of technology can affect behavior, particularly in developing brains, because of heavy stimulation and rapid shifts in attention.

Kristen Purcell, the associate director for research at Pew, acknowledged that the findings could be viewed from another perspective: that the education system must adjust to better accommodate the way students learn, a point that some teachers brought up in focus groups themselves.

"What we're labeling as 'distraction,' some see as a failure of adults to see how these kids process information," Ms. Purcell said. "They're not saying distraction is good but that the label of 'distraction' is a judgment of this generation."

The surveys also found that many teachers said technology could be a useful educational tool. In the Pew survey, which was done in conjunction with the College Board and the National Writing Project, roughly 75 percent of 2,462 teachers surveyed said that the Internet and search engines had a "mostly positive" impact on student research skills. And they said such tools had made students more self-sufficient researchers.

But nearly 90 percent said that digital technologies were creating "an easily distracted generation with short attention spans."

Similarly, of the 685 teachers surveyed in the Common Sense project, 71 percent said they thought technology was hurting attention span "somewhat" or "a lot." About 60 percent said it hindered students' ability to write and communicate face to face, and almost half said it hurt critical thinking and their ability to do homework.

There was little difference in how younger and older teachers perceived the impact of technology.

"Boy, is this a clarion call for a healthy and balanced media diet," said Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media. He added, "What you have to understand as a parent is that what happens in the home with media consumption can affect academic achievement."

In interviews, teachers described what might be called a "Wikipedia problem," in which students have grown so accustomed to getting quick answers with a few keystrokes that they are more likely to give up when an easy answer eludes them. The Pew research found that 76 percent of teachers believed students had been conditioned by the Internet to find quick answers.

"They need skills that are different than 'Spit, spit, there's the answer,' " said Lisa Baldwin, 48, a high school teacher in Great Barrington, Mass., who said students' ability to focus and fight through academic challenges was suffering an "exponential decline." She said she saw the decline most sharply in students whose parents allowed unfettered access to television, phones, iPads and video games.

For her part, Ms. Baldwin said she refused to lower her expectations or shift her teaching style to be more entertaining. But she does spend much more time in individual tutoring sessions, she added, coaching students on how to work through challenging assignments.

Other teachers said technology was as much a solution as a problem. Dave Mendell, 44, a fourth-grade teacher in Wallingford, Pa., said that educational video games and digital presentations were excellent ways to engage students on their terms. Teachers also said they were using more dynamic and flexible teaching styles.

"I'm tap dancing all over the place," Mr. Mendell said. "The more I stand in front of class, the easier it is to lose them."

He added that it was tougher to engage students, but that once they were engaged, they were just as able to solve problems and be creative as they had been in the past. He would prefer, he added, for students to use less entertainment media at home, but he did not believe it represented an insurmountable challenge for teaching them at school.

While the Pew research explored how technology has affected attention span, it also looked at how the Internet has changed student research habits. By contrast, the Common Sense survey focused largely on how teachers saw the impact of entertainment media on a range of classroom skills.

The surveys include some findings that appear contradictory. In the Common Sense report, for instance, some teachers said that even as they saw attention spans wane, students were improving in subjects like math, science and reading.

But researchers said the conflicting views could be the result of subjectivity and bias. For example, teachers may perceive themselves facing both a more difficult challenge but also believe that they are overcoming the challenge through effective teaching.

Pew said its research gave a "complex and at times contradictory" picture of teachers' view of technology's impact.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who studies the impact of technology on the brain and is the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Hospital, emphasized that teachers' views were subjective but nevertheless could be accurate in sensing dwindling attention spans among students.

His own research shows what happens to attention and focus in mice when they undergo the equivalent of heavy digital stimulation. Students saturated by entertainment media, he said, were experiencing a "supernatural" stimulation that teachers might have to keep up with or simulate.

The heavy technology use, Dr. Christakis said, "makes reality by comparison uninteresting."

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Technology Is Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say

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Teachers who were not involved in the surveys echoed their findings in interviews, saying they felt they had to work harder to capture and hold students' attention. "I'm an entertainer. I have to do a song and dance to capture their attention," said Hope Molina-Porter, 37, an English teacher at Troy High School in Fullerton, Calif., who has taught for 14 years.

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For the next 10 days we are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Third Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here.

Up first, an essay by Zahra Nasser, age 17.

Read more...

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Editorial Winner - The Learning Network Blog - The New York Times

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For the next 10 days we are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Third Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here. Up first, an essay by Zahra Nasser, age 17. Read more...

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How does advertising benefit and hurt Youtube, its creators, and consumers?

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AT&T believes that its dialogue with YouTube played a role in the platform's announcement last month that humans will manually vet videos from channels that are part of Google Preferred - a designation applied to channels representing the top 5 percent of content on YouTube that helps brands advertise on popular videos.

Over the past year, major marketers have been demanding more accountability from Google, Facebook and the rest of the digital advertising ecosystem, as they have come to the conclusion that the same algorithmic tools that allow unprecedented access to consumers can be used to spread misinformation, hate speech and harmful videos that target children. On Monday, Keith Weed, the chief marketing officer of Unilever, called on tech companies to take greater responsibility for what appears on their sites and said that his company would not invest in platforms "that do not protect our children or which create division in society and promote anger or hate."

"We've been talking about the digital supply chain for several years but what happened last year is it became a societal issue, a people issue," Mr. Weed said in an interview after delivering remarks on eroding trust in tech companies at an industry conference in Palm Desert, Calif.

Mr. Weed said that while he would pull dollars from the platforms "if something happened which was completely inappropriate for our brands or our business," he wanted to work with the companies to improve their sites.

"What I'm not doing is giving some sort of public ultimatum," he said.

Brian Wieser, a media analyst at Pivotal Research, said that marketers were clearly having an influence.

"If they said nothing then the only thing that would cause the platforms to act is the risk of government regulation," he said.

But Unilever, he said, was not taking an especially hard line with the tech companies as far as its advertising budget. "It's not like they set a threshold and said companies who don't do this lose their money specifically," he said.

Unilever, which owns brands like Ben & Jerry's and Dove, did not pull its marketing dollars from YouTube last year, saying at the time that the number of ads running with objectionable content was proportionally small and that it would use the moment to win new concessions from Google.

Mr. Weed reiterated that position on Monday.

"What I'm talking about here is moving the conversation along," he said.

Unilever, for example, has been talking with YouTube about implementing more human screening of videos that include children to make sure that they are not being exploited.

"There is nothing we take more seriously than the trust and safety of our users, customers and partners, and we will continue to work to earn that trust every day," a Google spokesperson said of Mr. Weed's remarks.

Even though AT&T hasn't been spending money on YouTube ads in the past year, it has worked closely with the platform to improve its systems and is eager to have its ads again seen by YouTube's huge audience of teen and twentysomething viewers. YouTube has said that its manual reviews of Google Preferred channels would be complete by the end of March.

"We're very hopeful we can get back onto YouTube," Ms. Carter said. "It delivers the scale we want but we had to roll up our sleeves and find that performance elsewhere."

AT&T spent more than $1 billion on advertising in the United States last year through September, while Unilever spent $644 million, according to data from Kantar Media. AT&T was the sixth-biggest advertiser in the country during that period, Unilever was No. 16.

AT&T also said that it would audit its programmatic ad spending in coming months, as it tries to better understand the process through which technology and automation place its online ads in front of consumers. That realm of advertising has drawn scrutiny from marketers in recent years amid reports that much of their spending, which is difficult to trace, is going to tech companies and agency fees rather than publishers.

Ms. Carter said that it would be working with its agency, Omnicom's Hearts & Science, and the firms AdFin and Amino Payments to figure out how its money moves through those systems.

"I believe that marketers, and to a certain extent agency partners, have not been in control of the way the advertising process is moving," Ms. Carter said. "It's incumbent upon us to drive the key issues and shine a light on them and ensure that budgets are being spent in service of the right goals."

AT&T's efforts underscore the strange world that advertisers are navigating online.

"Five, six, seven years ago, the majority of spend was in TV, print, even outdoor, and you had absolute clarity in where your advertising was appearing but far less data around who you were advertising against," Ms. Carter said. "We've flipped that now.

"We have incredible data and insights into the people we're advertising against, but we no longer are really seeing across the digital ecosystem."

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YouTube Revamped Its Ad System. AT&T Still Hasn't Returned.

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AT&T believes that its dialogue with YouTube played a role in the platform's announcement last month that humans will manually vet videos from channels that are part of Google Preferred - a designation applied to channels representing the top 5 percent of content on YouTube that helps brands advertise on popular videos.

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Depression, the Secret We Share

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Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share

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"The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment." In a talk equal parts eloquent and devastating, writer Andrew Solomon takes you to the darkest corners of his mind during the years he battled depression.

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How To Make Stress Your Friend

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Transcript of "How to make stress your friend"

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TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case.

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How to Humor Your Stress | Loretta LaRoche | TEDxNewBedford

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Why Aren't We Teaching Mindfulness

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Why Aren't We Teaching You Mindfulness | AnneMarie Rossi | TEDxYouth@MileHigh

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Toxic Culture of Education

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Toxic culture of education: Joshua Katz at TEDxUniversityofAkron

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Generation Stress: From Striving to Thriving

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Stress Management and Human Spirituality

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Generation Stress: From Surviving to Thriving | Kristen Race | TEDxMileHigh

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In this inspiring talk, neuroscientist Kristen Race explains why Generation X is now "Generation Stress," and proposes small changes that will help you break the cycle of stress in your own life and your family's. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

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Stress at School | Carley Rogers | TEDxYouth@ParkCity

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Ted Talks stressed teens - Google Search

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znlsoaM_ALQ Teens are the most stressed population in America. Learn how simple mindfulness exercises ...

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To understand why many conservatives in rural America believe this, you must start with first principles, because the argument ultimately isn't about guns; it runs even deeper than the Second Amendment. At a 2015 campaign event during the Iowa caucuses, J. C. Watts, the former congressman from Oklahoma, spoke about perspectives on original sin. It helps illuminate the differences in worldview between many conservatives and liberals. Mr. Watts said Democrats think people were born basically good, so when good people did bad things, something in society (in this case, guns) needed to be controlled. Republicans think the fault lies with the person - the perpetrator of the evil. Bad choices result in bad things being done, in part because the perpetrator lacks the moral guidance the Christian faith provides.

The reaction to mass shootings highlights this difference. Liberals blame the guns and want to debate gun control. For conservatives, the blame lies with the shooter, not the gun.

To my conservative friends, it's a matter of liberty and personal responsibility. Even after a horrific event like the school shooting in Florida, where 17 people were killed, more gun control would be compromising those first principles. For them, compromising those principles would be even more horrific and detrimental to society than any shooting. What my conservative friends see is not gun control, but rather control, period.

Not everyone here is an N.R.A. nut, but they think the N.R.A. may be the last line of defense for the Second Amendment. The apocalyptic videos about gun control from the N.R.A. spokeswoman Dana Loesch are over the top, as my conservative friends here know, but they think they are fun for the basic reason that liberals grow faint after viewing them.

Many people own guns because they simply enjoy them - shooting them, the feel of them, their history, their role in protection. They want guns for the same reason you might want a particular kind of car. They also believe that having a gun makes them less likely to become a victim. Here, guns are tools. We hunt with them.

Because we live in a free country, we can have a great many things. But few of those things deserved special mention in our Constitution. Guns did.

Throwing around statistics on shooting deaths in America will not make rural gun owners give up their guns. Make no mistake: These statistics and the deaths behind them sadden rural gun owners just as much as they sadden you.

But again, where you might blame the guns, they don't. They blame the shooters.

I worry that the ready availability of guns contributes to the number of suicides in rural America. Nothing crushes a small town like a suicide, as nearly everyone knows the victim or a family member.

I had a chat with a good friend the other day. He's another law enforcement officer. He thinks the gun debate isn't being framed in a productive way.

He asked: "What are you, Bob? Pro-gun or anti-gun? Pro-Second Amendment or anti-Second Amendment?"

"Pro-Second Amendment," I said. "All in favor of rifles, shotguns and handguns. Concealed carry makes me nervous, but I guess I'm for it, and I want AR-15s and their kin banned."

"So, are you anti-gun or pro-gun?"

"Well, I guess I don't exactly know," I replied.

"Me neither," he said. "I'm a lifelong hunter, but when I tell my friends I don't want people with AR-15s slung over their shoulders at the county fair, some say I'm anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment, and I'm not. We need to frame this conversation differently before we can get anywhere."

I know those great kids from Parkland will accept only bans on AR-15s and more - I understand why - and some conservatives seem to be moving on age limits, background checks and perhaps on bump stocks. The Florida Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott have responded to the tragedy and raised the age on gun purchases.

Maybe we are stumbling to a better sort of dialogue, led by these kids from Florida and students all over the country who walked out to protest gun violence. There is room for some compromise.

For me, guns always bring to mind Grandpa Leonard. I remember the first time he took me hunting. He took a shot, and a squirrel fell from the branches of the oak. "Looks like we eat stew tonight," he said. I retrieved the squirrel, still warm, in the cool Iowa summer morning, and laid it in the pile of four or five he had already shot.

Grandpa Leonard was not a Republican but a devoted New Deal Democrat. He went to his grave knowing that the policies of President Franklin Roosevelt saved his family, including 11 children, from starvation during the Great Depression. Grandpa was a pro-union coal miner, a farm hand, a road crew worker, a boat builder and a factory worker.

Today, many rural men just like him are dedicated Republicans. If Democrats want to engage rural America culturally and politically, they need to understand us, and at least some of our ideals.

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Opinion | Why Gun Culture Is So Strong in Rural America

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To understand why many conservatives in rural America believe this, you must start with first principles, because the argument ultimately isn't about guns; it runs even deeper than the Second Amendment. At a 2015 campaign event during the Iowa caucuses, J. C. Watts, the former congressman from Oklahoma, spoke about perspectives on original sin.

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Why Gun Culture Is So Strong in Rural America  

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One of the first things I learned, when my friends and I started to get some attention, is how quickly politicians try to co-opt youth movements for their own agendas. Both Republicans and Democrats claimed to care about immigrants, but both parties continued to deport people and failed to pass immigration reform. The same thing is already happening to the Parkland kids. I saw politicians turn a recent town hall for the parents, teachers and students into a platform to debate not a solution to gun violence, but which party was better.

Young activists must learn to trust their instincts and not let these debates distract them from their goals. At the same time, they have to trust the wisdom and experience of those who preceded them.

Before embarking on our march, I had the opportunity to meet with the Rev. James Lawson, who helped coordinate the 1963 March on Washington. He served as one of the advisers for our walk. The struggle of black people in America, not just during the civil rights movement but today, is one we knew we had to understand and emulate. We called our walk the Trail of Dreams as a tribute to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as a memorial to the Native Americans who died in the Trail of Tears. We wanted to remind people how many atrocities have been carried out in this county in the name of "law and order."

The young activists of today are more adept with social media than we were. But I would encourage them to get out into the streets to talk to people. Our march took four months, and we spent time in the communities we visited. We rested on Mondays because weekends were when people were most likely to be free to walk with us.

One challenge in every social justice movement is making sure it's not dominated by a single voice. At the beginning, I was surprised to be criticized by fellow activists because I was not a Mexican immigrant. I did not have to walk across the border; my family came to this country from Ecuador on an airplane, with a tourist visa. My parents bought an apartment before we arrived. Because I was more privileged than many others, I tried to put them front and center when reporters came to talk to us. Learning to give up your seat so others can have a voice helps legitimize and strengthen your movement.

This is very important for the Parkland teenagers, many of whom are white and well off - the kind of kids the news media typically pays the most attention to. They have met with students from Chicago, where young people have long been speaking out about gun violence without much national attention. But they can and ought to do more.

At the same time, as a woman, I also knew I had to speak out, because my voice was often ignored. One day, two male reporters asked me, "Where are the students who are walking?"

I smiled and said, "I am one of them, how can I help you?"

They looked at me and said, "No, the people who are walking, where are the boys?"

This kept on happening. Maybe they didn't think a woman could walk 18 miles a day, or maybe they thought that because I was overweight, I couldn't possibly do this. After a CNN interview during which I had to force myself into the conversation, I shared what I had been experiencing with my fellow walkers. They decided that from then on, I would be the first person to speak at events.

Perhaps the hardest thing about being part of a youth movement is transitioning out of it. I am now 33. It's been 17 years since the introduction of the Dream Act, and still it has not passed. Part of me feels like I have failed.

I am still involved, but not at the forefront of the fight. I realized I could no longer go days without sleep, working on strategy and giving interviews. I needed a succession plan. And I wanted to help mentor other smart and motivated young people. Perhaps the Parkland students will be luckier than we were, and will see stricter gun control enacted before they hit their 30s. But if not, they will have to pass on the baton. This is important not just for the continuity of a movement but also for the sanity of the individuals within it.

Finally, people are going to attack any activist in the spotlight. Being vocal in the age of social media is hard. My advice to the youth activists of today is: Don't read the comments. And if you do, don't take what they say personally. While it is worth your time to listen respectfully to those who think differently from you, when someone is insulting you, it's best to ignore them.

I will always be an advocate, but it will take people who are brave, energetic - and young - to keep the fire burning. Thankfully, the resilience and strength of the Parkland students and the next generation of Dreamers fill me with hope.

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dream act (development  relief and education for minors act)

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Opinion | What the Dreamers Can Teach the Parkland Kids

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One of the first things I learned, when my friends and I started to get some attention, is how quickly politicians try to co-opt youth movements for their own agendas. Both Republicans and Democrats claimed to care about immigrants, but both parties continued to deport people and failed to pass immigration reform.

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What the Dreamers Can Teach the Parkland Kids  

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Opinion | A Billionaire and a Nurse Shouldn’t Pay the Same Fine for Speeding (Published 2018)

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A flat fine threatens poor people with financial ruin, but it lets rich people off easy. Real justice requires punishment that is equally felt.

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Opinion | Students, here's what you missed when you were walking out - The Washington Post

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The people on the Internet think you would have been discussing the Second Amendment today, but if it has taken you until March to get to the Second Amendment, something is very wrong in your class.

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Opinion | Students, here’s what you missed when you were walking out - The Washington Post

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The country is horrified by each mass school shooting - Umquaa Community College, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary, Columbine. These tragic events grab national headlines and stir political debates about the role of guns in our society. But the vast majority of the more than 30,000 gun deaths each year in the United States are not from mass shootings. In fact, most gun deaths aren't even homicides or accidental shootings. Instead, they are suicides. And more than 60 percent of people in this country who die from guns die by suicide.

With such a complex problem, what's the answer to so many gun deaths in the United States?

After the recent shooting in Roseburg, Ore., that killed nine people, many in the local community said they thought that more guns might help keep them safer.

A week has passed since J. J. Vicari huddled underneath a desk while gunshots exploded in the classroom next door. Now he is thinking about guns. Not about tightening gun laws, as President Obama urged after nine people were killed at the community college here. But about buying one for himself.

"It's opened my eyes," said Mr. Vicari, 19. "I want to have a gun in the house to protect myself, to protect the people I'm with. I'm sure I'll have a normal life and never have to go through anything like this, but I want to be sure."

That sentiment is in line with a common refrain promoted by the National Rifle Association that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

On the other hand, many see the best answer to gun violence as changing the way we see guns. Whether they are intended for hunting, sport or self-defense, guns are a type of potentially dangerous equipment that kills many people, just as cars kill people. In fact, about as many people die each year by firearms as die in motor vehicle traffic deaths.

The Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes:

Cars exemplify the public health approach we need to apply to guns. We don't ban cars, but we do require driver's licenses, seatbelts, airbags, padded dashboards, safety glass and collapsible steering columns. And we've reduced the auto fatality rate by 95 percent.

And as for gun deaths by suicide, Margot Sanger-Katz writes:

Not all of those suicides are by gun, but a majority are. And while some people feeling suicidal impulses will choose another method if a gun is not at hand, public health researchers cite two reasons guns are particularly dangerous: 1) Guns are more lethal than most other methods people try, so someone who attempts suicide another way is more likely to survive; 2) Studies suggest that suicide attempts often occur shortly after people decide to kill themselves, so people with deadly means at hand when the impulse strikes are more likely to use them than those who have to wait or plan.

Students: Tell us ...

- What's the answer to so many gun deaths in the United States?

- Do you think it's possible for the government to find a healthy balance between protecting people's right to own a gun and public safety? Do you believe the government is currently striking the right balance? Why?

- Would you rather the government err on the side of protecting an individual's right to own a gun or the public's health and safety? Or do you feel this is a false choice? Why?

- After mass shootings or renewed fears that the government will ban gun ownership, many people instinctively go out to buy guns - perhaps to feel safer in times of insecurity. Americans own an estimated 300 million guns or more. Do you think people buying more guns will prevent gun deaths?

- Do you find Mr. Kristof's argument convincing, that guns should be treated as dangerous equipment, like cars, and should therefore have public health research help guide safety regulations, such as car airbags or smart-gun technology, to try to save lives? Or do you see gun safety regulations as just an excuse for taking away people's right to own a gun?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. All comments are moderated by Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

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What Are Some Answers to America's Gun Violence?

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The country is horrified by each mass school shooting - Umquaa Community College, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary, Columbine. These tragic events grab national headlines and stir political debates about the role of guns in our society. But the vast majority of the more than 30,000 gun deaths each year in the United States are not from mass shootings.

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Adults are supposed to take care of children - not only keep them safe, but make them feel safe. Schools are essentially an extension of the home, in that sense, providing sanctuaries of learning, of nurturing and care. But after years of attacks by people with weapons of war, students cannot feel safe and are demanding that adults end years of complaisance and act. They are not asking for their schools to become armed garrisons. Rather, they want those weapons to be brought under control. And unlike too many adults, the young people leading Wednesday's walkout at schools around the country - inspired by angry, motivated students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed by a former student with an assault weapon - have had the courage to take on the industry responsible for blocking every reasonable measure to limit access to guns, including those that make it all too easy to commit mass murder.

As Stoneman Douglas junior Florence Yared said in front of the Florida State Capitol late last month, "You adults have failed us by not creating a safer place for your children to go to school. So we, the next generation, will not fail our own kids. We will make this change happen. If not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, next year. Take it from us. You created a mess for us, but we will make this world safer for our children."

With Wednesday's demonstration, and their March for Our Lives movement on March 24 in Washington, young voices are being heard. How will the nation's adults respond? Hopefully, by amplifying their demand: Never again.

"No kid should be afraid to go to school, no kid should be afraid to walk outside, and no kid should have to worry about being shot. Now that's why I'm marching."
- Alfonso Calderón, Junior
"The 'children' you pissed off will not forget this in the voting booth. Don't doubt the power of the younger generation, because we are a force to be reckoned with."
-Aly Sheehy, Senior
"Maybe the adults have gotten used to saying 'it is what it is,' but if us students have learned anything, it's that if you don't study, you will fail. And in this case if you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead, so it's time to start doing something. We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we're going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because...we are going to be the last mass shooting."
- Emma González, Senior
"High schools shouldn't be hashtags every other day"
-Jaclyn Corin, Junior
"More prayer, Jesus, god, and compassion won't bring back the victims that sadly lost their lives. It won't bring back the sense of security that my fellow peers and I lost. The only way to get that back is through gun control starting now."
-Jose Iglesias, Senior

"The children will become leaders as the leaders have become children."
-Madison Leal, Junior
"We march for Parkland, Newtown, Chicago, St. Louis, Columbine, and every other town in America affected by gun violence."
-Nikhita Nookala, Senior
"On March 24th, #IWillMarch so no child ever has to worry about texting their parents a final "I love you.'"
-Alex Wind, Junior
"Our trauma isn't going away, but neither are we. We will fight everyday because we have to, because change is the only thing that makes any of this bearable."
-Leonor Munoz, Senior
"The fact that some of the students at Stoneman Douglas high school ... are showing more maturity and political action than many of our elected officials is a testament to how disgusting and broken our political system is right now in America. But we're trying to fix that."
-David Hogg, Senior
"Our nation's leaders are baffled and surprised that a bunch of 17 year olds are planning a nationwide movement but haven't even blinked that we'll also be able to purchase weapons of war in the same year."
-Adam Alhanti, Junior
"The faces you see all over the media are not the only members of this movement. If you are willing to help to make a change, you are also a member. Simple as that."
-Morgan Williams, Junior
"We may be young but our voices are louder than you can imagine."
-Sarah Chadwick, Junior
"I blame the government for what happened and the people that are sending prayers and condolences but aren't doing anything. It's just heartbreaking to know that the people that are representing you are failing you."
-Lina Crisostomo, Junior
"This isn't red versus blue. This is life or death. And we refuse to ever allow any other student or human being to endure what we endured."
-Liz Stout, Senior Follow The New York Times Opinion section on and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

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Adults are supposed to take care of children - not only keep them safe, but make them feel safe. Schools are essentially an extension of the home, in that sense, providing sanctuaries of learning, of nurturing and care.

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On Campus features personal essays and art by college students, professors, and administrators on issues affecting higher education and university life. Here you will find dispatches about everything from free speech and trigger warnings to drinking, tuition costs and job prospects.

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Second Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day, in the order of submission.

Below, an essay by Zoie Taylore.
Redefining Ladylike
"I did it five times."
"Well - I did it 12 times."
"I've got all of you beat. I did it 16 times!"

No - this isn't a scene from a raunchy high school movie, but rather a group of young women discussing how many times they've said the naughty word: sorry.

Saying sorry, especially for women, has become the new norm. As natural nurturers this instinctive space-filler keeps the peace, while simultaneously ensuring our likability and ladylikeness. This instant "belly up" tactic works to defeat women on a daily basis.

This "sorry" epidemic is detrimental to women, especially for the future of female leadership. According to the New York Times article "Speaking While Female", when a woman speaks in a professional setting, she walks a tightrope. This tightrope being the fine line between being barely heard, and being too aggressive. Speaking up puts you into the automatic bitch box. But not speaking up gets you nowhere, creating the ultimate female catch-22. This lexical faux pas could very well be the reason only 5.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEO's are women, and that women hold a mere 1 percent of the world's wealth.

Now, sorry in itself is not a bad word, nor is it gender exclusive. In fact, it is a common trait of politeness. And, according to a Salon article called "I'm Not Sorry for Saying Sorry: Women Should Feel Free to Apologize as Much as They Want," sorry is just a "ritual of restoring balance to a conversation." In other words, a form of chitchat to make people more comfortable. But constantly apologizing for speaking your mind, or for things that are not your fault is exhausting, incarcerating and usually exclusive to women.

Melissa Atkins Wardy, author of "Redefining Girly", recently stated in a CNN article that "Our girls need to learn their voice has every right to take up space in a conversation, in a room, and in an argument." Confidence counts just as much as competence and this generation of girls is lacking in one of the two. With 60 percent of all university graduates being women, it certainly isn't competence. And in addition, saying and feeling sorry for doing day-to-day activities causes a serious confidence gap between men and women. This is why men are more likely to feel over-confident, while women are prone to underestimation.

The recent Dove commercial "Sorry Not Sorry" has brought attention to the sorry sickness. With more women acknowledging the excessive use of this appeaser, the apology apocalypse will hopefully be a thing of the past.

"Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over." - Bella Abzug
Sources
ABC News. "Pantene Commercial Asks Whether Women Say 'Sorry' Too Much." ABC News, 18 June 2014. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.

Klingle, Kylah. "I'm Not Sorry for Saying Sorry: Women Should Feel Free to Apologize as Much as They Want." Salon, 12 July 2014. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.

Sandberg, Sheryl, and Adam Grant. "Speaking While Female." The New York Times, 10 Jan. 2015. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.

Wallace, Kelly. "Sorry to Ask but ... Do Women Apologize More than Men?" CNN, 26 June 2014. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.

Warner, Judith. "Fact Sheet: The Women's Leadership Gap." Center for American Progress. 7 March 2014. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.

If you enjoyed this contest, stay tuned for the announcement of our Sixth Annual Summer Reading Contest, in which students are invited to write in weekly about the Times article of their choice.

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Editorial Contest Winner | Redefining Ladylike

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Second Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day, in the order of submission. Below, an essay by Zoie Taylore. Redefining Ladylike "I did it five times." "Well - I did it 12 times." "I've got all of you beat.

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Research shows that teenagers' brains are not fully insulated, which means that signals move slowly. Frances Jensen, who wrote The Teenage Brain, explains. Originally broadcast Jan. 28, 2015.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're going to talk about some neuroscience that will be of particular interest to the parents of teenagers and to anyone who's ever been a teenager. Recent research into how the human brain develops helps explain some of the reasons teenagers can be especially impulsive, moody and not very good at responsible decision-making. The research also explains why teenagers can be especially susceptible to addictions, including drugs, alcohol, smoking and, yes, smartphones.

My guest is neurologist Dr. Frances Jensen, author of the new book "The Teenage Brain." She's chair of the department of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and was formally a Harvard professor and director of translational neuroscience at Boston Children's Hospital.

She was the single parent of teenage sons. Her sons are now in their 20s. Later, we'll talk about something that afflicts many adults - the feeling that your brain has been overloaded with too much information. I spoke with Jensen last year when her book was first published. It's now out in paperback.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: Dr. Jensen, welcome to FRESH AIR.

FRANCES JENSEN: Great to be here.

GROSS: So you point out we know now that the brain is the last organ to fully develop...

JENSEN: Yes.

GROSS: ...And that the teenage brain is still developing. And the part of the brain that's responsible for what's called, like, executive decision-making - judgment - isn't fully developed yet. It's still starting to develop when kids are in their teens. So which part of the brain is that, and how underdeveloped is it?

JENSEN: Well, that's the prefrontal and frontal cortex - the very front of your brain. And teenagers are gaining increasing access as they go through their teens to that part of the brain. It used to be thought that children turned into almost adults - as we put in the book, adults with fewer miles on them - when they pass through puberty. And they kind of look like adults. And you had the expectation that their brain - because their body looks like an adult - that their brain should also be structurally like an adult. Well, it's far from the truth.

The teenage brain is not there all the way. It takes, often, into your early 20s and possibly late-20s and, you know, maybe even beyond for the brain to fully mature to adult levels. And one of the main drivers of this is the way our brain connects regions to each other inside the brain. These connection tracts have to be insulated for very fast signaling.

And we have a natural insulation that's similar to the insulation around an electrical wire, which is usually a, you know, rubber insulation. We have something - a natural insulation - called myelin. It's a fat, and it takes time - cells have to build myelin, and they grow it around the outside of these tracts. And that takes years.

It's interesting - it goes from the back of your brain to the front, so the last place to be connected, to be fully myelinated, is the front of your brain. And what's in the front? Your prefrontal cortex and your frontal cortex. These are areas where we have insight, empathy. These executive functions, such as impulse control, risk-taking behavior, is suppressed by activity in your frontal lobes.

GROSS: So what does that explain about teenage behavior?

JENSEN: So it does explain, at least in part, why they are - their frontal lobes are there. They're there and they're built. They're just not accessed in as rapid a manner because the insulation to the wiring to them isn't fully developed, so the signals go more slowly. Hence, teenagers are not as readily able to access their frontal lobe to say, oh, I better not do this.

An adult is much more likely to control impulses or weigh out different factors in decisions, where a teenager may not actually have full on-line, in-the-moment capacity. And that's why we see this increased in risk - you know, classic sort of increase risky behavior.

We talk a lot about the downside of the limitations of, oh, the teen brain, you know, no insight, no judgment. Well, of course there's some. It's a gradual process. It's not - never all or none. But there's also wonderful - this is a wonderful time in life for teenagers. This is a time where because of their enhanced synaptic plasticity, which we can talk about, they can learn faster. They can absorb more information. They can...

GROSS: Well, on a related note, you say teenagers cannot only learn faster but the memories last longer. Like, they're more deeply ingrained. Why is that?

JENSEN: Well, the whole process of learning and memory is thought to be a process of building stronger connections between your brain cells. Your brain cells create new networks when you learn new tasks and new skills and new memories. And where brain cells connect are called synapses. And the synapse actually gets strengthened the more you use it. And especially if you use it in a patterned way, like with practice, it gets even stronger, such that after the practice, you don't need much effort to remember something.

This actually has a scientific basis. This has been studied in slices of brain, for instance, in - from animal experiments, where it's called long-term potentiation - long-term meaning it's lasting a long time, potentiation meaning strengthening. Turns out that if you are stimulating one brain cell and recording from a second brain cell, if you do an initial stimulation, you get a small response from the second brain cell. But if you give a pattern stimulation, a fast-pattern stimulation akin to a practice session, from that point on, even if you go back to the little, small stimulus you used originally, you get a much bigger response on that second neuron.

It's now remembered this, and it's - how is the response bigger? It's actually physically built a bigger synapse on the receiving end of that second cell. All the machinery of that requires more activation, more excitation of the brain. We are programmed, over development, to have more excitation, more molecules that subserve excitation during childhood and teen years than an adult.

GROSS: Teenagers are more prone to addiction. Why is that?

JENSEN: Well, addiction is actually a form of learning. And just like when I was talking about learning requires synaptic plasticity and enhancement of a synapse based on repeated exposure to facts in a memorization task, what happens in addiction is there's also repeated exposure, except it's to a substance. And it's not in the part of the brain we use for learning.

It's in the reward-seeking area of your brain - the limbic system, some place called the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area you read a lot about. And it's involving dopamine and other neurotransmitters. It's happening in the same way that learning stimulates and enhances a synapse. Substances do the same thing.

They build a reward circuit around that substance to a much stronger, harder, longer, stronger addiction. Just like learning a fact is more efficient, sadly, addiction is more efficient in the adolescent brain. That is an important fact for an adolescent to know about themselves - that they can get addicted faster. It also explains why - and it also is a way to debunk a myth, by the way, that, oh, teens are resilient. They'll be fine, you know? He can just go off and drink or do this or that. They'll bounce back. Actually, it's quite the contrary. The effects of substances are more permanent on the teen brain. They have more deleterious effects and can be more toxic to the teen than in the adult.

GROSS: It's easy to turn off to what you just said and say, oh, all moralistic people talk that way about drugs. So are you coming at this from a moralistic, preachy perspective?

JENSEN: Absolutely not. And that's exactly why the book contains lots of facts and graphs from actual research that shows this very fact that drugs and alcohols, other substances have different effects on the teen and adolescent brain than they do an adult.

This is still a very imprintable, impressionable period of brain development. So it, you know, is kind of common sense when you think about it. Good things can have a good effect on the brain in a stronger way than later in life, and bad things can have a bad effect on the brain.

GROSS: There's an interesting paradox you point out when it comes to alcohol in the teenage brain. The teenage brain is more resilient when it comes to, like, the sedative effects of alcohol. Like, you know, they're not going to get tired as quickly. At the same time, that means they might drink more (laughter). So would you talk about that paradox?

JENSEN: Yes, so the alcohol actually - because it's affecting critical machinery in the brain that is actually at higher levels in the teenager than in the adult, there is more of target material for alcohol in the developing brain than later in life. And hence, it can have a more toxic effect.

There are studies that show that binge drinking - which is probably the worst scenario actually - binge drinking can actually kill brain cells in the adolescent brain where it does not to the same extent in the adult brain.

So for the same amount of alcohol, you actually get - you can actually have brain damage, permanent brain damage, in an adolescent for the same blood alcohol level that may not - may cause, you know, bad sedation in the adult but not actual brain damage.

GROSS: What about drinking's effect on memory? You know, teenagers are so good at learning and remembering. Does alcohol reverse that at all...

JENSEN: Yes.

GROSS: ...Or impede it?

JENSEN: Yeah, well, so one of the things that we go through in the book is to talk about how do we learn? What is learning? And what are the targets for learning? And how do drugs lock on to those targets and impair them? Well, alcohol is one of those drugs.

And it will actually cause - counteract the effects of learning, so that it will certainly impede learning. And there isn't as much of a bounce back from alcohol exposure in the adolescent brain when there's - you know, looking at experiments, looking at animal tissue, we see that there's a more permanent effect on learning in the adolescent compared to the adult.

GROSS: So is, like, alcohol likely to impair your ability to learn new things, or will it unravel the things you have already learned?

JENSEN: That's a very good question. Alcohol will impair you from even laying down a memory because it has a sedative effect. And it's actually causing more inhibition and blocking excitation. So we need excitation to learn. And it's actually diminishing that. So the process of learning doesn't even get started. And I think in the most extreme case - of course, you know after a binge drinking, there is complete amnesia around the - often the event and even for the hours after having had a binging episode.

GROSS: Let's look at marijuana. First of all, you point out that the marijuana of today is a lot more potent than the marijuana of the '60s or the '70s. So, like, things have really changed in terms of what teenagers are getting exposed to. But does marijuana have a particularly potent effect on the teenage brain?

JENSEN: Yeah, marijuana actually does have a different effect on the teenage brain than the adult. And this is one of those things that you want to let kids know about, that because they have more plasticity, more substrate, a lot of these drugs of abuse are going to lock on to more targets in their brains than in an adult, for instance.

And it's interesting because we have natural cannabinoids - they're called - in the brain. We have kind of a natural substance that actually locks onto receptors on brain cells. It has, for the most part, a more dampening sedative effect. So when you actually ingest or smoke or get cannabis into your bloodstream, it does get into the brain, and it goes to these same targets. It turns out that these targets actually block the process of learning and memory, so that you have an impairment of being able to lay down new memories.

Now, what's interesting is not only does the teen brain have more places for the cannabis to actually land, if you will, it actually stays there longer. It locks on longer than in the adult brain. So there were studies done that showed that several days out, there's still impaired learning and memory, say, in experimental adolescent animals compared to adults, where it's a more fleeting effect.

So this is important for teenagers to know. For instance, if they were, you know, to be - get high over a weekend, the effects may be still there on Thursday and Friday later that week. An adult wouldn't have that same long-term effect.

GROSS: My guest is neuroscientist Frances Jensen, author of the book "The Teenage Brain." She's the chair of the department of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. After we take a short break, we'll talk we'll talk about what neuroscientists are learning about multitasking and the difficulty of absorbing and retaining the overwhelming amount of information we consume. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: You recommend keeping cellphones and computers out of your teenager's bedroom, to which I say, good luck...

JENSEN: That's right.

GROSS: (Laughter) ...With that. Why do you recommend that?

JENSEN: Well, you know, that is - it may or may not be enforceable. I think the point is that you - when they're trying to go to sleep, to have this incredibly alluring opportunity to network socially or be stimulated by a computer or a cellphone really disrupts sleep patterns. Again, it's also not great to have multiple channels of stimulation while you're trying to memorize for a test the next day, for instance. So I think I would restate that and say especially when they're trying to go to sleep to really try to suggest that they don't go under the sheets and have their cellphone on and be tweeting people.

First of all, then the artificial light can affect your brain. It decreases some chemicals in your brain that help promote sleep such as melatonin. So we know artificial light is not good for the brain. That's why I think people - there have been studies that show that reading books with a regular warm light doesn't disrupt sleep to the extent that using a Kindle does.

GROSS: You suggest that maybe teens and people in their 20s now - these being the first generation to actually grow up with devices - that they were exposed to electronic distractions from the start...

JENSEN: Right.

GROSS: ...That no one else in history has been exposed to. So their brains might be different in some fundamental way. What are your thoughts about that?

JENSEN: Well, it's all very speculative at this point in time because of course the experiment hasn't completed itself. This generation hasn't fully made it to, you know, full-fledged adulthood, which I would say would be sort of your mid-30s. So I think that if we look back and see how well the human brain adapts to so many - has adapted to so many different things over the centuries - I mean, think about reading. Until about three or four centuries ago, it was very uncommon for humans to read. It was just the religious community and the academia that read. And most of the populations in even Western countries were not reading.

So we've developed a reading brain over just those few centuries. And we've come to rely on it very, very heavily. So we hope that there are new skills being embedded in these brains as they learn how to deal with all this input. I guess my concern is that the teen period is rather vulnerable because the input's out there. We can't control it. We can't really control their access to it. But what is more concerning to me is that they are not mindful of how to manage this input.

GROSS: So in talking about some of the things teenagers are prone to because their brain is still developing, one of the things is stress. So how does the development of the teenage brain figure into the possibility of being more stressed?

JENSEN: Right. So the teenage brain, like the childhood brain, is a very impressionable brain. The environment is molding it by the minute, right? So stress, just like substances, just like good experiences, are changing the wiring diagram of the brain and changing the chemistry of the brain and setting it up for future life. So stress, just like any other kind of stimulus, has been shown to have an effect on long-term brain health. Stressful situations in adolescence have been shown to increase the risk of depression, for instance, as adults. So we have to think about, you know, what is in our environment during the teen years.

GROSS: So does the ability to learn more quickly figure into the stress, too?

JENSEN: I think...

GROSS: Like, why are teenagers more prone to stress or to being moody?

JENSEN: Well, I think...

GROSS: I don't know if those are the same thing.

JENSEN: Well, they're not actually, so...

GROSS: OK. Let's stick with the stress then.

JENSEN: More prone to stress because they have more plasticity. Their synapses are being conditioned by whatever's in their environment. If stress is in their environment, they build synapses in a different way than they would without stress. And in the case of stress during the teen years, it can increase your risk of depression. So you are altering areas of your brain that would be - that are not functioning normally in depression.

GROSS: So a stressed teenager is more likely to have depression as a teenager or into later life as well?

JENSEN: Later life as well. Now, interestingly, your mental state is very dependent upon how mature your brain is. Most mental illnesses, such as depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, tend to have their onset at the end of the teen years or early adult. This is not a coincidence. It is because to be able to actually manifest depression or schizophrenia, you need your prefrontal and frontal lobes. They are not connected yet until late teens. So it helps us understand why they these diseases are actually quite silent earlier in life. And the person can appear completely normal and then have this onset in the early college years - usually it is - or, you know, late high school.

We know there's an increased risk of suicide in this window of development - probably related to this. It's a time where you have enough of your systems working in order to actually manifest a depression, yet you don't have your frontal lobes for the impulse or risk-taking behavior, and suicide in part, for instance, is an impulsive act. So there isn't that gating that's like maybe I shouldn't do this. But it's done.

GROSS: My guest is neuroscientist Frances Jensen, author of the book "The Teenage Brain." She's chair of the department of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. After we take a short break , we'll talk about the difficulty of absorbing and retaining the overwhelming amounts of information that so many of us consume. And David Edelstein will review the new film adaptation of "The Jungle Book." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with neuroscientist Frances Jensen, author of the book, "The Teenage Brain," in which she draws on recent research to help explain why teenagers can be especially impulsive, moody and not very good at responsible decision-making. She's chair of the department of neurology at the University Of Pennsylvania Perelman School Of Medicine.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: We've been talking about the teenage brain. In your neuroscience lab, you've been studying brain disorders that form in childhood, like epilepsy. Just explain, briefly, why children are more prone to epilepsy.

JENSEN: First of all, epilepsy is a disorder that we think about the main component being seizures. It's not just seizures. Seizures - being an epileptic seizure - which is, a person might fall on the ground. They might shake, or they might just have a staring spell.

There are many, many, many forms of epilepsy. And interestingly, the kind of epilepsy you have depends on many things, including what age you are when it comes on because it will involve circuits that are present at that different - at each developmental stage.

So actually in childhood, there's a lot of different epilepsies. There's early, early life epilepsies. There's epilepsies that are rather fleeting and you recover fully from, such as absence epilepsy of mid-childhood, febrile seizures. A large - you know, there's quite a few children will experience seizures when they have a fever, and they'll be completely normal. It is really just because the developing brain is very, very excitable.

Remember when I said you have excitation and inhibition? Well, epilepsy is just too much excitation. It's too much on time, too many circuits acting. So in development, you have much more excitatory machinery, and this is a double-edged sword. It's great for learning and memory. We just talked about that. But it's bad because it puts you at a very close threshold to having a seizure.

GROSS: Since you study the development of the brain and brain disorders, especially those that come on while the brain is still developing, I'm wondering if you're looking forward to new forms of medication that might help with those brain disorders.

JENSEN: Absolutely. We call this translational neuroscience. It's taking basic understanding of the building blocks of the brain and going from the animal into potentially finding targets that are relevant to diseases and finding therapies that attack those targets and putting them into clinical practice. That's the translation - what you hear about the bench-to-bedside translation.

There's a very active amount of translation going on right now in the field of epilepsy in fact because of our new knowledge of brain circuits, by using this functional MRI, new knowledge of new molecules that we are - there's been an explosion of neuroscience recently.

And epilepsy affects so many different functions of the brain that there are many opportunities for treatment, and much is being done along those lines. One interesting type of treatment that you might want to talk about is the use of cannabis in epilepsy - in early childhood epilepsies. Remember when I said that we have normal receptors for - we have cannabinoids in our brain. We have cannabinoid receptors. And there is a movement to try to understand whether there's a good medicinal use of marijuana for treatments of overactivity of the brain, such as early-life epilepsy. There are especially...

GROSS: Can I just stop you there? So there's a possibility that children with seizures would be treated with marijuana.

JENSEN: A certain part of the marijuana composition. So there's...

GROSS: So they're not going to be sitting around smoking weed.

JENSEN: No, they're not going around smoking weed. So marijuana is - contains both tetrahydrocannabinol - THC - and cannabidiol. It's the THC that is the mind-altering component - the psychoactive component that people experience when they get high. But the second component, cannabidiol, doesn't have those kind of affects. So there is a lot of work to try to enrich the marijuana plants for the second component, cannabidiol, and use it medicinally.

GROSS: And what does that do?

JENSEN: So using it, it actually dampens excitability of the brain. Now, it's not good for a normal brain either because you don't want to dampen excitability. You're going to affect learning and memory. But in cases of unrelenting epilepsy in young - in very small children, we look for anything that will block these seizures. And it turns out there is a group of children with early-life epilepsy, such as Dravet's and a couple of other of these disorders, that actually appeared to possibly be responding when they haven't responded to any other conventional treatment to the cannabidiol compounds.

This is undergoing a lot of study. I was formerly president of the American Epilepsy Society, and we've put out a statement, for instance, saying, you know, it's under investigation. It might be promising. But it doesn't mean you go off and you start, you know, getting your kid high by any means, but it is a very intriguing area of research. We're always looking for new targets.

One of the interesting things is that the developing early childhood and teen brain don't necessarily respond to adult drugs - drugs that are useful in the adult - in the way that adults do. In my work, neonatal seizures - seizures that happened around infancy - they don't respond to drugs that are perfectly good and perfectly useful in the adult - in the emergency department that might come in with a seizure - doesn't work.

GROSS: Would that be like Gabapentin?

JENSEN: It could be Dilantin, phenobarbital, barbiturates, things like that that work well in the adult brain because they're actually targeting inhibition. Well, there's not much inhibition in the children's - in the infant's brain, as I've mentioned, so having a drug that only promotes inhibition is kind of a moot point when you don't have a lot of it to start with.

GROSS: Like, you're targeting something that isn't there...

JENSEN: That isn't there yet, right. So we've been working to look for novel targets - and of course, the over-excitation, the excitability molecules, are great targets - or other targets - in this case, the cannabinoid receptors which are there - may be ways to, you know, decrease the excitability of the brain.

Another example of how a developing brain doesn't respond in the same way as an adult is the example - you may recall this, maybe 10 years ago - where it was realized that certain antidepressants caused an increase in suicidality in the teenager. Well, again, it's not an adult brain. You're giving adult doses that have adult chemistry to a not-adult brain. And you get unusual results and not the same result. And in this case, it was found that there was enhancement in suicidal behavior in kids that got certain SSRIs - certain antidepressants - which was unexpected, but actually probably explicable because their brain is not in the same developmental state.

GROSS: So this is going to sound like a kind of dumb question, but in terms of the language that we're using, the cannabinoids - the cannabinoid receptors in the brain - are they named after the cannabis in marijuana, or is it vice versa?

JENSEN: Often, we name receptors in the brain by whatever substances that binds to them. And so in this case, it seemed that cannabinoid substances bound to these receptors, and hence they got their name. But it does turn out that we have what we call endocannabinoids in us. And endo means inside, so we have our own internal cannabinoids that are just in the right balance and being used to modulate our signaling in our brain.

GROSS: So parts of our brain have been named after marijuana, basically?

(LAUGHTER)

JENSEN: I guess you could say that.

GROSS: My guest is neuroscientist Frances Jensen, author of the book "The Teenage Brain." We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: My guest is Dr. Frances Jensen, author of the book "The Teenage Brain." She's chair of the department of neurology at the University Of Pennsylvania, Perelman School Of Medicine.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: Dr. Jensen, can I ask you how old you are?

JENSEN: I'm 58.

GROSS: Are you noticing changes in your brain?

JENSEN: I'm noticing that I need to control my multitasking. I do need to make sure I get sleep. I'm a big sleeper, so I can always sleep, you know, nine hours plus. And I never get that, but I know I do a lot better when I get at least something close to eight hours of sleep. I find that I have learned to write notes to myself. I also have employed strategies like imagery to remember names and places and important facts. That's - for me, I'm more of a visuospatial learner, so I do better taking notes on a piece of paper and, you know, making diagrams and circles, and I remember what was on the top left and underneath the arrow. I think I find it harder actually to take notes for myself on a computer - just memorize - you know, just writing lines and lines and lines and lines.

GROSS: Is that too automatic?

JENSEN: It's too automatic, and it wasn't the way I learned in the first place. I'm much - I - you know, we all used to handwrite notes, right? So our generation, we used to handwrite notes. And converting to everything is just line by line by line in print is - for me, it's not as rich, visually.

GROSS: So you mentioned that now at the age of 58, you're trying to control your multitasking. What has changed for you in multitasking?

JENSEN: Well, I'm - I - first of all, I - up to this point I don't tweet. I may start doing that. I don't blog up to this point. I may start. That's going to be very hard for me to - another stream of information coming. My email is coming at me, you know, 60 emails an hour kind of thing. That's enough of a distraction for me.

I have taken up reading again, trying to find time to actually read books. I find it's remarkably sort of enriching, and you feel - your brain feels so satisfied after you read a book and get into a book that you can't put down. That's an amazing feeling. And I lament not having as much time to do that. I think that's great exercise for your brain. And I know I come out of reading a good book much sharper than I do if I go to a movie and just it's all passive learning or passive, you know, entertainment.

GROSS: You used an expression before the interview started that I found very intriguing. And the expression is dementia of the preoccupied. So I want a definition of that.

JENSEN: (Laughter). OK. Now, this is not a medical fact, everybody. But in a way to explain my own shortcomings in my life with so many things coming at me in one direction - having to switch modes from clinical to basic research to patients to administration, like, you know, on an hourly basis, just so much is coming at me. And you do - things fall through the cracks. They fall through the cracks.

So I just have now decided to call it the dementia of the preoccupied because I refuse to think that I'm actually becoming demented - that I just know it's all environmental. It's got nothing to do with my age or what's happening inside to my brain. I'm not there yet. I haven't hit that slide.

GROSS: So - but what are the symptoms that make you think, like, what's going on here? You know, seriously 'cause I think so many people are dealing with that. And since you're a neuroscientist, I'd love to hear it from your mouth.

JENSEN: Well, I think we're not dwelling on tasks long enough to consolidate our memories, frankly.

GROSS: I - yes, I know.

JENSEN: I think that's it.

(LAUGHTER)

JENSEN: And we're being forced to move fast - you know, move, move, move. And it is - you - I feel like a little robot sometimes, you know? I start on this, and then somebody rushes into the office - sign that. I sign that, and I go back to what I was writing. I'm like, I don't even know what the next sentence was that I was going to type here. You know, it just - and on and on - we've all done that classic of you go upstairs to get your keys, and you forget that you're going to get your keys, and you notice your coffee cup. You have a sip. You go to the next room meaning to go get - refill your coffee, and you find yourself in the next room not knowing why you're there. And eventually you realize it was something about the keys. But we just distract ourselves.

GROSS: But seriously, is there a new kind of distraction - I guess disorder would be too strong a word - but a new kind of distraction that many of us are experiencing because we're focusing on six or seven things at the same time? And there's all these, like, short bits of information coming at us that don't necessarily synthesize into a larger, coherent whole. There's all these, like, disjointed bits that are going to remain disjointed 'cause they don't necessarily relate to each other. And you're expected to keep ingesting them and managing them and behaving in a coherent way in spite of all this incoherent pattern of information that you're responsible for.

JENSEN: I agree 100 percent with everything you've just said. And there is research that's ongoing looking at the effects of quick task changes, interruption in tasks with fMRIs, for instance.

GROSS: Right, OK.

JENSEN: And there was a study that looked at what was the optimal age for this sort of distracted learning. Well, there was another study that was done looking at - across different ages - at when were you the best at multitasking and going back to a task, like, being distracted from a task and going back to the task and staying directly on track and continuing. Turns out that this study showed - and it had functional MRIs to - as an outcome as well - that it's like your mid-to-late-30s. It's, like, that's probably your meanest and leanest time (laughter) where you've got a lot of excitability still in your brain. The degeneration hasn't started yet. And you have all the connectivity, myelination is complete. And you're really, you know, firing on all cylinders. Now, they didn't go much past that. But they saw that it got increasingly optimal up to that point and then it plateaued. I don't think I'd want to be a subject in that study. I don't want to know how I would do.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: But it just seems to me that we're in this kind of paradoxical state of mind now where on the one hand, we crave and we - and we're committed to ingesting all these streams of information during the course of a day...

JENSEN: It's tempting. It's novelty-seeking.

GROSS: Right. And we kind of are obligated to do it - many of us - because of our work. And at the same time, it kind of feels very like it's short-circuiting your brain sometimes.

JENSEN: Well, it is a different way of learning. And actually in the medical education field - here's an interesting fact - that over the last two or three decades, learning had - it was determined that learning had to be done in a different way. There were just simply too many facts to memorize during medical school.

GROSS: Right.

JENSEN: There's a burgeoning amount of information now. So about 20, 25 years ago in a few schools, including at Harvard, they started to do a different form of learning, which is really teaching students how to access information rather than absorbing, digesting and ingraining that information. And, frankly, that today's modern physician does operate much more in that mode because, of course, there's always this new information coming every month about new treatments, new patterns of practice that you should be employing. You couldn't possibly stay, you know, up to date by memorizing everything. So it's more teaching you how to access information.

And I think this is going to be really interesting future because we have it where so - it's such an information-driven society that on the one hand, you think we're being very superficial. But on the other, maybe, you know, at least our students are developing a skill of scanning and also validating information sources and knowing where to go when. This actually is playing out very - in a very real way in the medical education field, I can tell you that.

GROSS: That's really interesting. So, like, when your doctor has to look something up...

JENSEN: Yeah.

GROSS: ...It's not 'cause they don't know what they're doing.

JENSEN: No, it doesn't mean that they're a bad doctor. It means that they're probably doing you a huge favor, that they're making sure that there isn't a better drug available that might have just come out or a new test that they can look for that mysterious disease that they still haven't made a diagnosis on.

GROSS: We are out of time, but I just want to ask you if there's any quick tip you can give us to preserve our brain health, something that you would suggest that adults do.

JENSEN: I think time to reflect on what you've done every day, to underscore for yourself the most important things that happen to you that day and to not respond to conflict - to try to not respond to conflict in the midst of your working environment, for instance, because it will color your efficacy.

GROSS: If you get too caught up...

JENSEN: If you get too caught up...

GROSS: ...In being annoyed or angry or...

JENSEN: ...Yeah.

GROSS: OK. This has been fascinating. Thank you very much for talking with us.

JENSEN: It's been great having a chance to talk to you. Thank you.

GROSS: Dr. Francis Jensen is chair of the department of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She's the author of "The Teenage Brain." I spoke with her last year when it was first published. It's now out in paperback. This is FRESH AIR.

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Why Teens Are Impulsive, Addiction-Prone And Should Protect Their Brains

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subscribe to Fresh Air podcast Research shows that teenagers' brains are not fully insulated, which means that signals move slowly. Frances Jensen, who wrote The Teenage Brain, explains. Originally broadcast Jan. 28, 2015. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

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Middle-school is just the warm-up for the emotional struggles that teens can face in high school.

By the time teens reach their 18th birthday, one in five will have had at least one diagnosable bout of clinical depression.

It's a disturbing figure, but there's gathering evidence to show that teaching teens strategies to challenge negative thinking and manage stress can help reduce depression. Tori Fornataro is proof of concept.

I met Fornataro during my reporting on programs to prevent depression in adolescence. She's currently a high school senior living in Portland, Ore. She's been part of a study aimed at determining whether early interventions can prevent future episodes of depression.

"I think depression is somewhat habit," Fornataro told me. When a funk starts to set in, she says you start skipping things. First, it's a work-out at the gym. Next it's blowing-off a visit with friends. Pretty soon, Fornataro says you start spiraling down into a deep depression.

Fornataro knows she'll always be at risk of depression. It runs in her family, and her first bout was diagnosed at 14. But she says she now feels like she's armed with all sorts of strategies to keep it at bay.

Her top strategy? She doesn't trust those automatic thoughts that can pop up. Things like "I'm not good enough" --a thought that ran through her mind a few weeks ago when she realized she wouldn't be attending any of her top choices for college.

When she becomes aware of this negative "self talk," she knows what to do. "It's kind of become second nature to rethink my thoughts." She tries to replace them with more realistic assessments.

On the college front, she knows she's still has options to attend other colleges, even if they aren't her top choice. "It's not the end of the world."

Researchers are currently following up with young adults in their early 20s who received therapy in their teens to evaluate its longterm effects.

"The hope is that preventing these episodes while they are teens reduces the lifetime chances of future depression," says Greg Clarke of Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.

A landmark study published last summer in the Journal of the American Medical Association adds to the evidence that group prevention programs for teens, using cognitive behavioral therapy are beneficial. The study found that cognitive therapy helped reduce the incident of depressive episodes by about 33 percent.

If you're a counselor or therapist interested in using the group intervention program -- Coping With Stress -- evaluated in this study, the materials are a free download.

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Catching Depression In Teens May Break Lifelong Cycle

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Middle-school is just the warm-up for the emotional struggles that teens can face in high school. By the time teens reach their 18th birthday, one in five will have had at least one diagnosable bout of clinical depression.

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"Why didn't she text me back yet? She doesn't like me anymore!"

"There's no way I'm trying out for the team. I suck at basketball"

"It's not fair that I have a curfew!"

Sound familiar? Parents of tweens and teens often shrug off such anxious and gloomy thinking as normal irritability and moodiness - because it is. Still, the beginning of a new school year, with all of the required adjustments, is a good time to consider just how closely the habit of negative, exaggerated "self-talk" can affect academic and social success, self-esteem and happiness.

Psychological research shows that what we think can have a powerful influence on how we feel emotionally and physically, and on how we behave. Research also shows that our harmful thinking patterns can be changed.

You may not be of much help when it comes to sharpening your son's calculus skills. But during my 35-plus years of clinical practice it's become clear to me that parents can play a huge role in helping their children to develop a critical life skill: the ability to take notice of their thoughts, to step back and view the bigger picture, and to decide how to act based on that more realistic perspective.

Taking heed of an alarmist or pessimistic inner voice is a universal experience. It has survival value; it often protects people from danger. And it's often true that a worrying thought can act as a motivating force - to study, for example.

Still, the insecurities that adolescents feel as they undergo the multiple transitions necessary in growing up make them especially vulnerable to believing the worst. This tendency can lead to chronic anxiety, depression and anger, and can interfere with relationships and success in school.

Helping children grasp the importance of thinking more realistically may help protect them later when they make the huge transition to college. A 2016 survey by the American College Health Association of undergraduates at over 50 colleges and universities found that about 38 percent had felt so depressed at some time during the previous year that it was tough to function. Some 60 percent had experienced an episode of debilitating anxiety.

The power of thoughts to affect feelings and behavior is a foundational principle of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is the form of therapy that I practice. CBT teaches people how to recognize faulty negative self-talk, to notice how it makes them feel and act, and to challenge it. Parents can practice this skill themselves, and act as models as they guide their kids to question a thought by looking at the evidence for and against it.

If your child often seems withdrawn, sad or angry, you may be able to identify a problematic thinking pattern by listening closely. Here are four key styles of negative self-talk to listen for:

Catastrophizing. One common thought habit is the tendency to jump to the worst-case scenario ("What if I fail the test? I'm never going to get into college!") Scanning constantly for disaster ahead acts as a huge contributor to anxiety. And catastrophizing often leads teens to avoid people or become reluctant to try new things.

Zooming in on the negative. Ruminating on a disappointment without taking into account the many positive and neutral aspects of one's experience is often associated with sadness and depression. A missed soccer goal might overshadow everything else that happens one day - the lunch with friends, the good grade on a test, the hilarious TV show - and consume your high-schooler for days.

It's not fair! Interpreting every letdown as a grave injustice - the "it's not fair!" habit - often underlies teens' anger and can harm friendships and family relationships.

I can't! Reacting habitually to difficult situations or to new opportunities with "I can't," rather than "I can try," leads to helplessness. Changing the thought to "I can try!" encourages problem-solving and a willingness to be proactive, to take positive action - both keys to being successful and resilient.

For parents, the idea is not to squelch the negative thought. Research has found that attempted "thought stopping" can actually make the idea stickier. Rather, you want your child to face the thought, thoroughly examine it and replace it with a more realistic and helpful perspective.

Questions that you might pose to carefully weigh the evidence include: "You had a group of friends at your old school and at camp - realistically, what are the chances you can't make friends now? What actions can you take to reach out? What would you say to somebody else who worries about this?"

A helpful replacement thought might be: "It probably will take a few weeks to get to know people, but I've made friends before and there are things I can try. I can sign up for the photography or robotics club and meet people that way."

More realistic and balanced thinking leads to positive action, which, in turn, tends to bolster confidence, enhance self-esteem and result in greater happiness.

Mary K. Alvord, Ph.D., is a psychologist and director of Alvord, Baker & Associates, LLC, in Rockville, Md. She is the co-author of Conquer Negative Thinking for Teens: A Workbook to Break the Nine Thought Habits That Are Holding You Back, as well as the audio recording Relaxation and Self-Regulation Techniques for Children and Teens.

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For Teens Knee-Deep In Negativity, Reframing Thoughts Can Help

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"Why didn't she text me back yet? She doesn't like me anymore!" "There's no way I'm trying out for the team. I suck at basketball" "It's not fair that I have a curfew!" Sound familiar? Parents of tweens and teens often shrug off such anxious and gloomy thinking as normal irritability and moodiness - because it is.

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At the start of the new year, parents may encourage their teens to detox from social media, increase exercise, or begin a volunteer project. While kids may bristle at the thought of posting fewer selfies, surveys indicate 55 percent of adolescents enjoy volunteering. And according to a recent study, when it comes to helping others, teens may benefit psychologically from spending time helping strangers.

The study, published in December in the Journal of Adolescence, suggests that altruistic behaviors, including large and small acts of kindness, may raise teens' feelings of self-worth. However, not all helping behaviors are the same. The researchers found that adolescents who assisted strangers reported higher self-esteem one year later.

"Surprisingly, teens who helped friends and family members did not report the same emotional change," says Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University and one of the study's researchers.

The study, which included 681 adolescents between the ages of 11 and 14, examined how helping, sharing, and comforting others affected teens' self-confidence. Between 2008 and 2011, the researchers surveyed the study participants yearly. Questions like "I help people I don't know, even if it's not easy for me," and "I voluntarily help my neighbors," helped researchers assess the various ways teens support others, while statements like, "I am satisfied with myself," and "I feel useless at times," helped the researchers evaluate the teens' self-esteem.

Padilla-Walker says the study findings suggest there's something unique about leaving one's comfort zone to support someone you do not know.

"Helping a stranger is more challenging than assisting a friend, and when teens take this risk, they feel more competent," she says.

For many teens, the turbulent adolescent years bring social and emotional challenges like learning to resolve conflicts with friends, coping with peer pressure, and dealing with rejection. These newfound stressors can rattle their self-esteem. Witnessing their kids' angst can be painful for parents who feel unsure how to help. However, Padilla-Walker says helping teens find ways to feel more self-assured can be immensely valuable.

In fact, volunteering may do more than boost personal morale; studies show altruism can help people connect socially, which may prevent loneliness, as well as alleviate mental health concerns, like depression.

These psychological benefits may be especially significant for teens, as studies show anxiety among adolescents has risen in the past five years. A recent mental health survey, conducted on college campuses around the nation, found that over 50 percent of students seeking psychotherapy suffered from anxiety. Research also shows that by the age of fourteen, 25 percent of teen girls and 10 percent of teen boys struggle with depression.

According to the American Psychological Association, young adults now face greater social and economic challenges than did previous generations. Between 1989 and 2016, over 40,000 college students completed a survey measuring their tendencies towards perfectionism.

Today's young adults are more competitive and inclined to be perfectionists, expecting more of themselves and others. Perfectionism seems particularly harmful when one feels pressured to meet unrealistic expectations set by others. The researchers found that this "social" perfectionism makes students more susceptible to psychiatric concerns like eating disorders, depression, and anxiety.

"With the vast amount of information on the internet and social media, adolescents may feel like every choice they make - big and small -is an opportunity for failure. Even worse, they may fear that this failure is permanent," says Dr. Abigail Marks, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco who works with parents and teens.

While altruistic acts may bolster teens' wellbeing, many adolescents may reject the idea that they need a confidence boost.

"Recommending anything that may improvea teenager's behavior always carries the risk of seeming condescending or critical," says Marks. And when it comes to volunteering, suggestions made by parents about "who" and "how" to help can sound like a demand, not an opportunity.

Instead, Marks suggests that families discuss potential volunteer projects together. Even though it may seem impossible to communicate with a teenager at times, when asked to share their opinions they often develop interest. And connecting with this curiosity can help them identify an activity they value.

Of course, like many of us, teens may feel as if there aren't enough hours in the day to take on a new responsibility like a lofty volunteer project. However, virtual volunteering, such as donating to a "Go Fund Me" campaign or writing an advocacy letter can also be worthwhile. The non-profit organization, DoSomething, also lets youth help remotely. By signing up on the site, they can join other volunteers and create social justice hashtag campaigns, use Instagram to support refugees, and tweet to raise awareness about education policies.

"Helping strangers doesn't need to be on a grand scale. When teens can see the benefit of their actions, they often realize how much power they have to support others," says Padilla-Walker. And that can inspire more self-confidence.
Juli Fraga is a psychologist and writer in San Francisco. You can find her on Twitter @dr_fraga.

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Helping Strangers May Help Teens' Self-Esteem

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At the start of the new year, parents may encourage their teens to detox from social media, increase exercise, or begin a volunteer project. While kids may bristle at the thought of posting fewer selfies, surveys indicate 55 percent of adolescents enjoy volunteering.

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Nina Langton had no right to be depressed. At least, that's how she saw it.

She had a great group of friends, lived in a prosperous neighborhood, and was close with her parents. Like most 16-year-olds at her Connecticut high school, Nina spent much of her free time on her smartphone. But unlike many of her classmates, she was never "targeted" on social media-her word for the bullying and criticism that took place daily on sites like Snapchat. "Part of what made my depression so difficult was that I didn't understand why I was feeling so sad," she says.

Later, after her attempted suicide and during her stay at a rehabilitation facility, Nina and her therapist identified body image insecurity as the foundation of her woe. "I was spending a lot of time stalking models on Instagram, and I worried a lot about how I looked," says Nina, who is now 17. She'd stay up late in her bedroom, looking at social media on her phone, and poor sleep-coupled with an eating disorder-gradually snowballed until suicide felt like her only option. "I didn't totally want to be gone," she says. "I just wanted help and didn't know how else to get it."

Nina's mom, Christine Langton, has a degree in public health and works at a children's hospital. Despite her professional background, she says she was "completely caught off guard" by her daughter's suicide attempt. "Nina was funny, athletic, smart, personable . . . depression was just not on my radar," she says.

Nina Langton, 17, at her dormitory in Mass., Oct. 2017. Rania Matar-Institute for TIME

In hindsight, Langton says she wishes she had done more to moderate her daughter's smartphone use. "It didn't occur to me not to let her have the phone in her room at night," she says. "I just wasn't thinking about the impact of the phone on her self-esteem or self-image until after everything happened."

It seems like every generation of parents has a collective freak-out when it comes to kids and new technologies; television and video games each inspired widespread hand-wringing among grown-ups. But the inescapability of today's mobile devices-coupled with the personal allure of social media-seems to separate smartphones from older screen-based media. Parents, teens and researchers agree smartphones are having a profound impact on the way adolescents today communicate with one another and spend their free time. And while some experts say it's too soon to ring alarm bells about smartphones, others argue we understand enough about young people's emotional and developmental vulnerabilities to recommend restricting kids' escalating phone habit.

The latest statistics on teen mental health underscore the urgency of this debate.

Between 2010 and 2016, the number of adolescents who experienced at least one major depressive episode leapt by 60%, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The 2016 survey of 17,000 kids found that about 13% of them had a major depressive episode, compared to 8% of the kids surveyed in 2010. Suicide deaths among people age 10 to 19 have also risen sharply, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Young women are suffering most; a CDC report released earlier this year showed suicide among teen girls has reached 40-year highs. All this followed a period during the late-1990s and early 2000s when rates of adolescent depression and suicide mostly held steady or declined.

"These increases are huge-possibly unprecedented," says Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of , which examines how today's super-connected teens may be less happy and less prepared for adulthood than past generations. In a peer-reviewed study that will appear later this year in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, Twenge shows that, after 2010, teens who spent more time on new media were more likely to report mental health issues than those who spent time on non-screen activities.

Using data collected between 2010 and 2015 from more than 500,000 adolescents nationwide, Twenge's study found kids who spent three hours or more a day on smartphones or other electronic devices were 34% more likely to suffer at least one suicide-related outcome-including feeling hopeless or seriously considering suicide-than kids who used devices two hours a day or less. Among kids who used electronic devices five or more hours a day, 48% had at least one suicide-related outcome.

Twenge also found that kids who used social media daily were 13% more likely to report high levels of depressive symptoms than those who used social less frequently. Overall, kids in the study who spent low amounts of time engaged in in-person social interaction, but high amounts of time on social media, were the most likely to be depressed.

Twenge is quick to acknowledge that her research does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship exists between smartphones and depression. "It's possible that depressed kids are just more likely to spend time on their devices," she says. "But that doesn't answer the question of what caused this sudden upswing in teen depression and suicide."

Some experts have pointed to the aftermath of the Great Recession, or rising student workloads, as possible non-device explanations for young people's recent struggles. "But when you look at the economic or homework data, it doesn't line up with the rise in teen suicide or depression," Twenge says. Youth smartphone ownership does. "I'm open to exploring other factors, but I think the more we learn about kids and smartphones, the more we're going to see that limiting their exposure is a good idea."

Others agree it's time to approach adolescent device use with greater caution. "What this generation is going through right now with technology is a giant experiment, and we don't know what's going to happen," says Frances Jensen, chair of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. While the science on kids and technology is incomplete, Jensen says what we already know about the minds of tweens and teens suggests giving a young person all-the-time access to an Internet-connected device "may be playing with fire."
The teenage brain
To understand how device use may be affecting a young person's mental health, it's important to recognize the complex changes occurring in an adolescent's still-developing brain.

For one thing, that brain is incredibly plastic and able to adapt-that is, physically change-in response to novel activities or environmental cues, says UPenn's Jensen, who is the author of The Teenage Brain.

Some research has already linked media multitasking-texting, using social media and rapidly switching among smartphone-based apps-with lower gray-matter volume in the brain's anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a region involved in emotion processing and decision making. More research has associated lower ACC volumes with depression and addiction disorders.

"We know for a fact teens have very underdeveloped impulse control and empathy and judgment compared to adults," Jensen says. This may lead them to disturbing online content or encounters-stuff a more mature mind would know to avoid. Teens also have a hyperactive risk-reward system that allows them to learn-but also to become addicted-much more quickly than grown-ups, she says. Research has linked social media and other phone-based activities with an uptick in feel-good neurochemicals like dopamine, which could drive compulsive device use and promote feelings of distraction, fatigue, or irritability when kids are separated from their phones.

Even if smartphones aren't the root cause of a teen's anxiety or other issues, Jensen adds, they may turn out to be an accelerant-the gasoline that turns a flicker of adolescent angst into a blaze.

Another area of the brain-the prefrontal cortex-is critical for focus and interpreting human emotion, and doesn't fully develop until a person's mid-20s, says Paul Atchley, a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas. "During our teenage years, it's important to train that prefrontal cortex not to be easily distracted," he says. "What we're seeing in our work is that young people are constantly distracted, and also less sensitive to the emotions of others."

While the research on smartphones is preliminary, Atchley says he believes studies will eventually show a clearer connection between the negative trends in teen mental health and rising smartphone use. But some scientists contend there isn't enough cause-and-effect evidence to condemn smartphones.

"I see the rise in depression, especially among girls, and I understand why people are making these connections with new technologies," says Candice Odgers, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University who has published research on teens and tech. "But so far, we have very little data to suggest mobile technologies are causing anxiety or social impairments." She points to evidence that some young people, particularly marginalized groups like LGBT youth, can derive benefits from online communication through supportive exchanges with friends and family.

Odgers adds that jumping to conclusions and vilifying smartphones may lead us away from factors that may turn out to be more significant-a worry raised by other experts. "This is such a serious and polarizing issue that I think we need to set aside our assumptions until we have stronger data," she says. At the same time, she doesn't condone unrestricted smartphone access at any age. "I'm certainly not advocating giving an 8-year-old a smartphone," she says. "But if you ask me what age is appropriate, or how much use is safe, I don't think the existing evidence provides those answers."

As researchers debate appropriate public health messaging, kids are receiving their first smartphone at ever-younger ages-the average is 10, according to one recent estimate-and they're spending more and more time on their devices.

"I am probably on my phone 10 hours a day," says Santi Potočnik Senarighi, a 16-year-old eleventh grader in Denver. Even when he's not actively using his phone, Santi says it's always with him, and he never considers taking a break. "This is part of my life and part of my work, and [that] means I need to be in constant contact."

Santi's dad, Billy Potočnik, says he worries about his son's phone habit, as Santi is struggling in school. But every one of Santi's friends has a smartphone and uses it constantly, and so Potočnik says confiscating his son's phone feels oppressive. "If I try to take it away from him, he tells me he's not doing anything bad on it," which Potočnik says is usually true, "and it turns into a struggle."

He and other parents say enduring that struggle day after day feels overwhelming. And to complicate matters, many schools and after-school groups now use social media or online platforms to coordinate events, or to post grades and homework. "It's not as simple as saying, okay, time to take a break from your phone," Potočnik says.
How teens 'talk'
Colleen Nisbet has been a high school guidance counselor for more than two decades. One of her duties at Connecticut's Granby Memorial High School is to monitor students during their lunch periods. "Lunch was always a very social time when students were interacting and letting out some energy," she says. "Now they sit with their phones out and barely talk to each other."

This scene-of kids collecting in parks or at one another's houses only to sit silently and stare at screens-comes up over and over again when talking with parents and kids. "When you're with people you don't know well or there's nothing to talk about, phones are out more because it's awkward," says Shannon Ohannessian, a 17-year-old senior at Farmington High School in Connecticut.

That avoidance of face-to-face interaction worries Brian Primack, director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health. "Human beings are social animals," he says. "We evolved over millions of years to respond to eye contact and touch and shared laughter and real things right in front of us." There's strong research linking isolation to depression, and time spent socializing with improved mood and well-being. If smartphones are getting between an adolescent and her ability to engage in and enjoy face-to-face interaction-and some studies suggest that's happening-that's a big deal, Primack says.

But while they're not always speaking out loud, kids today are talking to each other-and about each other. They're just doing it on their phones. Not all that talk is friendly. "They tell me they're making comments or criticizing each other to friends while they're all sitting together," says Nisbet, the guidance counselor. Something about the phone just seems to "take the filter off," she adds.

Backbiting and mean-girl gossip are nothing new, of course. But research suggests that, even among adults, the Internet has a disinhibition effect that leads people to speak in coarser, crueler ways then they would offline.

Maryellen Pachler, a Yale-trained nurse practitioner who specializes in the treatment of adolescent anxiety disorders, says her job used to involve convincing her patients that their fears were largely irrational. "Now I don't think they're irrational at all," she says. "If you raise your hand in class or say something silly, I think it's likely your classmates will be texting or posting something about it."

She says the glamor and gleam of social media is also fueling a rise in teen anxiety. "My patients see their friends' Snapchat or Instagram photos where they look so happy, and they feel like they're the only ones who are faking it," she says, referencing what researchers call the highlight reel effect of social media. "I want to tell them, listen, this girl you're jealous of-she was in here with me yesterday!"

Teens agree social-media whitewashing is the rule, not the exception. "No one's going to post something that makes them look bad," Ohannessian says. "I know that, but it's still hard to separate what you see on social media from real life."
What's next for teens and phones
There are doubtless many factors contributing to teen depression. Parents say kids today are busier than ever before-their lives increasingly crammed with the extracurriculars required to gain admission to a good college. But even those researchers who aren't ready to slam smartphones say it's important to restrict an adolescent's device habit, and that too much social media or media multitasking is likely harmful.

"I don't think these devices are the main cause, but I think they contribute to a lot of the things we worry about," says David Hill, director of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Council on Communications and Media. "I speak to parents who are very concerned, and my take is to be much more rigid about setting limits-especially when it comes to phones in the bedroom at night."

But the AAP's current guidelines do not offer specifics when it comes to appropriate smartphone limits for children older than 6, and public health officials generally say parents should decide what is right for their kids, without offering specifics.

Educators are also grappling with smartphone-related dilemmas. Most schools allow smartphone use between classes and during free periods, but teachers say keeping students off their phones during class has become a tremendous burden.

Gina Spiers, an English teacher at San Lorenzo High School near Oakland, Calif., says she used to confiscate phones, but students would panic and cause a disruption in class. She and her school are fighting back-with encouraging results.

Starting this fall, San Lorenzo High joined several schools nationwide in working with a company called Yondr to restrict smartphone access during school hours. Yondr makes small, lockable phone pouches that students keep with them, but that can't be opened until the end of the day.

"The changes have already been profound," says Allison Silvestri, San Lorenzo's principal. Kids are more focused and engaged during class, and student journals suggest the high schoolers are feeling less anxious and more relaxed. Silvestri says fewer fights have broken out this semester-a benefit she attributes to the absence of social media. "They have to look each other in the eye to make conflict happen," she says. "There's so much more joy and interaction, and I can't count the number of parents who have asked me, 'How do I buy this for my home?'"

The smartphone experiment at San Lorenzo doesn't meet the standards of the scientific method. But it's one more piece of evidence linking mobile devices with the troubles today's teen are facing. While there are no doubt helpful and healthy ways young people could use smartphones to enrich their lives, it's becoming harder to argue that the status quo-near-ubiquitous teen smartphone ownership, coupled with more-or-less unfettered Internet access-is doing kids good.

A few months after her suicide attempt, Nina Langton addressed her high school classmates and spoke openly about her depression. She described the stigma of mental illness, and lamented the fact that, while many teens experience depression, very few are willing to talk about it or ask for help. "I was worried for so long about opening up about my struggles because I thought I would be judged," she said.

After she gave the speech, "so many people my age reached out to me about their own experiences with technology and depression and therapy," she says. "I think this is a big problem that needs to be talked about more."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Just How Dangerous Are Smartphones for Kids? Here's Why Health Experts Are Worried

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teen depression and suicide rates are climbing, as more kids than ever use cellphones. Here's what new research says about what's happening

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For years Madeline and Eva suffered in silence. Then they shared their secret with each other: "We have depression." It was only the beginning of an unlikely story of two teens determined to shine a light on depression-by opening up to the world.

Madeline Halpert and Eva Rosenfeld were bunking together at a student journalism conference last November when they found an unexpected connection.

On their first night there, Madeline caught a quick glimpse of a prescription bottle in Eva's suitcase and recognized a very familiar name: Prozac. It was the same anti-depressant that Madeline had been prescribed the year before, when her depression took hold.

Without thinking twice, Madeline opened up to Eva, and Eva spoke freely in return, revealing that she had been suffering from depression too-since eighth grade.

"I felt so relieved," explains Madeline. "I had never talked to anybody who could relate to what I was experiencing. It made a world of difference to know that I wasn't alone."

It's true: Depression isn't something you usually discuss with your classmates, but it's definitely not rare. Approximately 1 out of every 10 teens (of every race, gender, social group, and economic status) will suffer from it by the time they graduate from high school, and a survey released by the World Health Organization earlier this year found it to be the #1 cause of illness in teens worldwide.

But if it's so prevalent, what's with the hush?

And why do depressed teens feel so alone? Those are exactly the questions that set Eva and Madeline on a mission-as Eva explains it-"to put real faces on the illness." As co-editors of their high school's newspaper in Ann Arbor, Michigan, they proposed devoting an entire issue to personal stories from their peers who were suffering from mental illness.

Their goal: honesty with no anonymity. "The stigma surrounding depression makes people feel like they can't talk about it openly-or at all," says Eva. "And in turn, those people are not getting the help they need."

But in the end, school officials blocked the issue, citing their fear that the stories would provoke bullying or trigger recurrences in recovered students. Eva and Madeline were sympathetic to their viewpoint, but also believed that this reluctance to support a frank discussion about depression teaches teens that they should be ashamed of an illness they cannot control.

Fired up, they wrote an essay about it and sent it off to big-time newspapers. To their surprise, The New York Times agreed to publish their article as an op-ed, giving them a forum for their perspective on their school's decision-but not an opportunity to share the personal stories they had worked so hard to gather.

That's why we've teamed up with Madeline and Eva, who enlisted another friend-Caroline Phillips, a 17-year-old fellow editor-to help. Together, the girls chose classmates (or former classmates) whose personal struggles with depression show the disease for what it really is: difficult, diverse, and-most important-treatable. Here are their very powerful and incredibly brave stories.

"IN DARK MOMENTS, REMEMBER: IT ONLY GETS BETTER FROM HERE"

Evan, 19, has always been passionate about soccer, from playing it and watching it on TV to volunteering with TopSoccer (a program that helps athletes with disabilities play the sport). He also loves to fish, canoe, and read-up to three books a week-and hopes to one day settle down in New Zealand.

When Evan's parents separated junior year, he felt lost, unmotivated, and-for the first time ever- extremely depressed. "My dad, [who is] such a strong guy, was upset all the time," he says. "With him emotionally compromised and my mom gone, I had to be a parent to my younger brother."

Faced with that overwhelming responsibility on top of his depression, Evan struggled. "At my worst, I felt like nothing could make me feel better-not even my girlfriend or friends," he says.

But Evan eventually found a healthy way to cope-a therapist. "Therapy keeps me open and gives me feedback about how to help myself," he says.

Still, Evan is often frustrated by what he sees as a permanent illness. "It comes in waves," he says. "Some weeks I'll be happy, and then that weekend I'll be low for no reason. It always comes back."

While Evan cannot predict when his depression will hit, he has found comfort in one hopeful piece of advice from his friend Henry.

"At my worst point, he told me, 'The darkest times are behind you,' and it's true," says Evan. "Everything always works itself out, one way or another."
-By Madeline Halpert
"MY DEPRESSION IS NOT A DISABILITY"

Diagnosed with depression and then bipolar disorder, Alice, 17, loves being outside, finding new music, and serving on the Ann Arbor Community Foundation's Youth Council, which grants money to youth organizations throughout her county.

Alice first experienced depression in seventh grade: "It felt like everything was crumbling, and I didn't even care," she says. "I thought I was weird, and that most people weren't depressed at my age."

But now, five years later-after therapy, medication, and multiple diagnoses have caused this high school senior to cycle through periods of helplessness and hopefulness-Alice accepts her illness. "If I'm listening to the people around me and listening to my therapist, I'm OK," she says. "That acceptance was really important to me and for my progress as a human."

Instead of viewing her mental illness as a disability, Alice has now transformed her viewpoint. She is open with her peers and community and is able to speak with others about her struggles with no shame. This year, she auditioned-and was chosen- to give a presentation at the local student TEDxtalks. She also participated in the school's Depression Awareness Group.

"The stigma associated with depression can be so strong that it makes the situation-and your overall outlook-so much worse," she says. "But it really is nothing to be ashamed of."

Alice still occasionally has rough days, but she also has the strength and wisdom to see the power that living openly and honestly can have. "I've been strong," she says, "and now I can be grateful."
-By Caroline Phillips
"YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT HELP"

Meet Lauren, 17, who was diagnosed with depression in sixth grade. She loves makeup, fashion, traveling, and animals-especially her bunny, Riley, and her husky, Kimba. Cool fact: She graduated from high school last year . . . a whole year early!

"You feel like you're drowning. No matter how hard you try, the waves push you down again. You feel empty and nothing seems to make you happy anymore. You're tired and done trying to be something you're not: happy."

This is how Lauren describes her darkest place-a feeling of being completely powerless: "Even though I could point out positives in my life, I still couldn't control that I wasn't happy."

While her friends, family, and therapist have helped to lift her up from these low points, Lauren says that the best coping mechanism has been talking to others who struggle with mental illness. "You can tell someone else what depression is," she explains, "but it's hard for them to understand why you're upset for no reason."

Lauren now feels like her life is stable. She knows her depression may not go away, but she has found a medication that works for her, and she is confident that she can handle the challenges her illness brings. "You have to let people help you to help yourself," she says.

- By Madeline Halpert

"TALKING HELPS ME HEAL"

Ali, 17, is a poet, guitarist, aspiring architect, and hockey fan who has had depression for over a decade. In his spare time, he likes to organize music shows at a local venue.

Losing one home at age 10 and a second at 16, Ali has adopted the mind-set that the only consistency in his life is a lack of it. Still, he has found methods for coping with his depression-and reasons to be optimistic.

"Part of me thinks nothing will ever be steady and firm," Ali says. "But part of me has a lot of hope that things will sort out too."

Ali has found talking about his depression through poetry to be instrumental in dealing with it. He wants people who are struggling to know that others are struggling as well, and he is willing to use his own story to carry that message.

"It's so easy to not be fully aware of what everybody has going for them in life-how everybody has a story about them," he says.

Despite Ali's openness, depression has proved detrimental in some areas of his life. At school, his grades and relationships with teachers have suffered. And while some friendships have been strengthened, Ali has lost some friends altogether.

"When [friends] see that I have sunk into my feelings, it agitates them," Ali explains. "I know that in their hearts they want to help, but it's really hard to help people with depression. It's not like you can just tell them it's going to be OK and they get better."

Ali tries to take life one day at a time, and he urges people not to be ashamed to tell their story-and to be accepting of others' stories too.

"Always keep an open heart," he says. "You never know what's hiding behind someone's eyes-or inside their heart."
-By Eva Rosenfeld
This article originally appeared in the November/December issue of Choices. For more information about the magazine, including how to subscribe,

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Remarkable Teens Who Are Crushing The Mental Illness Stigma

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For years Madeline and Eva suffered in silence. Then they shared their secret with each other: "We have depression." It was only the beginning of an unlikely story of two teens determined to shine a light on depression-by opening up to the world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For years Madeline and Eva suffered in silence. Then they shared their secret with each other: "We have depression." It was only the beginning of an unlikely story of two teens determined to shine a light on depression-by opening up to the world.

Madeline Halpert and Eva Rosenfeld were bunking together at a student journalism conference last November when they found an unexpected connection.

On their first night there, Madeline caught a quick glimpse of a prescription bottle in Eva's suitcase and recognized a very familiar name: Prozac. It was the same anti-depressant that Madeline had been prescribed the year before, when her depression took hold.

Without thinking twice, Madeline opened up to Eva, and Eva spoke freely in return, revealing that she had been suffering from depression too-since eighth grade.

"I felt so relieved," explains Madeline. "I had never talked to anybody who could relate to what I was experiencing. It made a world of difference to know that I wasn't alone."

It's true: Depression isn't something you usually discuss with your classmates, but it's definitely not rare. Approximately 1 out of every 10 teens (of every race, gender, social group, and economic status) will suffer from it by the time they graduate from high school, and a survey released by the World Health Organization earlier this year found it to be the #1 cause of illness in teens worldwide.

But if it's so prevalent, what's with the hush?

And why do depressed teens feel so alone? Those are exactly the questions that set Eva and Madeline on a mission-as Eva explains it-"to put real faces on the illness." As co-editors of their high school's newspaper in Ann Arbor, Michigan, they proposed devoting an entire issue to personal stories from their peers who were suffering from mental illness.

Their goal: honesty with no anonymity. "The stigma surrounding depression makes people feel like they can't talk about it openly-or at all," says Eva. "And in turn, those people are not getting the help they need."

But in the end, school officials blocked the issue, citing their fear that the stories would provoke bullying or trigger recurrences in recovered students. Eva and Madeline were sympathetic to their viewpoint, but also believed that this reluctance to support a frank discussion about depression teaches teens that they should be ashamed of an illness they cannot control.

Fired up, they wrote an essay about it and sent it off to big-time newspapers. To their surprise, The New York Times agreed to publish their article as an op-ed, giving them a forum for their perspective on their school's decision-but not an opportunity to share the personal stories they had worked so hard to gather.

That's why we've teamed up with Madeline and Eva, who enlisted another friend-Caroline Phillips, a 17-year-old fellow editor-to help. Together, the girls chose classmates (or former classmates) whose personal struggles with depression show the disease for what it really is: difficult, diverse, and-most important-treatable. Here are their very powerful and incredibly brave stories.

"IN DARK MOMENTS, REMEMBER: IT ONLY GETS BETTER FROM HERE"

Evan, 19, has always been passionate about soccer, from playing it and watching it on TV to volunteering with TopSoccer (a program that helps athletes with disabilities play the sport). He also loves to fish, canoe, and read-up to three books a week-and hopes to one day settle down in New Zealand.

When Evan's parents separated junior year, he felt lost, unmotivated, and-for the first time ever- extremely depressed. "My dad, [who is] such a strong guy, was upset all the time," he says. "With him emotionally compromised and my mom gone, I had to be a parent to my younger brother."

Faced with that overwhelming responsibility on top of his depression, Evan struggled. "At my worst, I felt like nothing could make me feel better-not even my girlfriend or friends," he says.

But Evan eventually found a healthy way to cope-a therapist. "Therapy keeps me open and gives me feedback about how to help myself," he says.

Still, Evan is often frustrated by what he sees as a permanent illness. "It comes in waves," he says. "Some weeks I'll be happy, and then that weekend I'll be low for no reason. It always comes back."

While Evan cannot predict when his depression will hit, he has found comfort in one hopeful piece of advice from his friend Henry.

"At my worst point, he told me, 'The darkest times are behind you,' and it's true," says Evan. "Everything always works itself out, one way or another."
-By Madeline Halpert
"MY DEPRESSION IS NOT A DISABILITY"

Diagnosed with depression and then bipolar disorder, Alice, 17, loves being outside, finding new music, and serving on the Ann Arbor Community Foundation's Youth Council, which grants money to youth organizations throughout her county.

Alice first experienced depression in seventh grade: "It felt like everything was crumbling, and I didn't even care," she says. "I thought I was weird, and that most people weren't depressed at my age."

But now, five years later-after therapy, medication, and multiple diagnoses have caused this high school senior to cycle through periods of helplessness and hopefulness-Alice accepts her illness. "If I'm listening to the people around me and listening to my therapist, I'm OK," she says. "That acceptance was really important to me and for my progress as a human."

Instead of viewing her mental illness as a disability, Alice has now transformed her viewpoint. She is open with her peers and community and is able to speak with others about her struggles with no shame. This year, she auditioned-and was chosen- to give a presentation at the local student TEDxtalks. She also participated in the school's Depression Awareness Group.

"The stigma associated with depression can be so strong that it makes the situation-and your overall outlook-so much worse," she says. "But it really is nothing to be ashamed of."

Alice still occasionally has rough days, but she also has the strength and wisdom to see the power that living openly and honestly can have. "I've been strong," she says, "and now I can be grateful."
-By Caroline Phillips
"YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT HELP"

Meet Lauren, 17, who was diagnosed with depression in sixth grade. She loves makeup, fashion, traveling, and animals-especially her bunny, Riley, and her husky, Kimba. Cool fact: She graduated from high school last year . . . a whole year early!

"You feel like you're drowning. No matter how hard you try, the waves push you down again. You feel empty and nothing seems to make you happy anymore. You're tired and done trying to be something you're not: happy."

This is how Lauren describes her darkest place-a feeling of being completely powerless: "Even though I could point out positives in my life, I still couldn't control that I wasn't happy."

While her friends, family, and therapist have helped to lift her up from these low points, Lauren says that the best coping mechanism has been talking to others who struggle with mental illness. "You can tell someone else what depression is," she explains, "but it's hard for them to understand why you're upset for no reason."

Lauren now feels like her life is stable. She knows her depression may not go away, but she has found a medication that works for her, and she is confident that she can handle the challenges her illness brings. "You have to let people help you to help yourself," she says.

- By Madeline Halpert

"TALKING HELPS ME HEAL"

Ali, 17, is a poet, guitarist, aspiring architect, and hockey fan who has had depression for over a decade. In his spare time, he likes to organize music shows at a local venue.

Losing one home at age 10 and a second at 16, Ali has adopted the mind-set that the only consistency in his life is a lack of it. Still, he has found methods for coping with his depression-and reasons to be optimistic.

"Part of me thinks nothing will ever be steady and firm," Ali says. "But part of me has a lot of hope that things will sort out too."

Ali has found talking about his depression through poetry to be instrumental in dealing with it. He wants people who are struggling to know that others are struggling as well, and he is willing to use his own story to carry that message.

"It's so easy to not be fully aware of what everybody has going for them in life-how everybody has a story about them," he says.

Despite Ali's openness, depression has proved detrimental in some areas of his life. At school, his grades and relationships with teachers have suffered. And while some friendships have been strengthened, Ali has lost some friends altogether.

"When [friends] see that I have sunk into my feelings, it agitates them," Ali explains. "I know that in their hearts they want to help, but it's really hard to help people with depression. It's not like you can just tell them it's going to be OK and they get better."

Ali tries to take life one day at a time, and he urges people not to be ashamed to tell their story-and to be accepting of others' stories too.

"Always keep an open heart," he says. "You never know what's hiding behind someone's eyes-or inside their heart."
-By Eva Rosenfeld
This article originally appeared in the November/December issue of Choices. For more information about the magazine, including how to subscribe,

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Remarkable Teens Who Are Crushing The Mental Illness Stigma

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For years Madeline and Eva suffered in silence. Then they shared their secret with each other: "We have depression." It was only the beginning of an unlikely story of two teens determined to shine a light on depression-by opening up to the world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I want you to picture a person with depression. Are you seeing the dark bedroom, filthy sweatpants, empty eyes, poor health and general lack of prosperity?

You know what I see when I picture depression? A blonde, blue-eyed teenage girl. She gets awesome grades, loves to paint, go to football games, drink Starbucks, Instagram and giggle with her friends. She can quote Harry Potter, obsesses over makeup tutorials and cannot wait for college. She looks back at me every morning in the mirror.

Since I was diagnosed with depression five years ago, I have noticed a lot of stigma surrounding it. Even the image that pops into view when depression is mentioned is an inaccurate generalization. Anyone can have depression -- from celebrities, to hairstylists, to that guy next to you in algebra. It isn't just the gloomy kids. This illness is pervasive and the amount of misconception is astounding. So I am going to share some of my experiences to help clear the air.

We live in a time that demands instant gratification. We have Nyquil, cough syrup and various other insta-cures for our ailments. Unfortunately, antidepressants are not to depression as ibuprofen is to headaches. Depression is often a long journey. Medication and therapy help, but do not make it disappear. The only "cure" is to accept depression and try to make positive, healthy choices.

The worst part of a depressive episode is when someone asks questions like "Why?" "What happened?" or "Was someone mean to you?" Sometimes, there is an antecedent, but more often than not, depression just hits you. It feels like riding a bike, and in the blink of an eye, you're trying to pedal through quicksand with no tires. Moreover, it is almost impossible to explain, so trying to answer these questions makes you feel like even more of a failure. It can be frustrating as a friend or family member to read this -- advice is much easier to give when there is a definitive issue at hand. The best thing you can do when you are trying to help someone with depression is to simply be there.

I have depression, but I am one of 16 million Americans with the same diagnosis. Depression does not make me unique. What makes me unique is the fact that I talk about it. It took me four years to find a way to speak about my mental illness. The shame, weakness and hopelessness I feel when I am depressed are debilitating. These are not the kind of feelings I like to admit to having, but I know that I am not alone in my loneliness. There are millions of other people who feel just like me. I want them to know they are not alone, so I speak up. It may hurt to start the conversation, but in the end, the dark clouds overhead often lift.

The four things I would like you take away from this piece are the following:

1. There is no face of depression. It impacts every race, religion, gender, socioeconomic group and geographical area.
2. Depression has no miracle medicine or quick fix. 3. It is hard to explain depression, so it is best to just be there and not ask question. 4. Depression is painful to discuss, but it's beneficial to talk about it in the end.
The bottom line is that mental illness sucks. It's not fun to deal with personally, or to watch someone else battle it. The best thing you can do for yourself, or anyone else with a mental illness is to speak. An open dialogue is the only way that the stigma associates with mental illnesses can be eliminated.

P.S. If you believe that you are suffering from depression, I encourage you to get help. Find a counselor, pastor, parent or friend and spill your guts. You might cry, but talking about it can take away that clenched feeling in your chest that makes it hard to breathe.
Have a story about depression that you'd like to share? Email strongertogether@huffingtonpost.com, or give us a call at (860) 348-3376, and you can record your story in your own words. Please be sure to include your name and phone number.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. And teens can also visit www.teenlineonline.org, call: 310-855-467 or text TEEN to 839863
Follow HuffPost Teen on Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr | Pheed |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I want you to picture a person with depression. Are you seeing the dark bedroom, filthy sweatpants, empty eyes, poor health and general lack of prosperity? You know what I see when I picture depression? A blonde, blue-eyed teenage girl. She gets awesome grades, loves to paint, go to football games, drink Starbucks, Instagram and giggle with her friends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I want you to picture a person with depression. Are you seeing the dark bedroom, filthy sweatpants, empty eyes, poor health and general lack of prosperity?

You know what I see when I picture depression? A blonde, blue-eyed teenage girl. She gets awesome grades, loves to paint, go to football games, drink Starbucks, Instagram and giggle with her friends. She can quote Harry Potter, obsesses over makeup tutorials and cannot wait for college. She looks back at me every morning in the mirror.

Since I was diagnosed with depression five years ago, I have noticed a lot of stigma surrounding it. Even the image that pops into view when depression is mentioned is an inaccurate generalization. Anyone can have depression -- from celebrities, to hairstylists, to that guy next to you in algebra. It isn't just the gloomy kids. This illness is pervasive and the amount of misconception is astounding. So I am going to share some of my experiences to help clear the air.

We live in a time that demands instant gratification. We have Nyquil, cough syrup and various other insta-cures for our ailments. Unfortunately, antidepressants are not to depression as ibuprofen is to headaches. Depression is often a long journey. Medication and therapy help, but do not make it disappear. The only "cure" is to accept depression and try to make positive, healthy choices.

The worst part of a depressive episode is when someone asks questions like "Why?" "What happened?" or "Was someone mean to you?" Sometimes, there is an antecedent, but more often than not, depression just hits you. It feels like riding a bike, and in the blink of an eye, you're trying to pedal through quicksand with no tires. Moreover, it is almost impossible to explain, so trying to answer these questions makes you feel like even more of a failure. It can be frustrating as a friend or family member to read this -- advice is much easier to give when there is a definitive issue at hand. The best thing you can do when you are trying to help someone with depression is to simply be there.

I have depression, but I am one of 16 million Americans with the same diagnosis. Depression does not make me unique. What makes me unique is the fact that I talk about it. It took me four years to find a way to speak about my mental illness. The shame, weakness and hopelessness I feel when I am depressed are debilitating. These are not the kind of feelings I like to admit to having, but I know that I am not alone in my loneliness. There are millions of other people who feel just like me. I want them to know they are not alone, so I speak up. It may hurt to start the conversation, but in the end, the dark clouds overhead often lift.

The four things I would like you take away from this piece are the following:

1. There is no face of depression. It impacts every race, religion, gender, socioeconomic group and geographical area.
2. Depression has no miracle medicine or quick fix. 3. It is hard to explain depression, so it is best to just be there and not ask question. 4. Depression is painful to discuss, but it's beneficial to talk about it in the end.
The bottom line is that mental illness sucks. It's not fun to deal with personally, or to watch someone else battle it. The best thing you can do for yourself, or anyone else with a mental illness is to speak. An open dialogue is the only way that the stigma associates with mental illnesses can be eliminated.

P.S. If you believe that you are suffering from depression, I encourage you to get help. Find a counselor, pastor, parent or friend and spill your guts. You might cry, but talking about it can take away that clenched feeling in your chest that makes it hard to breathe.
Have a story about depression that you'd like to share? Email strongertogether@huffingtonpost.com, or give us a call at (860) 348-3376, and you can record your story in your own words. Please be sure to include your name and phone number.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. And teens can also visit www.teenlineonline.org, call: 310-855-467 or text TEEN to 839863
Follow HuffPost Teen on Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr | Pheed |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I want you to picture a person with depression. Are you seeing the dark bedroom, filthy sweatpants, empty eyes, poor health and general lack of prosperity? You know what I see when I picture depression? A blonde, blue-eyed teenage girl. She gets awesome grades, loves to paint, go to football games, drink Starbucks, Instagram and giggle with her friends.

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Marina and Matt Bowsher want their children Kent, 14, and Zaida, 12, to get used to regulating their own use of technology before they leave for college. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

In recent months, Silicon Valley executives have been speaking out about the purposefully addictive designs of smartphones and social media, which make them hard to put down for anyone, but particularly teenagers. Now, a new report puts numbers to the warnings by tying a sudden and large drop in adolescents' happiness with the proliferation of smartphones and finding that the more hours a day teens spend in front of screens, the less satisfied they are.

The report, "Decreases in Psychological Well-Being Among American Adolescents After 2012 and Links to Screen Time During the Rise of Smartphone Technology," was published Monday in the journal Emotion using a large national survey of eighth, 10th and 12th graders conducted annually by the University of Michigan. After rising since the early 1990s, adolescent self-esteem, life satisfaction and happiness plunged after 2012, the year smartphone ownership reached the 50 percent mark in the United States, the report said. It also found that adolescents' psychological well-being decreased the more hours a week they spent on screens, including with the Internet, social media, texting, gaming and video chats. The findings jibe with earlier studies linking frequent screen use to teenage depression and anxiety.

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The ubiquity of the devices has mushroomed in the past six years. The percentage of teens who had smartphones jumped from 37 percent in 2012 to 73 percent in 2015 to 89 percent at the end of 2016, according to data from the Pew Research Center and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The Emotion study graphed correlations between happiness and screen activities and non-screen activities such as sports, in-person interactions, religious services, print media and homework. For all the non-screen activities, the correlation was positive; for the screen activities, it was uniformly negative.

A study released on Jan. 22 shows there is a correlation between how much happiness teens feel and time spent online, including texting and social media use. (Video: Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

"When I made that graph, I got up and took my kids' Kindle Fires and shoved them in the back of a drawer," said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and the study's lead author.

Twenge, who is also the author of " iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy - and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood," called the relationship of screen and non-screen activities "zero sum" - if you are doing one, it takes time away from the others.

Diane Tanman of Chevy Chase, Md., worries that is the case for her sons, 11 and 15. "Like playing games in the field like they used to when they were little - they used to do that, and I think it made them more happy," she said.

These days her sons are more into online games, many of which have rewards built in to keep players coming back. "I think it's addictive," Tanman said. "It's just junk food for the brain. ... I don't know one parent who doesn't worry about it."

As with any addiction, breaking away can be unpleasant. Ed Lazzara of Salem, Ore., says his 12-year-old son, Leo, a fan of the game Minecraft, is more irritable after he has been playing a lot. "It's like interacting in the real world doesn't have that zing, you know?" Lazzara said.

The report's findings were not all dire: Teenagers who get a small amount of exposure to screen time, between one and five hours a week, are happier than those who get none at all. The least happy ones were those who used screens for 20 or more hours a week.

The greater unhappiness among those with no screen exposure could be due to several factors, Twenge said. "It could be that they are left out of the social scene of high school, that it's very difficult to carry on friendships in high school these days without texting at all or being on social media." It is also possible that those kids are outliers, she said - teens with special needs or in special education, or those whose screens have been taken away from them by parents.

The happiest teens, according to the study, are those who are above average in face-to-face social interaction time and below average in social media use.

Amanda Lenhart, deputy director of the Better Life Lab at New America who has conducted studies on teenagers and screen use, called the study interesting but said it is hard to separate screen time from other stressors that may affect teenagers' happiness, such as the political or economic landscape. "The culturally easy scapegoat right now is the technology - it's new, it's scary, it's changed our lives, it's changed our kids' lives," she said.

While she generally advises moderation, Lenhart said that rather than making one set of rules about when and how much screen time teens should have, she prefers a case-by-case approach. "Some of it is about your particular kid and your particular life and you as a parent," she said. "Some of it is you looking at your child and saying, 'Something is not right here.'"

Technology-free schools do exist - including some in Silicon Valley that tech titans have sent their own children to. And movements such as Wait Until 8th have urged parents to delay giving smartphones to kids until high school or just before. But even Bill Gates, who is known for limiting his children's access to technology, allowed them to get phones by age 14.

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Marina Bowsher, the mother of a 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl in Chevy Chase, views screen time "like dessert - sure you can have some once in a while, but it shouldn't be part of your every day."

However, she and her husband decided to relax her rules against gaming after helping their niece move into college at George Washington University and noticing that "every boy was carrying around an Xbox ... and suddenly there was no monitor. It's like drinking; nobody's telling you no." They decided it was better for their son to learn to regulate his gaming in high school, when he still had parents to help, than to have to learn how in college when no one was watching. Their son also has a smartphone and a laptop; their daughter has a phone with no social media accounts. "It's all around them, and they are going to have to learn to live with it in their society," Bowsher said.

But the finer points of screen use in today's society are still evolving. Earlier this month, investors in Apple, the maker of the iPhone, signed an open letter demanding more options for parental regulation of phones, such as the ability to limit their use to certain hours or shut off social media access at a certain time each day.

The letter, which Twenge helped draft, cited research showing negative psychological effects of phone use on teens and noted parents' "constant battle" over screen time, calling it "unrealistic and a poor long-term business strategy to ask parents to fight this battle alone." Apple responded by saying it is planning new enhancements to increase parental control.
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Teens who spend less time in front of screens are happier - up to a point, new research shows

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Teens who have more in-person interaction than screen time are most satisfied with their lives