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The Gap in State Gun Laws, Apple Card Is Sorta Here, and More News

A report outlines the link between gun laws and mass shootings, Apple's new credit card has arrived for a select group of users, and WIRED has some pocket camera suggestions for you. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less.

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Today's Headlines

The looser a state's gun laws, the more mass shootings it has

A report in BMJ compared the strictness of state-level gun laws to the annual rate of mass shootings, and the results are sobering: States were scored from 0 (very restrictive) to 100 (very permissive) based on 13 factors surrounding their gun laws. And for every 10-point relaxation in a state’s gun laws, the rate of mass shootings in that state increased by 11.5 percent.

The Apple Card is now available, just probably not for you

Apple's famed credit card will finally arrive today—but only for a select group of iPhone users. (The card will become available to everyone later this month.) Apple's card is a lot like other credit cards you might have, except that it mostly lives inside of your iPhone. You can request a titanium physical card, but Apple rewards those who use their phones for transactions by giving them twice the cash back.

Fast Fact: 183%

That's how much textbook prices have increased over the past 20 years. Digital textbooks are cheaper—plus they take up less space and are more easily updated—but when it comes to retention and comprehension, good ol' paper still produces better results.

WIRED Recommends: Pocket Cameras

What if you could have the portrait mode of a real camera with the mobility of a cell phone? Say hello to the best 5 pocket cameras you can buy right now.

News You Can Use

Don't know what TikTok is or how to use it? Here's a beginner's guide.

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Culture

I Made an Untraceable AR-15 'Ghost Gun' In My Office

WIRED senior writer Andy Greenberg puts new homemade gunsmithing tools to the test as he tries three ways of building an untraceable AR-15 semi-automatic rifle—a so-called "ghost gun"—while skirting all gun control laws.

Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/state-gun-laws-mass-shootings-apple-card/

telecommunications

In healthcare these days, Theres an app for that unless you really need it

Sarah Lisker Contributor

Sarah Lisker is a Program Manager at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations and a collaborator in The OpEd Project. She manages SOLVE Health Tech, which bridges private sector innovation with public health expertise to make digital health accessible.

When a digital health company announces a new app, everyone seems to think it’s going to improve health. Not me.

Where I work, in San Francisco’s public health system, in a hospital named after the founder of Facebook, digital solutions promising to improve health feel far away.

The patients and providers in our public delivery system are deeply familiar with the real-world barriers to leveraging technology to improve health. Our patients are low-income (nearly all of them receive public insurance) and diverse (more than 140 languages are spoken). Many of them manage multiple chronic conditions. The providers that care for them struggle with fragmented health records and outdated methods of communication, like faxes and pagers.

So when companies tell us they will cure diseases, drive down costs, and save lives with state-of-the-art technology, I am often hesitant. 

More than thirty billion dollars have been invested in digital health since 2011. The resulting technological innovations, such as mobile applications, telemedicine, and wearables, promise to help patients fight diabetes, treat chronic disease, or lose weight, for example.

However, we have yet to see digital health drive meaningful improvements in health outcomes and reductions in health expenditures. This lack of impact is because digital health companies build products that often don’t reach beyond the “worried well” – primarily healthy people who make up a small proportion of health expenditures and are already engaged in the healthcare system.

If we’re designing health apps for those who already have access to healthcare, nutritious food, clean air to breathe, and stable housing, we’re missing the point.

It’s no surprise that health apps are incongruous with the needs of low-income, diverse, and vulnerable patients when these populations are unlikely to be a part of user testing. In addition, the science that technology developers draw from is generated by clinical trials conducted on participants who often do not reflect the diversity of the United States.

Over 80% of clinical trial participants are white, and many are young and male. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, as well as older adults must be included in clinical trials to ensure the results — drawn on not only for product development but also for clinical care and policy — are relevant for diverse populations. 

Research conducted by my colleagues at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations demonstrates that patients who are low-income are unable to access many digital health apps. One of our patients testing a popular depression-management app said, “I’d get really impatient with this” and expressed concern that “Somebody that’s not too educated would be like, ‘now, what do I do here?’” A caregiver testing a different app also voiced frustration, saying “Yeah, it’s an app that makes you feel like an idiot.” Yet, despite these barriers, the majority of our study participants (most of whom have smart phones) also express a high interest in using technology to manage their health.

 While the private sector is great for innovation, it will fail to improve health in a meaningful way without real-world evidence generated in partnership with diverse patients. In addition, these for-profit companies face long odds to benefit their shareholders in a substantial way without learning how to reach the 75 million patients on Medicaid (including 1 in 3 Californians) who stand to benefit from digital health solutions.

 There’s an answer, though, and it’s within reach. To truly improve health outcomes, digital health companies must partner with public health experts and patients to not only ground themselves in evidence-based research, but also build products that meet the needs of all patients. 

Along with the compelling business potential of innovating for Medicaid, infrastructure to support this work is growing. For example, organizations like HealthTech4Medicaid are bending the arc of innovation towards the patients who need it most through advocacy and key partnerships with payers, policy makers, care providers, and technology developers.

To truly revolutionize health, let’s demand that technology creators and scalers include diverse end users early and often. Otherwise, the app “for that” will be for them, not for all of us.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/21/in-healthcare-these-days-theres-an-app-for-that-unless-you-really-need-it/

Credit Cards

Why don’t parents talk to their kids about money?

(CNN)There is one question that most parents seem to dread more than any other when it comes to talking to their kids about money. Can you guess what that might be?

If you said “How much money do you make?” you are exactly right, according to Jayne Pearl, author of several books about what she calls financial parenting.
Pearl said she was caught off guard when her own son, now grown, asked her that question at the age of 8. “I was initially like, Ahhh. I write a lot about personal finance and I wasn’t prepared for this question,” she said during an interview.
    She eventually answered her son’s question, but focused on the expenses of the household to make the case that the amount she made covered most of their costs and that the money left over either went into the bank or could be used to pay for additional things they might want or need.
    “I realized that if I told him that I made $1,000 a year, he would think that we were rich. How did he have any frame of reference?” said Pearl, who also made sure her son understood that this was private information that should not be shared with anyone else.
    That experience is part of the reason why she decided to write a series of books about kids and money, including her most recent, “Kids, Wealth and Consequences: Ensuring a Responsible Financial Future for the Next Generation.”
    There are two main reasons why more parents don’t talk to their kids about money and help them develop critical financial literacy skills, said Pearl, a writer, editor and mother of one.
    For one, they’re terrified they’re not good role models when it comes to money, she said.
    “Many of us make a lot of mistakes ourselves with money, or spend too much, or will say, ‘I need a new pair of shoes’ when you really don’t,” she said.
    Second, many parents feel like they don’t know a lot about money and then don’t have the confidence they can teach their kids about it. “We think we need a Ph.D. in finance to be able to teach our kids when it’s not true at all. All you have to do is talk out loud about what you’re doing as you’re going about your business,” said Pearl.
    For instance, when you are at the ATM with little kids, it’s a great opportunity to explain how you put money in the bank to keep it safe and to have money there when you need it, and that you can only take out as much as you put in, she said.
    Parents can also learn alongside their kids. “You don’t have to just say ‘I don’t know.’ You can say, ‘I need to learn more about this too, so let’s sit down and learn about it,’ ” said Pearl.
    If you start with financial literacy web sites that are geared for kids, you’re probably going to be learning at your level as well, she added.

    Why should you talk to kids about money?

    If you get past your insecurities about money and eventually talk to your kids, they’ll definitely benefit, said Pearl. Kids are ultimately going to need to know how to handle their own money when they get older so better for them to learn when the stakes are low.
    “It’s better that they should make $20 mistakes than $20,000 mistakes when they’re older,” she said.
    There are a lot of misconceptions about money, just like with another topic that’s often taboo among parents — sex.
    “They’re going to learn a lot of things that are not accurate or what you want them to learn so you need to check in and make sure that (they) have your take on things,” Pearl said.
    Talking with your kids about money also allows you to impress your financial values on your kids, said Pearl. Those values dictate a lot about how we live and how we interact with the world. They include understanding the differences between wants and needs and learning how to make tradeoffs, she said. “You can’t have everything. You can have this or you have that, and these are opportunities to teach your kids how to do that by giving them tradeoffs, discreet decisions that they can make around things that get bought for them.”

    How to talk to kids about money

    OK, so how can you actually start talking to your kids about money? For some answers, we asked some kids themselves, elementary and middle school students in Caldwell, New Jersey, as part of a new video series called “If I Were a Parent,” where we ask kids how they would handle things if they were in charge.
    Grace Szostak, who just started middle school this year, said she would start early, as young as age 4. She would get one of those play cash registers and have her kids do a little role play with it, selling stuff to each other to understand the concept of money and learn how to count it.
    Lance Jenkins, who is also in the sixth grade, said he would follow his grandfather’s advice and give three envelopes to his kids. “You just put money in each every week so you’d have one for donations, I think, then one for spending, then one for saving.”
    Toniann Garruto, a fifth grader, said she would talk to her kids about credit cards. “Even though credit cards have a lot of money on them, if you use them frequently and a lot then you’ll be broke,” she said. “You won’t have any money to do what you really want.”
    Pearl, the author and financial expert, said parents shouldn’t hesitate to talk to their kids about the mistakes they’ve made, and that includes talking about the perils of credit card debt, something I will tell my kids I learned about all too well during my 20s when I was working as a reporter and having trouble making ends meet.
    She’s also a big believer in giving kids allowance, but not connecting the weekly money to grades and behavior. The goal of allowance, she believes, is to start teaching kids about financial responsibility.

    See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.

    “They’re going to lose some of it. They’re going to mismanage some of it, make bad decisions. They’re going to give some of it away to a friend just because they want to be popular. They’re going to make all kinds of crazy mistakes, better they should make them now.”
    Pearl says parents know their kids and know when they are ready to talk about finances. “If your kid is ready to have a conversation, you can try to have a conversation. If it bombs, you can try again in a few months or next year but I think it’s never too early to try … and if you miss the boat and your kid is 17 and going off to college next year, don’t throw your hands up and say, ‘I missed the boat.’ Start whenever you can.”

    Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/health/money-talking-to-kids-parenting/index.html

    Health Care

    Republicans are radicalizing Democrats. Just look at healthcare | Lawrence Jacobs

    Republican efforts to blow up Obamacare may lead to a more leftwing alternative. This may one of the juiciest ironies of the Trump presidency

    The determined push by Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to rollback Barack Obamas health care reform is radicalizing the Democratic party. The backlash is empowering the progressive wing of the party and forcing moderates to shift toward the left. When the Democrats are back in power and that day will come the change will be dramatic.

    Obamas healthcare reform (known as Obamacare) followed the broad contours of Bill Clintons third way approach of offering government incentives to induce the private sector to do good. Obamacare aimed to expand private health insurance coverage by offering tax credits and creating an accessible online marketplace of quality health plans. It also cracked down on gaming by insurers who avoided the sick and on individuals who ducked insurance but still wanted all of us to pay for their medical care when they showed up in emergency rooms or in urgent care.

    The elegant blueprint for Obamacares marketplaces has collided with a complex reality. Many consumers found the complexity of the online process off-putting and the deductibles and co-pays too high. The blueprint anticipated eager private sector partners; in reality, most of the countrys largest private insurers recoiled at the risk of Obamacare saddling them with substantial losses and pulled out, which inconvenienced tens of thousands of Americans.

    The vast majority of states (including blue states) refused to implement the marketplaces and, where states did implement it, some, like Minnesota, found it difficult to work. Overall, enrollment reached 12 million in 2016 but fell short of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Offices expectations.

    Obamacares limitations may well have been tackled overtime, if it was treated like earlier landmark social welfare programs. After all, social security and Medicare faced unexpected problems before Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan led bipartisan efforts to stabilize them under the motto: build on what works, fix what doesnt.

    But Obamacare was given the boot by Trump and congressional Republicans, incinerating the Democratic expectation that public/private partnerships would draw moderate Republicans to the fix it agenda. Although a few Republicans held back from supporting repeal, the shrunken Republican party middle did not hold under pressure from ultra-conservatives. The result: repeal passed repeal by one vote in the House and the Senate came within a single vote of approving it.

    The Democratic Third Way also failed to attract business. The pullout of Obamacares marketplaces by most large insurers revealed the limits of public incentives in the face of Wall Street demands for strong profits and low uncertainty.

    The strongest repudiation of the public/private approach comes from the most surprising source Republicans. Obamacares most governmental programs were accepted by the repeal legislation that Senate Republicans nearly passed embraced.

    Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell agreed to let stand the expansion of Medicaid to 11 million Americans as well as the enormous new benefits in Medicares prescription drug benefit. Heres the irony: Democrats created Obamacares marketplaces as a fig leaf to Republicans who in turn targeted them by shrinking subsidies, undercutting protections for pre-existing medical conditions, and more.

    The sobering reality of 2017 is propelling Democrats to shift toward a full-on government approach that does not rest on winning over the shrinking number of Republican moderates and business partners.

    Democrats and their progressive policy experts are debating a new paradigm that focuses on expanding Medicare but differs over scope. The most liberal position has been advanced by Bernie Sanders and insists on expanding Medicare to all.

    More cautious Democrats worry about the political hit from enormous new taxes and warnings to seniors about threats to a program they rely upon. Democratic moderates favor Medicare for More that would open the program to near retirees in their early 50s.

    As Democrats joust over these two options, there will be broad agreement about expanding Medicaid to all states and improving the affordability of prescription drugs for non-retirees.

    Republican efforts to blow up Obamacare may propel the expansion of government by convincing even moderate Democrats that truly liberal programs that visibly deliver new coverage and benefits are good politics and better policy.

    This may one of the juiciest ironies of the Trump presidency.

    • Lawrence Jacobs is the Director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota

    Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/13/republicans-radicalizing-democrats-healthcare

    Health Care

    At least 8 dead after Irma leaves Florida nursing home with no A/C

    (CNN)Police are investigating the deaths of eight nursing home residents in Hollywood, Florida, where oppressive heat and humidity set in after Hurricane Irma knocked out much of the power in the area.

    The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills said the residents, ages 71 to 99, died “following a prolonged outage of our air conditioning system due to Hurricane Irma.”
    The center did not lose power during the storm, but it lost a transformer that powers the air conditioning, nursing home administrator Jorge Carballo said in a statement later Wednesday.
      The center said it immediately contacted Florida Power & Light and continued to follow up with them for status updates on when repairs would be made. Outreach was made to local emergency officials and first responders, Carballo said, without specifying when.
      “Staff set up mobile cooling units and fans to cool the facility and continually checked on our residents’ well-being to ensure they were hydrated,” Carballo said.
      CNN reached out to Florida Power & Light for reaction to that statement.

      Questions abound

      The statements were the latest on a day of finger pointing among state officials, Florida Power & Light and the nursing home, leading to more questions than answers about how the sweltering conditions persisted for so long.
      One resident died late Tuesday at Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills and was taken directly to a funeral home. Three more were found dead on the second floor of the facility after rescue units were called in. Four more died in hospitals after the sweltering facility was evacuated Wednesday morning in a chaotic blur of events that prompted checks of other nursing homes in the area.
      By Wednesday evening, the state had issued an emergency moratorium on the facility admitting new patients, and Hollywood Police were investigating whether any laws had been broken.
      In his latest statement, Carballo attempted to clarify some of the outstanding questions.
      “The Center and its medical and administrative staff diligently prepared for the impact of Hurricane Irma. We took part in emergency management preparedness calls with local and state emergency officials, other nursing homes and health regulators,” the statement said.
      “In compliance with state regulations, the Center did have a generator on standby in the event it would be needed to power life safety systems. The Center also had seven days of food, water, ice and other supplies, including gas for the generator.”
      Carballo also said: “We are devastated by these losses. We are fully cooperating with all authorities and regulators to assess what went wrong and to ensure our other residents are cared for.”
      In a statement, Richard Beltran, a spokesman for Florida Power & Light, said: “What we know now is that a portion of the facility did, in fact, have power, that there was a hospital across the parking lot from this facility and that the nursing home was required to have a permanently installed operational generator.”
      The utility said it urges facilities with patients dependent on electricity-powered equipment, and who don’t have power, to call 911 if there is a life-threatening situation.
      Temperatures reached the 90s Tuesday in Hollywood; by Wednesday the heat index was near 100 degrees and low temperatures were in the upper 70s.

      Calls come in

      The first fire rescue crews responded to a call from the facility around 3 a.m. Wednesday, for a patient in cardiac arrest. The patient was brought to the hospital and firefighters were called back to the facility at 4 a.m. to transport another patient experiencing breathing problems. Soon after, a third call came in for another patient transport, and the fire department sent over more crews, the City of Hollywood said in a statement.
      Police Chief Tomas Sanchez described the second floor “as excessively hot.” Hollywood Fire Chief Christopher Pratt said it was “more than likely” that heat played a factor in the residents’ conditions.
      In all, firefighters evacuated 158 people from the nursing home, including a number of critical patients.
      “Most of the patients have been treated for respiratory distress, dehydration and heat-related issues,” Dr. Randy Katz, the medical director of Memorial Regional’s emergency department, said in a morning news conference.
      Another 18 patients in an adjacent behavioral health facility also were evacuated, Storey said. As a precautionary measure, police checked 42 more nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the city of Hollywood, Sanchez said. One of them was later evacuated because of the heat.

      Governor wants answers

      Gov. Rick Scott said Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration and the Department of Children and Families also launched investigations.
      “I am going to aggressively demand answers on how this tragic event took place,” he said in a statement. “If they find that this facility was not meeting the state’s high standards of care, they will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
      Earlier Wednesday, the City of Hollywood said an an initial investigation determined that the facility’s air conditioning system was “not fully functional.” Portable A/C units were being used in the facility, “but the facility was excessively hot,” the city said in a statement.
      The nursing home has had a list of safety violations and citations, including two for not following generator regulations in 2014 and 2016. In both instances, the nursing home corrected these deficiencies.
      “We’re certainly all very disappointed that something like this could’ve taken place,” Mayor Josh Levy told CNN. “Unfortunately, emergency services were called obviously too late.”

      Patients evacuated to hospitals

      The hospital has set up a hotline, 954-265-1074, so that families of nursing home residents can check on their loved ones.
      Florida Health Care Association, which represents 81% of Florida’s nursing centers — but not the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills — said about 150 facilities out of nearly 700 nursing facilities in the state do not currently have full power services restored, the statement said.
      The association added that it is working with state officials to identify homes without power so that utility companies could prioritize those in greatest need.
      Police also started evacuating 79 residents of another nursing home in North Miami Beach on Wednesday, citing similar safety concerns about lack of air conditioning. Police used city trolleys as one way to transport residents of the Krystal Bay Nursing and Rehabilitation Center to another facility, according to public information officer Brian Andrews.
      There are 683 nursing homes in Florida with more than 84,000 beds, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which licenses and regulates these facilities. In addition, there are more than 3,100 assisted living facilities with more than 99,000 beds.
      Florida Sen. Bill Nelson said he spoke to Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin to ask him if Veterans Affairs medical facilities could be used to house elderly people, if necessary, and was told yes.

      Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/health/florida-nursing-home-deaths/index.html

      human resources

      Britain flouting duty to protect citizens from toxic air pollution UN

      Exclusive: Special rapporteurs mission finds government has violated obligation to protect peoples lives and health

      The UK government is flouting its duty to protect the lives and health of its citizens from illegal and dangerous levels of air pollution, according to the UNs special rapporteur on human rights related to toxic waste.

      Baskut Tuncak issued his warning after a fact-finding mission to the UK in January at the invitation of the government in a report that has been shared exclusively with the Guardian before it is presented to the UN human rights council this week.

      Air pollution continues to plague the UK, he said. I am alarmed that despite repeated judicial instruction, the UK government continues to flout its duty to ensure adequate air quality and protect the rights to life and health of its citizens. It has violated its obligations.

      Such harsh international criticism will be embarrassing for the government, whose air pollution plans have already been ruled illegally poor twice. The latest plan forced by the courts was released in July but condemned as woefully inadequate by city leaders and inexcusable by doctors.

      Air pollution causes an estimated 40,000 early deaths every year in Britain and was declared a public health emergency by MPs in 2016. Air pollution is worst overall in London, but many other places have illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide emitted by diesel vehicles, such as Leeds, Birmingham, Bournemouth and Northampton. Ipswich has higher levels of particulate matter than London.

      London breached its nominal annual air pollution limits five days into 2017 at Brixton Road in south London. Other known pollution hotspots in the capital include Putney High Street in west London, Oxford Street, Kings Road in Chelsea and the Strand.

      In his report for the UN, Tuncak assessed how well the UK protects human rights that are infringed by pollution, such as the rights to life, health and safe housing.

      Vulnerable groups were worst affected by air pollution, he said: Children, older persons and people with pre-existing health conditions are at grave risk of mortality, morbidity and disability, with magnified risks among the poor and minorities.

      A government spokeswoman said Brexit represented an opportunity to improve the UKs air quality standards. EU policies, from the common agricultural policy to vehicle emissions tests, have damaged the environment. Our 3bn air quality plan will address the dirty air caused by the EUs failed testing regime, and in ending the sale of new diesel and petrol cars by 2040, the UK is more ambitious than most EU member states including Germany.

      We now have an opportunity to deliver a green Brexit, ensuring the UK is a global leader in environmental protection, she said.

      Anna Heslop, at ClientEarth, the lawyers who have twice defeated the government on air quality standards, said: This damning report with regard to air pollution is unsurprising but no less shocking for that. The UK has illegal levels of air pollution and successive governments have fought us in the courts rather than tackling it effectively.

      We are glad the report says the government must listen to the experts, including its own, and develop a national network of clean air zones to keep the worst polluting vehicles out of the most polluted areas of our towns and cities. This should happen as soon as possible.

      A new, wide-ranging ClientEarth report argues the governments claim that all EU environmental laws will be retained after Brexit is misleading. It also criticises the government over other aspects of environmental policy loopholes in fracking regulation; the loss of environmental staff due to austerity which has resulted in serious governance gaps; and the risks to environmental safety posed by Brexit.

      Tuncak also warned of the risk that fracking, soon to start in Lancashire, poses to safe water. UK regulations on fracking are complex, split between several regulators and do not appear to be sufficiently stringent, he said. Fragmented policymaking allows for loopholes.

      All the UKs environmental regulators have suffered due to budget cuts, he found: The decreasing financial, technical and human resources due to austerity have created serious governance gaps. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has lost a third of its staff compared with 2007.

      Another consequence of austerity was Defras ending in March of capital grants to local councils for cleaning up contaminated land sites, which the UN report said posed potentially serious health risks.

      Tuncak warned that unless the UKs future green standards equalled those of the European Union, the UK could risk becoming a haven for dirty industries and a dumping ground for products failing to meet EU regulations.

      Labour MP Mary Creagh, who chairs the environmental audit committee, said: It is vital the government passes a new environmental protection act as soon as possible to protect the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Tuncak backs that call in his report.

      The committee warned in January that Brexit could result in key environmental protections being left as ineffective zombie legislation. Creagh said the UN report highlighted the governments lack of clarity about the future of environmental issues after Brexit and how they will stop the UK from becoming a dumping ground for dirty industries and a haven for bad practice.

      Tuncaks report also asks the UK government to reconsider national plans to increase reliance on nuclear energy, considering that long-term storage of nuclear waste is uncertain and poses significant risks to the population. He criticised the UKs cuts to legal aid and protection from legal costs which make it extremely challenging for victims of environmental harm to seek redress in the courts.

      Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/10/uk-flouting-duty-to-cut-air-pollution-deaths-says-un-human-rights-report

      Health Care

      Why teens should put down their phones, sign out of social media, and reclaim their lives

      Image: ambar del moral / mashable

      Anyone with a smartphone lives in fear of missing out at some point.  

      I’ve personally watched my Boomer parents’ eyes glaze over as they sit at the dinner table and scroll through Facebook. As a Gen X/Millennial Cusper (a Xennial, if you will), I deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone, but still compulsively update Apple News.  

      SEE ALSO: Why Lady Gaga and her mom want you to take this ‘mental health first aid’ class

      The truth is, we feel drawn to our mobile devices because they deliver an exciting emotional rush every time we hold those shiny little computers in our hands and reveal what’s new in the world.  

      Yet my parents and I — and everyone else who became a teenager before high-speed internet hit most American households — have something that today’s youth don’t: the luxury of knowing what it’s like to be still. 

      If you keep a phone or mobile device close by, then you know it’s always beeping, buzzing, or begging for your attention. When new technology comes out (think: radio, television, video games), it tends to draw us away from our innermost selves. But constant access to the internet is something else altogether because it can obliterate the solitude humans have known for millennia — downtime that studies show is essential for thriving.

      Now, new research suggests this relentless background noise may take a disturbing toll on teen mental health and emotional well-being. 

      This is the upsetting premise of Jean Twenge’s new book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us. Twenge defines iGen, otherwise known as Generation Z, as beginning in 1995 — “the year the internet was born.” That’s when eBay, Amazon, and GeoCities all launched, and when Microsoft released the first version of Internet Explorer. 

      Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor, argues that certain studies and large-scale mental health surveys of adolescents and teens indicate their emotional well-being began deteriorating in the last 10 years. The downward trend looks particularly startling in 2012 — the year, Twenge notes, that more than 50 percent of American households owned a smartphone.  

      The prevalence of depression for adolescents and teens increased between 2005 and 2014. The suicide rate also rose sharply between 2007 and 2015 while the number of children and teens admitted to hospitals for suicidal thoughts or self-harm doubled during roughly the same time period. Twenge’s analysis of national survey data indicates that teens started feeling more lonely in 2013, after declining modestly in previous years. While historical data show that emotional well-being ebbs and flows from generation to generation, Twenge has been shocked by how abruptly and starkly iGen began showing signs of distress.  

      Plenty of teens in the mid-’90s were also struggling, and the stigma surrounding mental health treatment was far greater then. Yet you could often count on moments of silence to provide refuge from the chaos of adolescence. Even on my busiest days, playing in weekend soccer tournaments, trying to catch up on the never-ending homework, and going out with friends, my free time wasn’t broken into a random collection of minutes defined by pings and clicks. 

      I could spend hours making mix tapes, listening to Loveline on the radio, watching Buffy, and even going online via a painfully slow dial-up modem. I routinely immersed myself in a single activity without much disruption. And when all of that ceased to entertain, what followed next was often a reverie of daydreaming, overwrought journaling, or jags of creativity. 

      To be sure, mine was a privileged existence, even if it didn’t always feel that way in comparison to my wealthy classmates. Many teens — then and now — don’t experience that quiet because they must work, watch siblings, or have no privacy of their own. Those without that calm now also have to contend with the exhausting demands of living a digital life. 

      While I may have feared missing out on social outings organized by the cool kids on the weekends, I wouldn’t hear about those till Monday, if ever. I didn’t have to relive the exclusion in perpetuity thanks to social media. And when I was invited to hang out with the cool kids, I never worried about capturing the perfect selfie to share online. 

      More importantly, in those moments of boredom, silence, and yes, anxiousness, there were only so many ways I could avoid being alone with myself. Crossing the threshold into your own mind and spirit — getting lost in a world that is of your making — can be a rite of passage for the young. But today’s teens may not understand that experience; they’ve been thrust into the world with social media and a smartphone as their constant companions — for better and worse. 

      The adults in their lives may worry about “screen time,” cyberbullying, and porn, but no one is necessarily teaching teens how to be alone with their thoughts, or why that’s important in the first place. Parents probably take that skill and knowledge for granted and may not want to admit that it’s difficult for them to unplug, too. 

       I don’t believe that social media and smartphones are boogeymen that snatch children’s souls.

      If this sounds like an Old Person Rant about how the kids today have got it all wrong, rest assured this isn’t a lecture. I know that each generation is successively worried about the next, convinced that technological innovation keeps removing us, inch by inch, from our humanity. 

      This isn’t moral panic, either. I don’t believe that social media and smartphones are boogeymen out to snatch children’s souls. Both aspects of technology have transformed our ability to communicate and connect in undeniably positive ways. Still, I’m troubled by the research featured in iGen suggesting that today’s youth are on the brink of an alarming mental health crisis. Numerous signs point to phones and social media as potential culprits. 

      “What is most worrying about these trends is how pervasive they are,” Twenge told me. “They show up in the most serious outcomes like suicide, but also in symptoms of depression, anxiety, loneliness, happiness, and life satisfaction.” 

      Twenge acknowledges that she can’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the widespread use of smartphones and worsening mental health for teens. But she does persuasively argue against possible explanations like homework load and the Great Recession by looking at the onset of mental health trends, the timing of external events, and whether those are linked to negative effects on a person’s well-being.  

      Sleep deprivation, which can lead to symptoms related to anxiety, depression, and suicidal behavior, is on the rise. That might explain heightened feelings of despair, but guess why teens may not be sleeping as much? Nighttime use of electronic media looks partly to blame, according to research. 

      Twenge has her share of critics who argue that she’s cherry-picked data to prove her thesis. Some research indicates that social media and smartphones can help people develop positive connections and traits, but other studies reveal a potentially negative effect on mental health and happiness.

      It’s essential that future research answer, as conclusively as possible, whether moderate or obsessive social media and smartphone use leads to negative mental health outcomes. In the meantime, we must find a middle ground between condescending to teens about their use of technology and dismissing concern about that trend as alarmist. 

      When I recently spoke to Gabby Frost, a 19-year-old who founded the Buddy Project, a suicide and self-harm prevention initiative, about her experience with smartphones and social media, she shared a bittersweet perspective. 

      The internet helped a shy and anxious Frost form relationships as an adolescent and teenager. She even founded an influential nonprofit organization that relies on digital technology. But at the same time, she looked back on the years she’s spent tethered to her phone and recalled how it separated her from family, subjected her to painful online harassment, and weakened her attention span. 

      “I feel like being alone is definitely a hard thing to kind of grasp.”

      “I feel like being alone is definitely a hard thing to kind of grasp,” she said. “We were given technology and grew up with it. We learned the phone culture from our siblings and parents. I feel like we need help from the older generation, or people our age who get it, that we should not be on the phone 24/7.”

      Frost makes an effort to put her phone away for long stretches of time so she can paint, craft, or listen to music while traveling. These “tangents” often bring new ideas or revelations, a sensation Frost is still learning to appreciate.  

      Teens can come up with their own strategies, but ignoring their phones for a few hours at a time is a good start. Talking to a parent or trusted adult about ways to create and experience solitude is also smart. For some people, especially those coping with anxiety and depression, being alone with your thoughts isn’t always pleasant, so exploring therapy or yoga and meditation practices could help manage those fears. Writing about how you feel on days with and without your phone and social media could help articulate feelings you didn’t even know you had — and provide convincing evidence about the emotional effects of both habits.

      Teens have forever to spend on the internet but only a relatively short period during adolescence and young adulthood to be unapologetically immersed in understanding who they are and who they want to become. When they think of FOMO, I hope what comes to mind aren’t the Insta posts, Snapchat stories, and viral Twitter threads. Those have value, but they also produce a never-ending stream of notifications and updates that distract teens from something irreplaceable: the chance to reflect, create, and dream.  

      If you take one message from this Old, let it be to never surrender those quiet moments to the banality of the internet. Trust me: That’s a skill you’re going to need for the rest of your life. 

      If you want to talk to someone about what you’re feeling, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Here is a list of international resources.

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      Read more: http://mashable.com/2017/08/31/teens-social-media-phone-mental-health/