All screen time may not be bad for children

The effects of screen time on young children may depend on more than just how long they spend in front of a device, according to a new study.

What children watch, how old they are, and whether a parent watches with them can all shape the experience, the review of 30 studies found. Led by University of Georgia researcher Minal Manisha, the paper points to coviewing—parents watching and talking about media with their children—as one way to help young viewers make sense of what they see.

“We need to be aware of what our children are actually watching.”

A common belief, especially among parents, is that all screen time is bad, but the researchers found that it wasn’t that simple.

Some shows appeared to have a positive impact. For example, programs such as “Daniel Tiger” supported social skills, while “Sesame Street,” “Between the Lions” and “SuperWhy!” were linked with stronger letter and sound recognition among some preschoolers.

“If they are watching prosocial content, they will have values like empathy or compassion,” Manisha says. “If children are watching violent content, they may exhibit physical aggression.”

How much time children spend with screens matters, too. Heavy use can push out other activities like reading, outdoor play, and time with family. Evening media use was also linked with sleep problems, the review found.

Very young children learn heavily through play, exploration, and face-to-face interaction. Among infants and toddlers, the review linked heavier screen use with poorer language development, smaller vocabularies, and other learning concerns.

So what works for a 5-year-old may not work for a toddler. Younger children need more help understanding what they see while older preschoolers may be better able to learn from programs designed for their age group.

Previous research suggests children in lower-income households often spend more time with media, likely due to work schedules, childcare or lack thereof, access to recreation, and other pressures. The review focused on children from low-income families for this reason.

That challenge looks different today than it did in much of the research Manisha reviewed, which focused heavily on television. Modern devices are portable, personalized, and often shaped by algorithms, allowing children to move from room to room with an endless stream of recommended content.

That is where watching together can help.

Coviewing does not mean turning every cartoon into a lesson. It can be as simple as watching programs together, answering questions, or talking afterward about what a child saw, the researchers say.

“We need to be aware of what our children are actually watching,” Manisha says. “It’s a big thing to be able to talk to them about the content they are absorbing.”

The goal is not necessarily to remove media from children’s lives altogether but to help them build healthier habits around it.

Still, Manisha cautions against one-size-fits-all rules. Families have different schedules, resources, and needs, which can all shape how realistic certain screen-time limits are.

And those recommendations may keep changing as technology does.

“It’s an evolving landscape,” Manisha says.

The study appears in the Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work.

Source: University of Georgia

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Americans are adding more calories to their coffee

While Americans have been drinking roughly the same amount of coffee over recent years, the calories in those cups have increased thanks primarily to the addition of non-dairy creamer, according to a new study.

The study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics analyzed the reported dietary intake of 30,000 US adults aged 20 and over and found that between 2003 and 2018, the consumption of total coffee remained stable (roughly 13 ounces/day), but the energy, or calories, consumed increased from 43 kcal/day to 60 kcal/day. The most common coffee additions by calories in 2018 were non-dairy creamer, sugar or syrup, and dairy milk.

“Coffee consumption has been associated with several health benefits. However, coffee is often accompanied by the addition of sugar and cream, which can contribute to an increased consumption of calories from added sugar and saturated fat,” says Fang Fang Zhang, senior author of the study and a professor at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.

“The more we know about what people are consuming, the better we can understand the link between nutrition and overall health.”

The study analyzed data from eight consecutive cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2003 to 2018. The study included a nationally representative sample of 30,000 adults aged 20 years and older who provided two 24-hour diet recalls. Coffee-containing beverages were divided into two categories: non-combination beverages and beverages with additions. The coffee additions were further classified as dairy milk, half-and-half, dairy cream, non-dairy milk, non-dairy creamer, sugar/syrup, sugar substitute, and other coffee additions, such as alcohol and cocoa powder. To determine the amount of coffee additions in pre-mixed coffee beverages/powder reported in diet recalls, the cycle-specific USDA Food and Nutrition Database for Dietary Studies and the linked Standard Reference codes were used.

The researchers found that consumption of total coffee and coffee without additions remained stable among US adults from 2003 to 2018. For coffee additions, the most common by weight in 2018 were dairy milk (21.4 grams/day), non-dairy creamer (8.1 g/day), and sugar (4.4 g/day), with no significant changes in consumption of dairy milk and sugar/sugar substitutes since 2003. Consumption of non-dairy additions increased during the window studied, from a mean of 3.65 g/day to 10.5 g/day. Within the options for non-dairy additions, non-dairy creamer (from 3.37 g/day to 8 g/day) and non-dairy milk (from 0.27 g/day to 2.45 g/day) increased the most. There was also a small increase in the consumption of other coffee additions, with a mean increase of .5 g/day.

In terms of estimated calories added to a cup of joe, by 2018 non-dairy creamer added the largest amount (18.5 kcal/day), followed by sugar (16 kcal/day) and dairy milk (11 kcal/day). In 2003, mean caloric intake from non-dairy creamer was 7.71 kcal/day.

“We found that non-dairy creamer being added to coffee has now passed both sugar and dairy for its contribution to the total energy consumed from coffee. Non-dairy creamers can be high in saturated fat, which is calorie dense. This could explain the increased calories that non-dairy creamer is contributing,” says Yongyi Pan, the study’s lead author and a PhD candidate at the Friedman School.

“Even though it has been on the market since the 1950s, non-dairy creamer has increased in popularity in recent years as consumers seek plant-based or dairy alternatives.”

At the population level, the researchers found that adults with fewer hours of sleep or longer working hours consumed more coffee than those with more sleep or shorter working hours. Coffee consumption was similar among individuals with high versus low diet quality.

The authors note as a limitation that self-reported recall data is subject to measurement error due to day-to-day variations in food intake, but steps were taken to improve estimates.

Source: Tufts University

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YouTube beats out TV as the top source for political news

Six in 10 Americans say they trust independent creators as much as professional journalists, a new survey finds.

The Center for the Creator Economy at Syracuse University—the nation’s first academic center dedicated to the advancement of interdisciplinary academics, independent research, policy engagement, and support for creator-based ventures—today released the findings from its inaugural industry Flash Report. Published monthly, these reports examine the issues creators, brands, and audiences are talking about right now.

The inaugural edition examines public trust and credibility in news: specifically, how Americans weigh independent news creators against traditional journalists. The findings draw on a demographically representative survey of 1,001 US adults conducted via Prolific.

Social media is now a core news source for Americans: 59% access general news from social media often or always and 55% get political information there at the same rate. Reliance runs highest among younger adults and those that identify as African Americans and Republicans.

YouTube ranks as the single most-used platform for political and election news at 16.5%, closely followed by broadcast and cable TV news (16.1%) and print and online news sites (15.7%). Combined, TV and news sites outpace YouTube nearly 2 to 1. Social platforms as a group, however, lead traditional sources 60% to 32%.

Perceptions of trust present a nuanced picture:

• 61% of Americans trust a well-known independent news creator as much as a well-known professional journalist or a major news organization on political topics.
• 67% say doing the reporting matters more than formal journalism credentials.
• 86% trust independent news creators more when they publicly correct their mistakes, the strongest trust signal in the study.
• 79% still see a meaningful difference between an independent news creator and a journalist.

Social media use and political affiliation both shape trust. Respondents who use social media for news and politics more often rate independent news creators as more credible.

Party lines matter too: compared with Independents, Republicans place greater trust in independent news creators, while Democrats place greater trust in professional journalists and news organizations.

Across these patterns, respondents recognize a clear distinction between independent news creators and professional journalists:

• 79% see a meaningful difference between an independent news creator and a journalist.
• Views divide on which is more trustworthy overall: 41% trust professional journalists more, 35% disagree, and 25% are neutral.
• Trust in independent news creators rises with social media news use. The link is weak for professional journalists and absent for news organizations.

The findings show Americans trust independent news creators and professional journalists about equally on politics, but they see them as different roles. For both, the clearest path to trust is accountability: 86% say public corrections make them trust an independent news creator more.

Source: Syracuse University

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Social anxiety boosts brain sensitivity to other people looking at you

Social anxiety heightens the brain’s sensitivity to others’ gaze, researchers report.

Ever catch someone looking your way and wonder what they’re thinking? For people with social anxiety, that moment may trigger a heightened response in the brain, even though it does not improve their later judgments about what the gaze means.

A new University of Michigan study found that young adults with higher levels of social anxiety showed stronger brain responses when a word describing someone’s thoughts or feelings didn’t match what their gaze seemed to convey.

The federally funded research, which appears in the journal Psychophysiology, offers a new perspective on social anxiety, which is often viewed mainly as a source of distress.

Being especially alert to social cues could help people notice potentially important signals about others, but it could also leave them more prone to worry about what others think of them, says the study’s first author, Irene Melani, who recently received doctorate in psychology from UM and is now a postdoctoral fellow at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Melani and colleagues studied young adults with varying levels of social anxiety. While their brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography, participants viewed different gaze patterns followed by words describing mental states. Some words matched the meaning typically associated with the gaze; others did not.

People with higher social anxiety showed a stronger brain response when the gaze and the word didn’t match, Melani says. This response, known as the N400, occurs when the brain encounters information that conflicts with an expected meaning.

The pattern did not appear in a comparison task involving animal stereotypes, suggesting that the heightened response was specific to interpreting what other people might be thinking or feeling—not simply to noticing mismatched information.

But there was a catch: People with higher social anxiety were no better at later explicitly judging what someone’s gaze meant. They were neither more accurate nor faster than participants with lower social anxiety.

“People higher in social anxiety showed greater neural sensitivity to the meaning conveyed by the gaze, but this advantage was not apparent in their later judgments,” she says. “One possibility is that this initial neural sensitivity may place additional demands on their thinking, potentially contributing to excessive monitoring or rumination that obscures the earlier advantage.”

The researchers say this heightened sensitivity could have both benefits and drawbacks, depending on the situation. Paying close attention to social cues might help people recognize others’ intentions or anticipate social risks. But the same vigilance could also make everyday interactions more stressful, encouraging people to dwell on what others might think or mean, Melani says.

The study did not establish whether this sensitivity helps people navigate real-world social situations. However, in a related ongoing study, the authors found that social anxiety predicted lower biological health risk in Japan, where social norms are more strongly enforced, but not in the United States, where norms are relatively more relaxed.

Together, the findings raise the possibility that social anxiety may not always be a liability. Instead, its consequences may depend on the context in which it operates.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Source: University of Michigan

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Special vertebrae keep diving seabirds from breaking their necks

Reinforced vertebrae allow plunge-diving seabirds to survive high-speed impacts, according to a new study.

A northern gannet scans the sea for fish from 100 feet in the air. Upon seeing a school, it pitches its body into a nosedive, somehow breaking the surface at 70 miles per hour without breaking its neck. This daring maneuver seems to defy the laws of nature, but it’s standard hunting behavior for plunge-diving seabirds.

The University of Washington study in the Anatomical Record shows that gannets and boobies have unique morphological adaptations that allow them to survive impact. Several of their neck vertebrae are joined by an additional contact surface that helps stabilize the cervical column. The overall shape of the vertebrae is also stockier than other birds.

“We wanted to figure out what makes gannets so special, so good at diving, and looking at their biology helped us understand how they can survive these impacts,” says senior author Bart Boom, a postdoctoral scholar at the UW’s Friday Harbor Labs.

The ecological record shows repeated instances in which birds develop physical traits in response to their environment. Charles Darwin was among the first to record this in in the 1830s—in finches on the Galápagos Islands—and researchers are still discovering new examples today. The connection between beak shape and foraging behavior is well documented, but the link between neck structure and feeding has received less attention.

The researchers began studying the mechanics of plunge-diving years ago. Gannets are built to withstand immense pressure on the head and neck that compresses the cervical column. Engineers typically favor short and fat structures for things built to tolerate compressive force, but these birds have long, slender necks with segmented vertebrae.

Gannet necks have 15 stacked vertebrae that bend slightly in an s-curve. Previous studies have shown that the muscles surrounding their vertebrae help lock them in place to prepare for impact, but few studies have looked at the actual morphology of diving birds’ necks.

To do so, the researchers collected specimens of diving birds and non-diving birds from the Burke Museum. The team performed CT scans to create detailed three-dimensional models of the cervical vertebrae and then analyzed the images with geometric morphometrics, a statistical method for studying biological samples that establishes landmarks for comparison. They considered the forces associated with various feeding styles and chose birds that represented a spectrum, pulling in additional morphological data from previous studies.

“Birds that rotate their heads side to side, or move them front to back, separate out from birds that use their heads in compression,” says lead author Megan Vanderberg, a graduate student of biology at UW’s Friday Harbor Labs. “We see that the birds that plunge-dive have more robust vertebrae. They’re thicker, wider, and also shorter, shaped more like a square.”

The stocky shape of the vertebrae provides added support, as does the additional contact surface, called an articular facet, in second through the sixth vertebrae. In this case, researchers think the extra facet keeps the birds’ necks from bending backward when they hit the water at an angle. Instead, the load gets transferred down the cervical column.

The researchers also observed more blocklike vertebrae in other diving birds, such as the kingfisher, but did not detect the extra facet. Kingfishers belong to a different avian family and are much smaller than gannets and boobies, but their necks seem to have evolved in a similar way. The structural relationship is also proportional: the larger the neck, the larger the vertebrae.

Kingfishers and the bigger plunge-divers also experience the same amount of force per neck area during a dive. Although total force scales with neck size, the amount of stress on the tissue is the same. Both groups experienced peak force nearly five milliseconds after impact despite the size difference.

Moving forward, the researchers hope to explore how force transfers down the neck in more detail. They also think this link between structure and function could help paleontologists identify plunge-diving birds from fossils.

“It feels like something I didn’t previously think about and probably overlooked before,” Vanderberg says. “I’m curious to start looking more closely at vertebrae in general, not just in birds.”

Additional coauthors are from UW and the University of California, Riverside.

This research was funded by the US National Science Foundation, Beatrice and Samuel A. Seaver Foundation, Friday Harbor Laboratories Research Endowment Fellowship, University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories Award, and Jim and Camille Uhlir.

Source: University of Washington

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Strong reading skills may help teens spot misinformation online

Students with stronger reading skills are better able to spot misinformation online—and those skills may be especially important for teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds, according to a new study.

“Reading skills matter most for disadvantaged students,” says Jason Jabbari, an assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and coauthor of the study. “The misinformation resistance gap between rich and poor students is largest among weaker readers and shrinks considerably among strong readers.”

The study appears in the journal Social Science Research.

It analyzed data from 232,901 teenagers in 49 countries who participated in the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment. Jabbari and his coauthor, Mobarak Hossain of the London School of Economics and Political Science, looked at how students evaluate and share online information, including whether they check accuracy, compare sources, and share information they know to be false.

The study suggests that reading skills may help narrow socioeconomic gaps in students’ ability to resist misinformation, Jabbari says.

Students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds were generally better at resisting misinformation than their lower-socioeconomic-status peers. But the link between reading achievement and misinformation resistance was strongest among disadvantaged students.

Stronger reading skills gave students with fewer resources a greater advantage, the study found.

“Reading skills could play a compensatory role here,” Jabbari says. “Students from more advantaged families often have other supports, like parents who discuss the news, access to credible sources and norms that encourage skepticism, while lower-income students may be less likely to have those supports and may face increased exposure to misinformation. As a result, the ability to comprehend, compare, and evaluate texts may carry more weight for low-income students.”

The study suggests that strengthening literacy skills could be an important way to reduce misinformation and its unequal effects, Jabbari says.

The study also shows how difficult it can be for teenagers to navigate misinformation, even when they report using some basic verification strategies.

Nearly one-third of students in the study says they had shared made-up information without flagging it as such. Many students reported comparing sources or checking information, but those habits didn’t always prevent them from sharing misinformation.

“We looked at how roughly hundreds of thousands of students handle information online, such as whether they compare sources, check accuracy before sharing, or pass along things they know are made up,” Jabbari says. “Most students report some basic checking habits, but many still trust what they read or share unverified content.”

Jabbari says teenagers’ online behavior is shaped not only by their ability to evaluate information, but also by their social environment.

The findings point to schools as an important place to help students navigate misinformation.

“First, building reading comprehension itself matters, especially for lower-income students, who appear to benefit most from stronger reading skills,” Jabbari says.

He also points to explicit strategies such as lateral reading, in which students leave a website and consult other sources rather than judging a page’s credibility by its appearance. Other approaches include “prebunking,” game-based interventions and prompts that encourage people to consider accuracy before sharing information.

Fifteen-year-olds are a particularly important group to reach, Jabbari says, because they are increasingly navigating online information independently while still being accessible through schools.

“This means we can still reach nearly all of them through classroom instruction before they enter adulthood and begin major milestones, like voting,” he says.

Source: Washington University in St. Louis

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How do heart valves last so long?

A new study offers insights into how heart valves last so long.

Collagen plays a critical role in keeping heart valves strong, but the heart is surrounded by enzymes designed to break down collagen. So how can heart valves function efficiently decade after decade?

The new study shows that the biomechanical tension applied to these valves every time your heart beats plays a key role in protecting the collagen from breaking down.

“We know that collagen is critical for keeping heart valves strong, and that the leaflets in a heart valve open and close millions of times every year,” says Hsiao-Ying Shadow Huang, first author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University.

“We also know that the fluid surrounding the heart contains collagenases that are designed to break that collagen down. Yet those leaflets remain sturdy for decades.

“We also know that when people develop heart disease, the structural integrity of those leaflets can degrade very quickly. We wanted to explore why these things happen, and what role—if any—biomechanics might play in these processes.”

Leaflets are the flaps of tissue in a heart valve that open to allow blood to be pumped in one direction, then shut to prevent that blood from flowing back.

For this study, the researchers conducted experiments using pig hearts. The researchers tested different levels of strain on heart valve leaflets, pulled the tissue in different directions, and varied the levels of collagenase in the fluid surrounding the hearts.

“When a healthy heart pumps, and the aorta valve leaflet is in the open position, the leaflet is stretched to 70% of its maximum capacity lengthwise, but to only 20% of its maximum capacity laterally,” says Huang.

“We tested the leaflets under those conditions, but also looked at other levels of strain that retained that same 70% to 20% ratio, such as 35% to 10%. We also tried changing the ratio so that the leaflets experienced the same amount of strain in both directions. And we conducted these experiments with both normal levels of collagenase and elevated levels of collagenase.”

After each experiment, the researchers evaluated the microstructure of the leaflet tissue to see if the tissue was intact or had been damaged.

“We found that increasing the strain did not damage the collagen, even with higher levels of collagenases—as long as the ratio of the lengthwise strain and lateral strain stayed the same,” says Huang. “When we changed the strain ratio, the collagen broke down—regardless of the collagenase levels.”

In other words, stretching the leaflet in the same direction as the collagen-rich fibers serves as a biomechanical protective mechanism, as long as the naturally-occurring strain ratio is preserved.

“Previous studies have identified this protective mechanism in collagen-rich tissues in tendons, but that research only pulled the tissue in one direction,” says Huang. “Heart valve leaflets experience strain in more than direction every time they open and close, so this finding is a step forward.

“Our findings also offer insights into why leaflets degrade so quickly when heart disease alters the amount of strain the leaflets are subjected to—they’ve lost that biomechanical defense mechanism,” says Huang.

“These findings advance our understanding of how the heart works, how it fails, and how we can engineer new biomaterials for use in heart valve replacements.”

The paper appears in the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering.

Source: North Carolina State University

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