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pot, the teen brain & free newsletter

This article showed up earlier this week. It is well worth the time...and that reminds me to suggest you sign up for their bi-weekly email.

Pot and the Teen Brain

Today’s teens are smoking a more potent form of marijuana and starting to use at increasingly younger ages – during crucial brain development years.1 There is plenty of evidence indicating the ways pot impedes, even changes, the mental health of adolescents. In fact, changes in the brain due to marijuana use are similar to those caused by cocaine, heroin and alcohol.2 The overall impact that marijuana has on the brain can have long-term consequences. This is where YOU come in. The first step in being able to discuss the dangers of marijuana with your teen is knowing the facts. To better understand how marijuana affects the different regions of the brain, read on! Find out how marijuana affects a developing teen brain. Take virtual tour>>

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Beautiful Disaster

You can watch the video for this song by going here.

This was a song that was played for me recently, and it really hits on some of the struggles young girls are having right now, especially during teenage years. The song struck a chord with me, and hopefully it will you too. Below are the lyrics so you can hear the song for yourself:

She loves her mama's lemonade, Hates the sounds that goodbyes make. She prays one day she'll find someone to need her. She swears that there's no difference, Between the lies and complements. It's all the same if everybody leaves her. And every magazine tells her she's not good enough, The pictures that she sees make her cry.

And she would change everything, everything just ask her. Caught in the in between of beautiful disaster, And she needs someone to take her home.

She's giving boys what they want, tries to act so nonchalant, Afraid they'll see that she's lost her direction. She never stays the same for long, Assuming that she'll get it wrong. Perfect only in her imperfection. She's not a drama queen, She doesn't want to feel this way, only seventeen but tired.

She would change everything for happy ever after. Caught in the in between of beautiful disaster, But she just needs someone to take her home.

Cuz she's just the way she is, but no ones told her that's ok. And she would change everything, everything just ask her. Caught in the in between of beautiful disaster, And she would change everything for happy ever after. Caught in the in between of beautiful disaster, But she just needs someone to take her home And just needs someone to take her home.

myspace/facebook: which site...

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace is an essay that just came on the radar screen. this is must reading for anyone who works with youth. its all about the shifting use of myspace and facebook by teenagers.

the essay suggests that the shift is happening along class lines. myspace is becoming the networking tool of choice for what she calls “subaltern teens”, and facebook is becoming the networking tool of choice for what she calls “hegemonic teens”:

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

Over the last six months, I’ve noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That’s only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it’s not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Who goes where gets kinda sticky… probably because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.

People often ask me if I’m worried about teens today. The answer is yes, but it’s not because of social network sites. With the hegemonic teens, I’m very worried about the stress that they’re under, the lack of mobility and healthy opportunities for play and socialization, and the hyper-scheduling and surveillance. I’m worried about their unrealistic expectations for becoming rich and famous, their lack of work ethic after being pampered for so long, and the lack of opportunities that many of them have to even be economically stable let alone better off than their parents. I’m worried about how locking teens indoors coupled with a fast food/junk food advertising machine has resulted in a decrease in health levels across the board which will just get messy as they are increasingly unable to afford health insurance. When it comes to ostracized teens, I’m worried about the reasons why society has ostracized them and how they will react to ongoing criticism from hegemonic peers. I cringe every time I hear of another Columbine, another Virgina Tech, another site of horror when an outcast teen lashes back at the hegemonic values of society.

how to save a life...

Even Evangelical Teens Do It...

this article popped up awhile ago...but is worth re-visiting. From Slate ~ Even Evangelical Teens Do It-How religious beliefs do, and don't, influence sexual behavior...

The results play out in the usual 19^th-century way. When evangelical parents say they talk to their kids about sex, they mean the morals, not the mechanics. In a quiz on pregnancy and health risks associated with sex, evangelicals scored very low. Evangelical teens don't accept themselves as people who will have sex until they've already had it. As a result, abstinence pledgers are considerably less likely than nonpledgers to use birth control the first time they have sex. "It just sort of happened," one girl told the researchers, in what could be a motto for this generation of evangelical teens.

Its all based on a book entitled Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers by Mark Regnerus. Go here to read the rest of the story

New Twists on Not-So-New Issues for Girls

Yesterday Erin was talking about this very subject while I was working on installing a new printer at the office. And then this morning this came across the inbox. It is an interesting article by Kara Powell and Brad Griffin from the Center for Youth & Family at Fuller Seminary.

While it may seem to some that adolescence hasn't changed much for girls in recent years, research and media trends indicate at least three areas they've identified as needing our renewed attention as youth workers. In this article they share ideas for responding to three "mores" that bring new twists to some perhaps-familiar issues: more sexy, more pressure, and more violence.

Go here to read the whole article.