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Ozempic Is Quietly Becoming the Go-to Weight Loss Treatment for Teens
GLP-1 medications like semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, have become some of the most popular drugs in the world. Its popularity is extending to teenagers and young adults, too, research out this week shows.
Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center examined medical records from teens and young adults across the country receiving treatment for obesity. The number of young people on GLP-1s has steadily risen since 2022, they found, while the rate of bariatric surgery has declined.
Though only a small percentage of people in these age groups are using GLP-1s in combination with surgery, there should be more done to ensure the best results for them down the road, the researchers say.
New Study Links ADHD Symptoms in Boys and Addictive Social Media Use
The adolescent boys indicated in the questionnaire that they found themselves frequently thinking about social media. They wanted to use it less often, but felt unable to stop. A year later, when their parents were asked about their children’s behavior, those same boys were more likely to demonstrate rising symptoms of ADHD.
This finding, from a new study by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, adds to growing research linking increased social media use to detrimental effects on attention, memory and cognition. Particularly where children are concerned, researchers have long sought to understand the dynamic between youth mental health and their online activity.
UCSF’s new study, published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open, suggests that addictive social media use among adolescent boys could contribute to worsening ADHD symptoms.
Child Vaccination Rates Continue to Drop in Oklahoma as Exemptions Rise
Cecilia Ramirez spends her summer crisscrossing the Oklahoma City area. She drives a van decorated with smiling cartoon kids and suns designed to look like they were drawn with chalk. Her van is stocked with all the vaccinations necessary for Oklahoma school enrollment, such as tetanus, measles and polio. It also has some immunizations that are recommended but not required, like meningitis and human papillomavirus.
Ramirez’s van is one of several operated by the Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Oklahoma Caring Foundation that travels around the state to administer free vaccines to children who are uninsured or on Medicaid and who otherwise might not be able to easily access them. Last year, the Caring Vans program vaccinated over 6,850 kids at over 760 stops.
But despite efforts to increase immunization rates by providing free and more accessible vaccinations, experts say Oklahoma’s overall child vaccination rates are down amid skepticism about the efficacy of vaccines.
They also said they’re seeing an increasing number of parents utilizing a state law that allows the children to opt out of required vaccinations, which raises the risk of contracting preventable illnesses when school starts again next month. Dr. Steven Crawford, a family physician and the chair for the Oklahoma Alliance for Healthy Families, says child vaccination rates in Oklahoma have been declining for many years, but the state saw a big drop after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Antibiotics Keeping Sick Children Alive Are Losing Their Power, Study Finds
A global study warns that antibiotic resistance is undermining treatment for serious infections in children. Researchers analyzed 106,581 bacterial samples collected from children aged 0 to 18 in 82 countries between 2004 and 2022.
Their findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, show that resistance to antibiotics has increased steadily over the past two decades, particularly in babies, children receiving intensive care and those living in resource-limited settings.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria evolve and become less susceptible to drugs designed to kill them. As resistance grows, infections become harder to treat, increasing the risk of severe illness and death.
Meta Faces Tennessee Trial Over Allegations Instagram Was Designed to Be Addictive
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Meta Platforms faces trial in Tennessee on Monday over the state’s claims that Instagram’s design is to blame for a youth mental-health crisis, one of several trials in the coming weeks testing allegations that the company’s social media platforms were intentionally built to be addictive.
Tennessee accuses the company of violating the state’s consumer protection law by knowingly designing a product that drives teens to compulsive use and misleading the public about its safety. The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office, claims Meta failed to disclose extensive internal research showing Instagram could harm teens and continued offering features it knew were dangerous without warning users.
The state alleges founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was repeatedly warned by some Meta employees about research that found a negative impact on teens, but declined to fund efforts to minimize those harms and made misleading public statements about the amount of harmful content on the platforms.
Meta’s Smartglasses Mean Any Child Can Be Covertly Filmed. In the Age of AI, How Do We Tackle That Risk?
It took me a while to realise what the man sitting next to me on the train was doing. He was flicking through pictures of a little girl on his phone; zooming in on some, cropping the images. Hardly unusual, of course, except that on closer inspection the pictures were very clearly of the toddler sitting opposite us, playing with her parents.
On a crowded train of people mostly staring obliviously at our own phones, a stranger had been covertly photographing that little girl over and over again. And if it hadn’t been for that very visible phone screen giving him away, he wouldn’t have been caught.
That encounter was a while ago but my memory was jogged last week listening to a clip of Meta’s VP of wearables, Alex Himel, talk fondly to the BBC about using his new smartglasses to film his daughter singing in a talent contest.
They let him capture the memory without having to watch her through a screen, he said, freeing him to be “kind of living in the moment, head up and hands free”. So far, so sweet. But what about the risk of creeps potentially using them to film other people’s daughters covertly, heads up and hands free? Meta’s smartglasses have a tiny flashing warning light on the frame to indicate when the wearer is recording, but the technology is still new enough that many people don’t think to look for it. And in the age of AI, stolen images of children matter.
France Joins a Global Move Toward Restricting Social Media for Children
France passed a landmark law on Tuesday restricting access to social media for anyone under 15, the first European country to do so, and the latest in a wave of countries acting against what they view as malign effects of such services on minors.
The law, approved by wide margins in both houses of France’s Parliament, could go into effect as soon as Sept. 1. It will also ban the use of cellphones in high schools, extending a prohibition that already applies to primary and middle schools.
A personal priority of President Emmanuel Macron, the law is viewed as a bellwether for other European countries, several of which are drafting their own laws. The measures come in response to concerns over online bullying and coercion, exposure to extreme content, the threat of predators and potential harm to mental health.
