Tragedy in Massachusetts; abortion rates rise; time on social networks skyrockets; more
Tragedy in Massachusetts — On Jan. 14, Phoebe Prince — a 15-year-old immigrant from Ireland who had just come to the United States last summer — was found dead in her home, apparently killing herself. After the suicide, her classmates at South Hadley High School came forward and said the girl had been teased incessantly, through both text messages and on Facebook. Prince’s principal, Daniel Smith, said the girl was “smart, charming, and is the case with many teenagers, complicated. … We will never know the specific reasons why she chose to take her own life.” Speculation, however, centered on the cyberbullying Prince had been subjected to. Disparaging comments were posted on Prince’s Facebook page even after her death (swiftly removed by network administrators), and the school recently suspended two South Hadley students in connection with the bullying. “There’s still an investigation going on, which may lead to disciplinary action against other students,” South Hadley Superintendent Gus Sayer said. According to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center, about 30 percent of American youth are either victims of bullying or bullies themselves. (ABCNews, Fox News)
Teen Pregnancy, Abortion Rates Rise — After decades worth of encouraging declines, teen pregnancy in the United States has inched up recently, and no one’s quite sure why. According to the Guttmacher Institute, teen pregnancy in 2006 (the most recent year for which numbers were available), climbed about 3 percent over the previous year, to 71.5 pregnancies for every 1,000 U.S. females. Abortion rates rose about 1 percent from 2005 to 2006, too. Still, that’s far better than what we saw in the 1990s, when about 117 of every 1,000 teens got pregnant. (Time)
Fair-Webber Friends — Facebook lets you amass 5,000 friends, and there are likely youth out there who feel that’s not nearly enough. But according to a new study, humans aren’t genetically capable of handling that many relationships. The study, authored by Robin Dunbar, a professor of Evolutionary Anthropology for England’s Oxford University, found that people can handle a maximum of 150 friends, no matter how social they are. Even in our prehistoric past, humans tended to self-organize in groups of 150. Any bigger, Dunbar insists, and the social structure tends to deteriorate. “The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world,” Dunbar says. (London Times Online)
Time Spent on Facebook, Twitter, Skyrockets — Social networking sites such as Facebook continue to surge in popularity around the world. According to new data from The Nielsen Company, the average social networker spent 5 hours and 35 minutes on their site of choice in December—more than double what they were spending on such sites two years ago. Over the last year, time spent on Facebook has surged about 200 percent, and Twitter has climbed 368 percent. (The Nielsen Company)
Average Time Spent on Social Network Sites in December, by Country*
1. Australia 6 hours, 52 minutes
2. U.S. 6 hours, 9 minutes
3. United Kingdom 6 hours, 8 minutes
4. Italy 6 hours
5. Spain 5 hours, 31 minutes
6. Brazil 4 hours, 33 minutes
7. Germany 4 hours, 12 minutes
8. France 4 hours, 5 minutes
9. Switzerland 3 hours, 55 minutes
10. Japan 2 hours, 50 minutes
*Countries with the highest social networking activity
Source: The Nielsen Company
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