Study Finds Big Increase in Self-Harm During Covid Lockdowns
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A new study reveals a 37 percent increase in deliberate self-poisonings among female children and adolescents over the last four years. The increase is strongly correlated with Covid pandemic restrictions.
Published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, the study found rates of deliberate self-poisoning were 84 percent higher among those aged 5–14 years, and 36 percent higher among those aged 15–19 years between March 2020 and Dec. 2023 compared to 2018–19.
There were only minor changes among males and older Australians.
Within the 5- to 14-year-old cohort, self-poisonings rose particularly among adolescent females aged 11 to 14. The researchers say the rise in self-poisoning by adolescent females appeared to be driven by lockdowns rather than Covid infections.
Violence on Social Media Making Teenagers Afraid to Go out, Study Finds
Hundreds of thousands of teenagers are afraid to go out because of the violence they see on their social media feeds, a major study of children in England and Wales has found.
One in four teenagers who see real-life violence, including fist fights, stabbings and gang clashes, online are being served the clips automatically by algorithmic recommendation features, according to the study done by the Youth Endowment Fund and shared with the Guardian.
Only a small minority actively searched for the violent content.
TikTok is the most likely place for teenagers to encounter real-life violent content, followed by X, according to the survey of more than 10,000 13- to 17-year-olds.
New laws are to come into effect from next spring under which tech companies will face large fines if they fail to deploy age checks to prevent children seeing harmful or age-inappropriate content, including serious violence.
Increases in Myopia Progression in Kids Tied to the Covid Pandemic
An increase in myopia progression was observed among Chicago-area children early in the COVID-19 pandemic, reported researchers, who suggested that closure of schools and cancelling of activities may have played a role.
In the overall cohort of over 2,000 children in this retrospective observational study, the change in mean spherical equivalent from 2020 to 2021 was 2.2 times greater than the change from 2019 to 2020 (0.42 D vs 0.19 D), reported Rebecca Mets-Halgrimson, MD, of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and colleagues in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
“This study confirms what other studies have found,” Jeffrey J. Walline, OD, PhD, of the Ohio State University in Columbus, told MedPage Today. “The fact that the refractive error of the sample changes more than twice as much after the pandemic as it does before almost certainly indicates the pandemic affected the change in refractive error in children.”
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