The following originally aired on KCBS

By: Sayre Quevedo 

The fact that I didn’t go away to college used to make me feel like an underachieving, ugly duckling among my friends.

When my friends left for college, it was bittersweet. It meant they’d disappeared for a bit, but so had the question, “So what are you doing now?” Those words were practically the soundtrack of my summer. No, I’d say, I’m not going to a university. No, I’m not moving away. No, I haven’t chosen a major. I’m just working and going to community college.

Honestly, I felt insecure. I was missing out on a milestone simply because I couldn’t afford to pay for it. But one morning as I sat on the bus going to work from my new place I realized: I’m doing plenty. Moving out and working to take care of myself are milestones too; ones my friends at school might not reach until after they graduate.

So if my friends’ college migration has taught me one thing, it’s this: I may not be walking the same path as everyone else but that doesn’t mean I’m not on one.

What goes around, comes around, seems to be one of the takeaways from the results of “Crossing the Line (2011),” a study done by the American Association of University Women about sexual harassment in school, in May and June of 2011. 

Notably, a third of those students who reported being harassed, also admitted to being harassers. And almost all of the students who reported being harassers, experienced some form of sexual harassment themselves.

Out of the 48 percent of students surveyed who said they had been sexually harassed, 87 percent of them said the harassment had a negative effect on them. Half of those students did nothing in response to the harassment.

Different kinds of sexual harassment were identified in the survey, verbal harassment being the most common. One third of students reported being harassed on Facebook or online, and those students were also likely to be harassed in person.

The study surveyed almost 2,000 students between 7th and 12th grades.

For more details on the study results, view the entire report here.

Also check out a personal commentary about sexual harassment from Mikki Robinson.

The number of 12 year-olds active on social networks continues to increase. According to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, in 2009 73% of teens ages 12-17 subscribed to an online social networking site and only 82% percent of teens 14-17 admitted to using those sites more than younger kids. However, these numbers might vary with the fact that older teens are more likely to admit they use social network sites.

The study also points out that teens who come from low-income families that earn less than $30,000, are more likely to log on to social networking sites daily than those who come from  wealthier families.

“As of September 2009, 47% of online adults used a social networking website, compared with the 73% of teens who did so at a comparable point in time. The percentage of adults who use online social networks has grown from 8% of internet users in February 2005 to 16% in August 2006 to 37% in November 2008. On a typical day in 2009, just over one-quarter (27%) of adult internet users visited a social networking site.” via Pew Internet and American Life Project

Updating your Facebook is not just about keeping your friends up to date, but subconsciously, those profile updates can help boost one's self esteem. According to a study done by Cornell University researchers, the ability to share information through various ways on Facebook, like wall posts and updating one's profile and status can enhance one's self-esteem.

The study focused on the three parts: “exposure to a mirror, exposure to one’s own Facebook, and a control condition in which participants used the same room without any treatment.” Sixty-three Northeastern University students consisting of 16 males and 47 females, participated in the study.

The study found that being exposed to information displayed in one’s Facebook profile “enhances self-esteem, especially when a person edits information about the self, or selectively self-presents.” The study also claims that, “Facebook is a unique source of self-awareness stimuli in that it enhances awareness of the optimal self.” The results contradict previous studies that found that digital self-awareness can have a negative outcome on one’s self-esteem.

This is one more justification for being glued to Facebook.

By Denise Tejada

We’ve heard several times that youth who spend a lot of hours online could become socially isolated, but according to a recent study by the MacArthur Foundation and the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, the opposite is true. The new study found that youth who spend more time online are more likely to be more engaged in civic and political issues.

The study surveyed more than 2,500 youth and more than 400 youth were followed for 3.5 years. The study focuses on three types of behavior: politically-driven online participation, online exposure to diverse perspectives, and interest-driven online participation.  The study concludes:

“Youth engagement in interest-driven online communities was associated with increased volunteer and charity work and increased work with others on community issues. The Internet can serve as a gateway to online and offline civic and political engagement, including volunteerism, community problem-solving, and protest activity.”

The study looked at how youth used blogs or social networking sites to share or discuss perspectives on social and political issues, how youth use the Internet to get information about political or social issues, and how email is used to communicate with others who are working on political or social issues.

The study also found that youth who are exposed to media literacy are more likely to be exposed to diverse perspectives.

Read more about the survey here.

Can someone's addiction to Facebook finally pay off? According to researchers at Abilene Christian University, the more active you’re on Facebook the more likely you are to remain in college.

Researchers followed the Facebook profiles of 375 first semester freshmen and noticed that students with less friends and wall posts were less likely to return to school.

“The study, only recently published by the Journal of College Student Retention, focused on students from fall of 2006 to summer of 2007. Students who opted to continue on to their sophomore year had, on average, 27 more friends and 59 more wall posts than those who dropped out, according to the study.”

via Wired

The study also shows connections between students’ Facebook profiles and their personal lives
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The students that showed more activity on their Facebook were also taking advantage of their school’s activities and being more active in their free time. Researchers believe their Facebook activities serves as an actual “mirror for their real-life interactions.”

A study, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-to-18-Year-Olds, conducted by Kaiser Family Foundation has been released showing that teens and tween regularly spend 7.5 hours online per day. The study looks at 2,000 kids from across the country and it tracks changes in media consumption from childhood into teenage years. It looks at different types of media used by kids like TV, computers, video games, music, print, cell phones, and movies.

Key findings in the study are:

“Five years ago, we reported that young people spent an average of nearly 6½ hours (6:21) a day with media—and managed to pack more than 8½ hours (8:33) worth of media content into that time by multitasking.

Five years ago, we reported that young people spent an average of nearly 6½ hours (6:21) a day with media—and managed to pack more than 8½ hours (8:33) worth of media content into that time by multitasking.”

( via Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-to-18-Year-Olds)

The study also shows that in the past five years, the increases range from 24 minutes a day for video games, to 27 minutes a day for computers, 38 minutes for TV content, and 47 minutes a day for music and other audio. (Time spent reading went from 43 to 38 minutes a day.)

With technology changes making it much easier to access the internet, the numbers of teens spending time on their phones has also changed. The study points out that 20 percent of media consumption is done on mobile devices—cell phone, iPods, etc. Owning an iPod or any kind of MP3 device saw a huge increase, from 18- 76 percent. The study also went on to show that blacks and Hispanics spend more time on different types of media (TV, music, video games, etc.) during the day than others.

A National Survey on Latino youth was released Friday by the Pew Hispanic Center. The study found that many Latinos have attitudes that contradict their behavior. For example, Latino youth care about education, hard work, career success, and are optimistic about their futures. However, they are also more likely to drop out of school, live in poverty, and become teen parents than other American youths. They also have high levels of exposure to gangs.

The survey was conducted on Aug 5 through Sept 16, 2009 and questioned 2,012 young people, ages 16-25. The study found that Latinos are not only the largest minority population in the U.S, but also the youngest. One-in-five school children in the U.S. are Latino and one-in-four newborns is Latino. These numbers alone, show that young Latinos will shape the kind of society American becomes in the 21st century.

The survey compared Latino youth of different backgrounds. It compared foreign born with native born, and first generation to later generations (second, third and higher).

98 percent of native-born Latino youth are twice as more proficient in English and 59 percent of them are enrolled in high school or college. Native born youth are also twice as likely as foreign born youth to have ties to a gang or to have gotten into a fight or carried a weapon in the past year.

A study linking cell phone usage to brain tumors was conducted by IARC—International Agency for Research on Cancer—and is expected to come out soon.

“The WHO’s Interphone investigation’s results showed, "a significantly increased risk" of some brain tumors" related to use of mobile phones for a period of ten years or more," via Fox News

It’s been said that the more someone uses his/her cell phone, the higher the probability that the person will develop a brain tumor -- but there hasn’t been a definitive study that shows the numbers and substantiates this theory. Will this study be able to prove the link? We'll just have to wait and see the details.

Cell phones are addictive for young people like me. It’s hard to put a cell phone down despite knowing that you’re harming yourself. Hopefully this study can help us break that addiction.

Previously:

• Cell Phone Boarding Passes: The Latest "Green Tech"
• Cell Phones As Wallets?
• Teen Drivers And Texting