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Parents Are Opting Kids out of School Laptops, Returning Them to Pen and Paper
His laptop was being taken away. His face lit up. “Really?” he asked, beaming with excitement. It wasn’t a punishment. It was a victory Frumin had fought hard for. Her third-grade daughter had already opted out of using school-assigned laptops in favor of pen and paper, and her son wanted to follow suit.
The middle schooler had been begging to opt out, citing headaches from the Chromebook screen and a dislike of the AI chatbot recently integrated into it.
“I’m just so happy that they’re getting an analog education for now,” Frumin said.
Parents across the country are taking steps to stop their children from using school-issued Chromebooks and iPads, citing concerns about distractions and access to inappropriate content that they fear hampers their kids’ education.
The parents have started to organize through email and in group chats with hundreds of members, swapping tips and creating online resources for other families to use when approaching their own district about alternatives to school-issued devices. In interviews with a dozen parents, each said they were the first in their district to attempt to opt out — often confounding school officials who weren’t sure whether opting out was legally allowed — but that they felt it was crucial to prove a point.
Amid Minnesota Fraud Scandal, Legitimate Autism Centers Face Closure
A Minnesota autism center for adults and children, which has been operating for more than 20 years, is facing closure in the wake of the massive fraud scandal in the state that dates back more than a decade and involves more than $9 billion of U.S. taxpayer money. The Holland Center is one of many legitimate centers in the state, which collectively serve thousands of disabled people.
Founder, owner, and CEO Jennifer Larson built the Holland Center for her autistic, non-speaking son, who is now 25 years old. She said she has recently been forced to put hundreds of thousands of her own dollars into keeping the center afloat because the state didn’t pay a single claim for nearly two months. Because of the payment delays, Larson said autism centers like hers are being forced to reduce hours, cut staff, and close in some instances.
Families are scrambling for help, disabled children and adults are regressing, and parents are leaving jobs to care for their disabled loved ones. Larson told The Epoch Times her facility can’t continue much longer. “The feds say it’s the state. The state says it’s the feds,” Larson said. “The kids are going to be the collateral damage.”
Early Puberty May Raise Teen Anxiety Risk and Alcohol, Tobacco, Drug Use
The body changes, hormones surge, and the transition from child to teenager is well underway. But when puberty begins earlier than among peers, it may have consequences for young people — even when it falls within what medical science considers the normal range. That is one of the key findings of three new studies from the research group of Professor Cecilia Ramlau-Hansen from the Department of Public Health at Aarhus University.
“Early puberty is associated with an increased risk of general psychological distress, in terms of lower self-rated health, psychiatric diagnoses and the use of psychiatric medication among young people. The trend is strongest for girls, but it also applies to boys.
“Our studies suggest that girls who enter puberty early may have twice the risk of receiving psychiatric medication for mental health conditions in general, compared with girls who begin puberty at the same time as their classmates. Among boys, we found only a slight increase in risk,” says Postdoc Anne Gaml-Sørensen, who is first author behind the study.
UNLV-Based Effort Expands Testing and Outreach on Childhood Lead Exposure
Southern Nevada loves to reinvent itself. Casinos are imploded, resorts are rebranded, whole neighborhoods seem to spring from bare dirt overnight. But tucked between master-planned communities and new construction are pockets of the past — modest bungalows and ranch-style homes that predate the valley’s boom years.
Those homes help tell the story of Las Vegas. They can also quietly endanger the children growing up in them. That’s where the Nevada Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program comes in. “Lead in itself in fully intact paint is not a hazard,” said Erika Marquez, the program’s director. “But as our homes age, things deteriorate — and that’s when lead becomes dangerous for young children and pregnant women.”
Based at UNLV’s School of Public Health, the program was first launched about two decades ago through the Southern Nevada Health District. It was the first time Nevada had a dedicated effort to track children’s blood lead levels and understand where and how exposure was happening in Clark County. For five or six years, the program quietly did its work, collecting data and raising alarms where needed — until federal funding dried up and Nevada’s effort, like many others around the country, was shuttered.
Then Flint happened.
Teen Sexting Has Surged in U.S.
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Teen “sexting” has surged in the U.S., leaving countless teenagers vulnerable to harassment, exploitation and extortion, a new study says. Nearly 1 in 3 teens (32%) have received a sext, and almost 1 in 4 (24%) has sent one, researchers reported in the Journal of Adolescent Health. That’s up from 2019, when 23% of teens said they’d received a sext and 14% had sent one, researchers said.
“Our findings make it clear that sexting is not rare among adolescents — it’s a common part of many young people’s digital lives,” said senior researcher Sameer Hinduja, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter, Florida.
“What is deeply concerning, however, is how often these experiences are tied to coercion, nonconsensual sharing and sextortion,” Hinduja said in a news release.
