EMERGING TRENDS
Tweet Like You Mean It, Soldier!
In an effort to drum up new recruits, the United States military is turning to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. “We know that’s where they are, and we need to go to them,” said Army Lt. Col. Kevin Arata.

The Army’s been particularly aggressive on the Internet front. Arata heads the Army’s online and social media division in the public affairs office, and the branch recently launched its own Facebook page—allowing, apparently, potential recruits to become the Army’s “friend.” (Associated Press)

A Craving for ‘Halo’
A new study published in Psychological Science suggests that nearly one of every 10 children is addicted, on some level, to video games.

The study, conducted by Douglas Gentile, director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family, found that about 8.5 percent of children tested display at least six of 11 “addictive” signs, including skipping chores or homework to play, getting restless or irritable when they try to cut down their game play, or playing games to avoid problems.

Some experts say more research needs to be done before any definitive conclusions can be reached, and Gentile admits the report actually “yields far more questions than answers,” but he adds that games do appear to cause or aggravate real-world problems in some children.

“I would hope parents pay attention to this,” said David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family. “Most kids play video games and enjoy them, and it’s just one of the things they enjoy doing, but for one out of 10 kids, it is a problem.” (USA Today)

Music Industry Hits Another Sour Note
Music sales fell 18.6 percent in 2008, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. While music downloads continue to sell briskly online, growing 16.5 percent last year and tallying $1.78 billion in revenue, it couldn’t make up for the rest of the industry. CD sales were hit particularly hard last year, with sales tumbling by nearly a third. (eMarketer)

TECH TALK
iWithdrawal
With some trepidation, 10th graders at a Los Angeles-area high school unplugged themselves from all electronic devices for an entire week this April—part of an experiment by homeroom teacher Shannon Meyer. (Cue evil laughter.)

While youth workers of a certain age might think losing one’s TV, iPod and Internet connection as more inconvenience than instrument of torture, Meyer’s students (who attend the California Academy for Liberal Studies Early College High School) weren’t so sure. These youth, after all, live their lives on social networking sites, and some sleep with cell phones under their pillows. Many likely would rather lose the use of their right hand for a week than put away their iPod.

“I suspect that people will be going crazy,” said student Jamila Mohedano shortly before the experiment began. Meyer agreed—which was all the more reason, she believed, for these youth to unplug for a bit. All the electronic stimulation we receive these days makes us far less able—or willing—to sit and listen to a classroom lecture. Let’s face it: Life isn’t all about Twitter and “Halo.”

“These kids are really bright, but they’re quickly bored,” Meyer said. (L.A. Times)

Smell My Vengeance!
Catch a glimpse of some modern platform video games, and you might mistake them for live action. Graphics are getting so good that it’s hard to see how the next generation of game designers will improve upon them.

Bob Stone of Birmingham University in England isn’t even going to try to improve how these games look. Instead, he’s hoping to add realism to next-gen gaming in a more fragrant way.

Stone is working on a way to inject scents into gaming—the loamy smell of a horse track, for instance, or the sharp odor of a battlefield. Initially, he envisions these olfactory elements will be used in virtual military exercises (the project, after all, is being funded by Britain’s Ministry of Defense), but he thinks the technology could waft its way to the private sector in no time.

Great? Maybe. Let’s just hope no one tries to inject scent into those zombie-fighting games. (The Sunday Times, London)

MIXED MEDIA
Something to Tweet About
Ashton Kutcher may be only a C-list actor, but in the world of Twitter, he’s the king of the world.

The 31-year-old Kutcher, best known these days as the husband of Demi Moore, became the first “Twitter millionaire,” snagging his millionth “follower” April 16 this year.

For the uninitiated, this means 1 million people subscribe to Kutcher’s Twitter feed, where he fires off short, staccato updates on his comings and goings.

Kutcher, who was locked in a tight race for the 1 millionth follower with CNN’s news feed, celebrated the achievement by popping open a bottle of champagne (the video of which was tweeted to his followers) and writing a $100,000 check to the nonprofit Malaria no More. (Fox News)

This Poll Really Is Moot
Moot, creator of the salaciously geek discussion forum 4chan.com, was voted “the world’s most influential person” in Time magazine’s third annual Time 100 Internet poll—topping such figures as Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and Zac Efron. “To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective,” the folks at Time wrote, “It’s worth noting that everyone Moot beat out actually has a job.”

The 4chan.com creator, believed to be 21-year-old college dropout Christopher Poole, snagged nearly 17 million votes—far ahead of second-place vote-getter Anwar Ibrahim, an opposition leader in Malaysia.

Of course, most folks believe Ibrahim’s strong showing was also attributable to Moot’s 4chansters, too. Indeed, almost everyone believes the folks at 4chan.com hacked into the Time poll and rigged the results, so the first initials of the top 21 vote-getters would spell “Marblecake Also the Game.”

No, we’re not exactly sure what that means, either; and if the folks at 4chan.com know, they’re not saying. (Time, Fox News)

Music to Our Ears
We’ve always known music could be good for the soul. As it turns out, it’s pretty OK for the heart, too. Dr. Mike Miller from the University of Maryland examined the cardiovascular systems of people as they listened to music and discovered that if his subject liked the tune being played, the inner linings of his or her blood vessels relaxed and released heart-friendly chemicals. If subjects didn’t like the music, though, Miller noticed their blood vessels actually contracted, as if they were under stress. (CNN)

SEX AND SEXUALITY
Bosom Buddies
So, when a guy and a girl say they’re “just friends,” what exactly does that mean? On college campuses, it’s becoming increasingly hard to figure out.

About 60 percent of college students say they’ve been in a “friends with benefits” relationship—a friendship packaged with an understanding that they can have casual sex with each other now and then. More than a third of the students polled at Wayne State University and Michigan State University reported they were in such a relationship now.

About 60 percent of the study’s participants said a definite perk of such friendships is that they could have sex without the promise of commitment, but nearly two thirds worried that such casual hookups could lead to stronger, more lovey-dovey feelings. In short: Physical intimacy is awesome. Emotional intimacy? Heaven forbid. (LiveScience.com)

Going to Plan B
The Food and Drug Administration has announced it will allow 17-year-olds to get the “morning-after” birth-control pill without a doctor’s prescription.

The decision is a reversal of sorts, though an expected one. The Bush administration initially restricted access to the drug, also known as “Plan B,” allowing only women 18 or older to purchase it over the counter. The policy, however, was overturned by a federal judge in March, and the FDA opted not to appeal. (Associated Press)

STATS
Social Butterflies
According to eMarketer, three-quarters of teens ages 12-17 use social networks—a percentage expected to go up to 79 percent by 2013. For what purposes do they use these networks? Here’s the breakdown.
Staying in touch with friends: 91 percent
Making plans with friends: 72 percent
Making new friends: 49 percent
Flirting: 17 percent
Source: eMarketer

EDUCATION
Teacher Receives Civics Lesson
High-school teachers have significant leeway as to what they say in the classroom—but if a teacher tells his or her class that creationism is “religious, superstitious nonsense,” that goes too far.

A California judge said as much in his ruling against James Corbett, a history teacher at Capistrano Valley High School. Former student Chad Farnan sued the teacher 17 months ago, after Farnan recorded Corbett allegedly slamming religion about 20 times during one of his lectures.

While the judge said most of the statements were protected by free speech (including when Corbett said that “when you pray for divine intervention, you’re hoping that the spaghetti monster will help you get what you want”), referring to creationism as “nonsense” crossed the line.

Farnan, now a junior, wasn’t suing for damages; and he is not currently in any of Corbett’s classes. So, the case primarily serves as a cautionary tale for other teachers.

“The court’s ruling today reflects the constitutionally permissible need for expansive discussion even if a given topic may be offensive to a particular religion,” U.S. District Judge James Selna wrote. “The decision also reflects that there are boundaries.” (Associated Press)

Dropout Rate Concerns Experts
Though graduation rates in many major cities rose between 1995 and 2005, according to a national study, about 30 percent of United States youth still drop out of school. That has education experts wringing their collective hands.

Urban areas typically have worse dropout rates than suburban or rural school districts, with the top 50 most populous cities reporting on average that half their students leave before graduating. On a positive note, many of those cities actually saw their graduation rates rise during the decade-long study—13 of them by double-digit figures.

Philadelphia, Pa., Tucson, Ariz., and Kansas City, Mo., all saw 20 percent more of their students graduate in 2005 than in 1995. Some cities saw their graduation rates go down. For example, Las Vegas now graduates only 44.5 percent of its students—down 23 percentage points from 1995.

“There are places around the country where those numbers are going down, and not just going down one year, they’re going down year after year after year,” said Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s education secretary. “In places that are struggling, there has to be a willingness to face those brutal truths, not be scared of them, and acknowledge this huge sense of crisis, the devastating impact this has on children’s lives and on the entire community.” (Associated Press)

Add one more thing to the ever-growing list of ways to use Facebook: scoping out colleges.

Facebook started off as a way for college students to connect with one another, and higher education always has kept a high profile on the popular social networking service. Now, however, some prospective college freshmen are turning to Facebook to help them choose which school to attend. Eighteen-year-old Sophie Ramayat joined Facebook groups for all four colleges to which she was accepted as a way to judge the campus vibe. “You can kind of tell what the students are like,” she says.

Some colleges and universities are thrilled with the growing interactivity. School officials eavesdrop on these online conversations, and some are creating their own Facebook forums for potential freshmen. “Before, we’d only hear from the exceptionally ecstatic or upset student who bothered to write,” says M.J. Knoll-Finn, Emerson College’s vice president for enrollment, “but now we can see exactly what the average accepted student is thinking and how he or she is deciding between schools.” (Time)

No Democrats Allowed
Liberty University, a Christian college located in Lynchburg, Va., and founded by the late Jerry Falwell, has shut down the college’s fledgling College Democrats Club. Liberty, according to an e-mail that club president Brian Diaz received, said that it couldn’t “lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principals” held by the college.

Of course, considering Falwell founded the Moral Majority and was one of Christian conservatism’s primary leaders, Diaz was surprised that Liberty let the group form in the first place. Liberty’s College Democrats drew 50 folks to its first meeting last fall and survived long enough to celebrate Barack Obama’s inauguration in January.

Frankly, while college leadership shut down the organization, fellow students may be softening. When the organization set up a recruiting table last fall, “People were a little confrontational, asking us how we could call ourselves Christians and be Democrats,” Diaz said. “Now it’s more like, ‘That’s interesting—let me talk to you and hear why you’re a Democrat.'” (Time)

STATS
Top 10 Twitterers
1. Ashton Kutcher
2. CNN
3. Britney Spears
4. The Ellen (DeGeneres) Show
5. Twitter
6. Barack Obama
7. John Mayer
8. Jimmy Fallon
9. Shaquille O’Neal
10. The New York Times
Source: Twitterholic

FRIENDS AND FAMILY
News Flash: Teens Like Their Parents
A Canadian study finds that teens are getting along better with their parents these days—thanks, researchers believe, to the parents’ ability to better balance work with home life.

About 90 percent of Canadian teens say their mothers have a high degree of nfluence in their lives, acrding to research from the University of Lethbridge, hile about 80 percent say the same of their fathers. Both measures are up 10 percent since the 1980s.

“The enjoyment of parents is correlated with a number of things, including the influence that parents have on teens’ lives,” says Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby. “As enjoyment increases, so does influence.”

More telling stats: About 42 percent of teens say they argue weekly with their parents—significant, but down 10 percentage points from a decade ago. Less than four in 10 say they’re misunderstood, nearly 20 percent lower than the 58 percent who felt that way in 1992. (Canwest News Service)

Say Cheese!
Smile, they say, and the world smiles with you—especially your spouse. Researchers from DePauw University in Indiana found that people who smiled in high-school yearbook photos were less likely to get divorced later. Even weirder? Of the study subjects who smiled the most intensely (think ear-to-ear, all-teeth-exposed type of smiles), none had divorced. Of those who kept a straight face, nearly one-in-four later split with their partners.

Furthermore, DePauw researchers found that 31 percent of folks who didn’t smile in childhood photos had been divorced by age 65. The upshot? Non-smilers are five times more likely to break up with their spouses, researchers say.

“It feeds into this idea that what’s occurring earlier in our lives…can predict things that occur decades later,” researcher Matt Hertenstein told LiveScience.com. “Maybe smiling people attract other happier people, and the combination may lead to a greater likelihood of a long-lasting marriage. We don’t really know for sure what’s causing it.” (New York Daily News)

HEALTH
A Joint Initiative
A group pushing to legalize marijuana is asking a cadre of college presidents to join its crusade, arguing that more weed could translate to less binge drinking—and safer college campuses.

The (ahem) grassroots organization, Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation, is targeting presidents who signed the Amethyst Initiative—a petition pushing for the reconsideration of the country’s de facto legal drinking age of 21. Signatories suggested that students under 21 still drink—they just do it secretly, leading to bigger problems.

“The Amethyst Initiative is college students calling on Congress to change the law—to change the drinking age—because they want to reduce drinking on college campuses,” says SAFER Executive Director Mason Tvert. “This is no different.”

Tvert wants to eliminate campus penalties for smoking pot and push the United States government to change laws pertaining to marijuana use. While Tvert has no proof that allowing students to smoke weed would cut down on campus drinking, he believes it’s an idea worth discussing. (insidehighered.com)

Is Vegetarianism Bad for You?
Lots of kids become vegetarians for altruistic reasons, ranging from saving cows to saving the planet. According to a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, some vegetarians simply are masking serious eating disorders.

The study polled about 2,500 Minnesotans ages 15-23, about 15 percent of whom were or are vegetarian. Many of these herbivores were healthier than the average youth, with less than 30 percent of their daily caloric intake coming from fat; but nearly a fifth of the vegetarians turned out to be binge eaters (compared to 5 percent of the carnivores polled), and about a quarter of current vegetarians had used “extreme weight-control measures” (from taking diet pills to forcing themselves to throw up) to stay thin. Experts fret that young vegans may use their persnickety diets as a way to lose weight without alarming their parents. (Time)

Signs of Autism Appear in Infancy
When watching a movie, most 18-month-olds will stop blinking—a sign of rapt attention—during a fight or a kiss. A few, however, seem fascinated by something as insignificant as an opening door.

Researchers say such children may be autistic; and many experts believe the earlier parents and others pick up on these telltale signs, the better chance they have of steering the child away from full-blown autism.

“The environment in the early years plays an active role in shaping the brain,” says Geraldine Dawson, chief scientific officer for the group Autism Speaks. “What we see in autism may be partly the result of not engaging with the social environment. So if you engage the baby through an intervention, you might prevent or at least reduce the development of autism symptoms.”

The trick is that, while signs of autism often start showing up by 12 months—not looking up when their name is called, for instance, or not pointing at things that interest them—none of these are clear-cut signs of autism; they’re merely indicators. Still, if children display enough indicators, researchers now say these children should be labeled “at risk” and be enrolled in intervention programs—just in case. (Time)

Chew on This Study
Chewing gum, it seems, actually makes you smarter. That’s what researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine say, at least. The study, which divvied up students into gum-chewing and non-gum-chewing factions for 14 weeks, found that students who chewed gum scored 3 percent higher on a concluding math test than their gum-deprived cohorts.

Researchers say it’s possible that chewing gum somehow increases blood flow to the brain; either that, or students used their gum wrappers as cheat sheets.

It should be noted the study was sponsored by the Wrigley Science Institute—presumably an offshoot of the ubiquitous gum-manufacturing company. No confirmation yet that its next study will examine whether chewing gum also makes you better looking. (Los Angeles Times)

Smoking out the Truth
More African-American adults smoke than their Caucasian compadres. Most smokers start when they’re teens. So it’d make sense that more black youth would smoke than white youth, right? Not so fast, Amigo. New research from the University of Washington found that 22 percent of white teens are smoking by 10th grade, compared to 15 percent of black teens.

Researchers found that teens of all colors were more likely to smoke if their friends or one of their parents smoked, but they also discovered African-American parents might be pretty effective—at least initially—in keeping their kids away from cancer sticks. Problems are more likely to develop after high school, when African-American youth start leaving home.

“In general, good parenting, such as setting clear guidelines about drug use and forming strong relationships with your child, reduces the likelihood of teens associating with deviant peers and has a significant impact on whether kids smoke or don’t smoke,” says researcher Martie Skinner. “Our findings are consistent with other research done here, which shows parents are important influences on their teenagers, including who they should hang out with.” (ScienceDaily.com)

Suicide Attempts Linked to Weight
Teens who are overweight—or teens who believe they are—are more prone to attempt suicide, according to new research recently published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. (HealthDay.com)

STATS
Sexting: A Growing Problem?
20 percent of teens say they’ve sent or posted racy pictures of themselves.
48 percent say they’ve received such pictures from peers.
66 percent of girls and 60 percent of boys say they send such pictures to be “fun or flirtatious.”
Source: The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy