Addicted to Tanning?
Health experts are increasingly concerned with the youth obsession with tanning. Despite the fact that most folks know that skin cancer is linked with too much exposure to the sun (nearly all 1 million cases of non-melanoma skin cancers are linked to it), many teens still eschew sunscreen and soak in as many ultraviolet rays as they can. A recent study found that 80 percent of a person’s exposure to the sun—and 80 percent of the damage it causes—occurs before the person reaches age 18, and more than 40 percent of teen girls have used a tanning bed.
Some experts believe that tanning may be a form of addiction—that exposure to the sun’s rays can release endorphins in the brain. (Los Angeles Times)
Bandzing Together
The latest school scourge isn’t a drug, a weapon or an immodest tank top. No, it’s a band of colorful rubber that’s worn like a bracelet. Called Silly Bandz, the stretchy accoutrements have become the latest elementary school craze—and some school administrators have decided to ban the Bandz from their boundaries.
“It’s a distraction,” says Jill Wolborsky, a fourth-grade teacher at a school in Raleigh, N.C., explaining why her school has barred Silly Bandz from its grounds. They’re so popular, Wolborsky says, that one student pilfered some confiscated Bandz from her desk—ignoring the cash sitting right beside it.
Part of the Bandz’s charm—and part of the problem—is that they’ve become a form of currency among elementary schoolers. They swap them like baseball or Pokemon cards a decade or two earlier, and sometimes the Bandz indirectly can instigate fights. Kids fiddle with them in class, too, at times when they should be thinking about their multiplication tables.
“We try not to limit [children’s] freedom of expression and what they wear,” says Karen White, who forbids Bandz at her school in Gardendale, Ala, “but when this became a problem, I knew we had to nip it in the bud pretty quickly.” (Time)
Social Networking for the Juice Box Set
Typical social networking sites have many uses: keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances, planning get-togethers, reuniting with old school chums among them—but what if you’re trying to reconnect with someone from kindergarten when you’re still in second grade?
For children too young to sign up for Facebook (which technically requires its users to be at least 13), entrepreneur Mandeep Dhillon has created Togetherville, a social networking site made just for children ages 6-10. The accounts require parents to be involved in their children’s online social lives: They must approve any “friends” and are given tools to monitor kids’ online activities.
Meanwhile, kids get to play games, watch pre-screened YouTube clips and send each other messages—selected from a menu of “quips.” (USA Today)
Top 10 Greatest Inventions
1. Wheel
2. Airplane
3. Light bulb
4. Internet
5. Personal computers
6. Telephone
7. Penicillin
8. iPhone
9. Flushing toilet
10. Combustion engine
The iPhone beat out other such inventions as cars, compasses, paper and space travel. Sliced bread, just in case you’re interested, came in 70th.
Quote: “When I don’t have my phone, I feel like I’m not going to make it through my day.” Quanai, a high school freshman from Hackensack, New Jersey (CBS News)
