Teens in Balance - Tara Cousineau, PhD

Go Figure: Teens Do Care About Their Health

Series: Tara’s Rants & Raves

Why is it that grown ups seem to think that teenagers don’t care about their health? Or that if you claim to help adolescents navigate the rollercoaster ride of the teen years that you’ll be outright dismissed? (Good luck to you! they exclaim.)

I get this response on a regular basis when I talk about BodiMojo for teens, an online health engagement platform to support adolescents during this weird transition to adulthood. “Teens don’t care about their health” is the most frequent declarative response.

Why does the notion of teens + health = non-starter? 

Is it because we remember our own turbulent years and recall that we wanted nothing to do with people telling us what we should do?

It’s a visceral memory. People wince or laugh or self-deprecate as they recall their own teen years. We are afraid of teens as we remember our own pasts!

Why is it, then, when we become those grown-ups, that's exactly what we do? We tell teens what they should be or not be doing. No drugs, no beer, no sex, no texting at the dinner table, don’t you dare miss your curfew, you must get As (or else you have no life). BUT…help with the dishes, mow the lawn, take out the trash, eat your broccoli, oh and, watch your sister while I run to the store.

I’ve become a defender of teenagers in the landscape of health.  Not only are they underserved in health care – after all they do not pay insurance premiums or have employee benefits – but teens are elusive, too.  They don’t pay much attention to health prevention messages. 

Why?  Because teens “know” what they need to know. Ya, know what I mean?  Teens have been soaking up prevention messages from school health classes, coaches, parents, peer educators, billboards, PSAs and so on (see one video teens created).  A good thing, too. We need to keep this education in their faces, because individuals absorb information at different rates and in different ways depending on a host of things:  cognitive maturity, ability to problem solve and plan ahead, propensity for risk taking or impulsivity, motivation, health beliefs and attitudes, pubertal status, social support, relationships and peer pressure, self-esteem and so on. 

It’s a lucky teen that might get the right message at the right time, though. Health topics, like many things in life, have become so compartmentalized, one wonders how any of the information might come together in a holistic way for a teen. Think about what a typical teen might get:  A few hours of puberty ed in 5^th grade, a reproductive biology module in 9^th grade, an assembly on bullying once a year, and alcohol prevention during prom season. At least that’s how it seems to work in my community.

How about personalizing health information for teens?

How about making it relevant to them when they need it?

Teens have a lot going on while their brains and bodies are undergoing massive shifts. So they forget things.  What was taught to 11 year olds during puberty education class (largely experienced as either disgust or hilarity) should be reconfigured each year thereafter through age 18 because reproductive health becomes increasingly more relevant over time (but that’s another rant). Teens “get” the messages about eating fruits and veggies and exercising, just like they get the messages not to do drugs or drive without a seat belt or to use a condom to avoid pregnancy or STDs. That doesn’t mean they actually act intelligently on their knowledge – especially when friends are around. Groupthink overrides the common sense switch in the brain.  Hormones override executive function. Social validation trumps IQ.

So let’s meet teens where they are at. They are more engaging than you think. They like to learn about themselves, test their knowledge, assess their personality, track their mood, and then share with their friends whatever they’ve learned that surprises or inspires them. They are inherently competitive and like to show off. Teens are dealing with highly personal issues and behaviors that are emotionally triggering. They may not want to talk about "health" in a classroom or with grown ups. But maybe they do.  Choices matter.

Bottom line: People learn new things and change behaviors when it means something to them AND when they have the ability or skills to act on it.  Not all teens mature at same rate so why do we think teaching them things at a certain time in a spotty curriculum will actually stick? 

Recently, I was part of a community service project with ten urban high school girls ranging in age from 14 to 17.  The topic they wanted to address was body image and the task was to bring back to the school community a positive message or outcome of the project.  As part of this exercise the girls used the BodiMojo site and took the body image quizzes as a discussion and icebreaker activity.  One girl, clearly overweight, read her personalized feedback about her body image attitude. She was delighted with it and cut and pasted the feedback to her Facebook page. This revealed several things. One, the message was relevant and positive to her.  Two, she wanted to show it off to her friends. Three, she choose to share a “confidential” experience because it could inspire others, too. (I know this because I asked her why she did this.) What is “social” trumps privacy, in this case, for the good.  Her sharing was a choice.  For others in the group, they did not jump to broadcast on Facebook. Yet, according to their school teacher, the girls learned a great deal and bonded over the experience.

As a team we also discovered that the BodiMojo platform was effective for teen girls for improving body esteem. Teens care about issues that are emotionally charged and immediate.  If we grown-ups can better attend to what is developmentally relevant, we might begin to affect change in other health areas, too. 

You still don’t think teens care about their health? Then you might just be asking the wrong questions!

 

Like Us on Facebook and tell the teens in your life:  www.facebook.com/bodimojo

A week of mourning for our youth

Series: Tara’s Rants & Raves

Is anyone else’s heart breaking over the recent news of our young people? Last week’s news of the suicide of Rutgers University student, Tyler Clementi, 18 – and other recent suicides of youngsters just 13 years old – challenge our notions of tolerance, right to privacy, and human dignity.  One can only imagine the anguish of Tyler’s parents, and what I imagine would be the horrified and confused reaction of the perpetrators’ families. ("My child would never do this!") It’s difficult to accept that in an age of multicultural acceptance and openness to diversity – in particular among universities – that such “pranks” occur. But of course they do. The issue of wanting power over others will always exist, no matter what tools or means are handy… a webcam, the Internet, a threat, a gun, physical strength, emotional bribery, a crowd. 

On the anniversary of the original production of The Lamarie Project, the play that depicts the murder of Matt Shepard because he was gay, we are reminded again of the plight that so many of our gay and lesbian youth confront all too often. (The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later was recently performed at Emerson College, Boston.) In the twittersphere and YouTube, the message that has taken off in the wake of Tyler's suicide is a message of hope for GLBT teens:  it gets better. But where is the support now? Where is the support when these teens ask for help?  

Last week I commented on youth and online ethics, calling for a need to educate at all stages of youth development so that the lessons of common decency, regard for others, rules of online/offline etiquette and privacy can be mindfully and meaningfully absorbed. Adolescence entails a process of cognitive and emotional fits and starts and a progressive fine-tuning of thought processes, reasoning, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills that occur well into the early 20s – it’s important to repeat lessons so they can sink in.  The students who egregiously invaded Tyler’s privacy showed no sense of ethics.  Empathy, though, is a prerequisite for personal ethics – the capacity to feel another’s pain and see another’s perspective – to put oneself in another person’s shoes. This capacity is derived not from annual cyberbullying lectures, lesson plans and PSAs, but from the felt experience of acceptance and respect that happens in consistent, reciprocal interactions with caring others.

Clearly, we have to do more.

Just threes miles from where I live, the community of Mattapan, experienced one of the most violent acts of murder in recent history – execution style – of four people, mostly in their 20s: A young mother and her 2-year old son, two young men, with a third hanging on to life at a Boston hospital. News reports suggest the crime was related to drugs (pot).  But honestly, dragging a young woman who was sleeping, and her baby out of a house and shooting them? Why? Why? It's too much to bear in less than the span of one week. And yet one can’t turn away from a sense of communal responsibility to our neighbors and our youth.  At its very core the recent events are a call to action. At a simple level: To pay kind attention to those around us – and yes – to put oneself in another’s shoes. 

Why is that so hard?

Are teens too wired or are parents too disconnected?

Series: Tara’s Rants & Raves

Here’s the stuff that freaks out the grown ups: 

Today, kids spend almost 8 hours a day using entertainment media – the equivalent of a full time job (Kaiser Family Foundation).  Moreover, kids are darn good at “media multi-tasking.” They pack in over 10 hours of media content, which means that they are looking at, listening, or playing with a few media devices at the same time for at least a couple hours of a day. Let’s assume most of this happens after school, with scholarly endeavors relegated to a part-time job.

Enter the cell phone stats.  Teens send on average 112 text messages each day or over 3360 messages a month. The majority (84%) of teens with cell phones sleep with their coveted devices under their pillow or near by. How sweet.  Girls, socialized to socialize, tend to be more text agile – with 86% of girls text messaging friends several times a day vs. 64% of boys. 

To make matters worse, a day doesn’t go by without news of the obesity crisis among children, the costs of the medical outcomes to health and society, and so on. It is a big deal.  

Then there is, to boot, the incessant daily exposure to thousands of media messages of sex, violence and unrealistic images of beauty that have dominated our visual landscape for decades via TV, movies, and billboards, presumably incubating a nation of impulsive, distracted youth – prone to either anorexia or obesity – and who are, as a whole, losing educational ground compared to the youth of other nations.

Oh wait. There’s more on the radar of concerned elders. Now the physical distance to media is just a matter of millimeters. We wear our technology. Earphones, headsets, game consoles, joysticks, dance pads and pedometers. There is the neurological implication that kids’ brains are being subtly rewired during a critical phase of brain development, or poisoned with microwaves from the guts of mobile technology. 

Digital kids are out of control!! What are we to do?

[A pause for reflection.] 

With whom do these children live, may I ask?  Is anybody home?

A recent survey by Partnership for a Drug-Free America indicated that over a third of parents are concerned that technology has impeded communication about risk behavior topics like drugs and alcohol use. Technology is now to bame for lack of heart-to-heart chats with our kids.

Who buys these kids their technology?

Here’s the thing. Technology, the Internet, mobile devices are here to stay.  They are a medium – neither good nor bad.  For American teens, computers are primarily learning and entertainment tools; and cell phones – well, cell phones are cultural currency. For most of the world, they are lifelines. No one is getting rid of these gadgets any time soon.

How modes of technology are used, manipulated, and managed can be either good or bad, or both. So let’s stop blaming the kids for being tech junkies. (They are getting tired of you anyway, with 30% of teens leaving Facebook because it’s just not cool anymore to “friend” the extended family). 

Might it be time that the grown ups take stock of the situation – perhaps set some rules and limits so there is room for some old fashioned human connection?

Let me throw out some ideas I’ve heard around the block:

•  Have family mealtime (set a goal, like at least 3 dinners a week)
• Turn off media and cell phones at mealtime and talk. Yep, have a conversation or at least try. Avoid questions that can end in a monosyllable. (Hey Jake, what was the high point of your day? Tell me one thing that surprised you at school today. What’s the coach’s strategy this season? What did you think of that news story of the teen drunk diver?)
• No entertainment media until homework is done.
• No entertainment media during the school week. OMG!
• All cell phones in back packs at night.
• No cell phone use while driving.
• No computer/screens an hour before bedtime (let those brain cells relax).

Yes, let’s take a step back and reflect. It is remarkable that over 90% of American teenagers over age 12 go online and over 80% use computers at school.  It is remarkable that over 90% of teens either own or have access to a household mobile phone.  It is remarkable that smart use of the Internet and social media fostered civic-minded young adults to get out the vote at the last presidential election. It is remarkable that more people donate to, or volunteer for, charities because of technology-based communications. It is remarkable that working or traveling parents can stay in touch with their children and have some peace of mind.  It is amazing that we can use these tools, and other wireless devices, to monitor health, like blood pressure, blood sugar, and physical activity steps. In other words, we can leverage technology for the social good.

The connected parent is a connected parent. Emotionally connected, that is. Even if parental efforts are dissed by impertinent teens, the effort counts for something. (I can speak from experience.) They do listen on many levels. They feel it when you pay attention.

Technology is peripheral to having an authentic and sustaining relationship with our children.

We want to reverse the obesity epidemic? Foster smart, creative, empathic children? Raise the social and emotional intelligence of future generations?

Great. Just what are you going to do about it?

Resource: How Teens Use Media. Nielsen, 2009.