Pediatrics

Improve Your Child’s Academic Performance!

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Phone ban impact on student academic achievement

The top estimate is the estimated average treatment effect of the phone ban on student academic achievement across the full population. The next estimates contain heterogeneous treatment effects for subgroups split by prior average academic achievement (above or below preexperiment median), years of study, and field of study.

Source: Alp Sungu et al.,Phones impede learning: Evidence from a massive phone-free classroom experiment.Science394,178-181(2026).DOI:10.1126/science.aef7249 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aef7249

I’m Taking Your Phone Away (and you didn’t do anything wrong)

When People Did Not Have Access to Mobile Internet, they Spent More Time Socializing in Person, Exercising, and Being in Nature.

Wait…I need to check my phone.

Improve Your Child’s Mental Health and Academic Performance!

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Results  This study included 5515 adolescent participants (2640 [47.9%] female; mean [SD] age 11.93 [0.65] years) using step counters. Higher step count was associated with lower total mental health problems (B [SE], −0.080 [0.015]; t = −5.497; P < .001) and greater cortical thickness in the paracentral (B [SE], 0.057 [0.016]; t = 3.621; P < .001) and rostral anterior cingulate (B[SE], 0.052 [0.016]; t = 3.319; P = .001) regions. Further analyses showed a significant dose-response association, with progressively lower mental health problems across higher step categories compared with the under 5000-step group. Mediation analyses revealed that greater paracentral thickness statistically mediated the association between higher daily step count and fewer mental health problems 1 year later.

Conclusions and Relevance  In this cohort study, higher daily step counts were associated with structural differences in the brains of adolescents, which were in turn associated with better mental outcomes prospectively. Beneficial associations for mental health appeared to accrue continuously across the observed range, with no evidence of a threshold or plateau, highlighting that every step counts and the potential value of promoting daily steps in adolescents. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2854698

Li Q, Paluch A, Rakesh D. Physical Activity and Adolescent Brain Structure, Mental Health, and Academic Outcomes. JAMA Netw Open. 2026;9(10):e2636973. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.36973

Greater cortical thickness too!

WOOHOO.

Antidepressant Prescriptions Increase 130% for Teenage Girls

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The increasing rate of mental health disorders among children and adolescents is a concerning trend that has been observed for several decades, with survey studies revealing dramatic increases in anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.1 In the United States, suicide ranks as the second leading cause of death for those aged 10 to 19 years and the third leading cause of death for those aged 15 to 24 years.2 Antidepressant Prescriptions and Mental Health – https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/153/3/e2023064677/196661/Antidepressant-Prescriptions-and-Mental-Health

Between January 2016 and December 2022, the monthly antidepressant dispensing rate increased 66.3%, from 2575.9 to 4284.8. Before March 2020, this rate increased by 17.0 per month (95% confidence interval: 15.2 to 18.8). The COVID-19 outbreak was not associated with a level change but was associated with a slope increase of 10.8 per month (95% confidence interval: 4.9 to 16.7). The monthly antidepressant dispensing rate increased 63.5% faster from March 2020 onwards compared with beforehand. In subgroup analyses, this rate increased 129.6% and 56.5% faster from March 2020 onwards compared with beforehand among females aged 12 to 17 years and 18 to 25 years, respectively. In contrast, the outbreak was associated with a level decrease among males aged 12 to 17 years and was not associated with a level or slope change among males aged 18 to 25 years. Antidepressant Dispensing to US Adolescents and Young Adults: 2016–2022 – https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/153/3/e2023064245/196655/Antidepressant-Dispensing-to-US-Adolescents-and?autologincheck=redirected

Between 2020 and 2022, antidepressant prescriptions for girls aged 12-17 skyrocketed by 130%. Antidepressants Increase 130% for Teen Girls, Drop 7% For Boys – https://brownstone.org/articles/antidepressants-increase-130-for-teen-girls-drop-7-for-boys/

Yikes.

Cannabis and Kids

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Epidemiologic research suggests that cannabis use may be a significant risk factor for psychotic disorders. A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies estimated that lifetime cannabis users had an odds ratio of 2.58 (95% CI 1.08–6.13) for psychotic disorders compared to non-users (Moore et al., Reference Moore, Zammit, Lingford-Hughes, Barnes, Jones, Burke and Lewis2007). Another meta-analysis found an odds ratio of 3.90 (95% CI 2.84–5.34) for psychotic disorders among the most frequent cannabis users compared to non-users, suggesting dose–response (Marconi, Di Forti, Lewis, Murray, & Vassos, Reference Marconi, Di Forti, Lewis, Murray and Vassos2016). Whether cannabis use is causally related to psychotic disorders continues to be debated, with recent genetic studies raising uncertainty about the directionality of the relationship and the magnitude of association (Ganesh & D’Souza, Reference Ganesh and D’Souza2022; Gillespie & Kendler, Reference Gillespie and Kendler2021).

This study provides new evidence of a strong but age-dependent association between cannabis use and risk of psychotic disorder, consistent with the neurodevelopmental theory that adolescence is a vulnerable time to use cannabis. The strength of association during adolescence was notably greater than in previous studies, possibly reflecting the recent rise in cannabis potency. Age-dependent association of cannabis use with risk of psychotic disorder Psychological Medicine , First View , pp. 1 – 11 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291724000990

Childhood Asthma, Gas Stoves and Junk Science

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Full Disclosure – I hate cooking on an electric stove. So there might be some bias in this post.

Here’s a link to the study behind the headlines – Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/75#B6-ijerph-20-00075.

Here’s a nice review of the study that most people will never read – No, new study does not link gas stoves with asthma in children https://junkscience.com/2023/01/no-new-study-does-not-link–stoves-with-asthma-in-children/

I read the study behind the headlines:

Indoor gas stove use for cooking is associated with an increased risk of current asthma among children…
The proportion of children (<18 years old) exposed to gas stoves was obtained from the American Housing Survey for the US, and states with available data (n = 9). We found that 12.7% (95% CI = 6.3–19.3%) of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use. The proportion of childhood asthma that could be theoretically prevented if gas stove use was not present (e.g., state-specific PAFs) varied by state… Nonetheless, our results align with a cross-sectional study which found that the use of a gas stove or oven for heat was a main risk factor for doctor-diagnosed asthma in US children under age six [6].

Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States – link above

Note the authors went from “associated with” to “attributed to gas stove use”. When I got to the “main risk factor” statement I immediately went into WTF mode. So I decided to read some of the authors’ source documents including this one – Contribution of Residential Exposures to Asthma in US Children and Adolescents https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/107/6/e98/66289/Contribution-of-Residential-Exposures-to-Asthma-in?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

The list of predictors of doctor diagnosed asthma included history of pet allergy, presence of pet in the household, dust mites, fungus, diagnosis of allergic rhinitis and cockroaches. The main risk factor of gas stove use is not listed.

Talor Gruenwald is listed as the lead author of the study causing an uproar from professional chefs in the US. Gruenwald used to work here https://rmi.org/ and now works here https://www.rewiringamerica.org

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

George Orwell – 1984

This was an interesting deep dive behind the headlines.

Did I mention I hate cooking on an electric stove?

Asymptomatic Tiny Human Disease Vectors

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Just 14% of adults who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were asymptomatic, versus 37% of children aged 0-4 years, in the paper. This raises concern that parents, childcare providers, and preschools may be underestimating infection in seemingly healthy young kids who have been exposed to COVID, wrote lead author Ruth A. Karron, MD, and colleagues in JAMA Network Open.,,

“Given the higher rate of transmissibility and infectivity of the Omicron variant, it is difficult to make direct associations between findings reported during this study period and those present in the current era during which the Omicron variant is circulating,” they wrote in an accompanying editorial. “However, the higher rates of asymptomatic infection observed among children in this study are likely to be consistent with those observed for current and future viral variants.”

Many Young Kids With COVID May Show No Symptoms — https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/980195?src=rss

A little more science on those Tiny Human Disease Vectors. See my last post Tiny (and not so tiny) Human Disease Vectors – the Princeton-led Study

May you live in interesting times.

What do we know about Covid-19 vaccines in under 5s?

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How researchers and public health officials perceive the risk-benefit ratio of rolling out vaccines to under 5s varies around the world and depends on the impact covid-19 has had on that country. Sweden has had just a handful of fatalities in those aged under 18,6 and vaccines are still not available to children aged 5-11 years. But in Brazil the virus has killed an average of two children under the age of 5 each day7—a rate which equates to around one in every five deaths among under 5s worldwide. Understandably, doctors are keen to boost protection levels, fearful of the impact that future variants might have.

BMJ 2022;378:o1892 — https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o1892 (Published 23 August 2022)

Got Kids? READ THIS

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Beyond just online platforms, the new survey finds that the vast majority of teens have access to digital devices, such as smartphones (95%), desktop or laptop computers (90%) and gaming consoles (80%). And the study shows there has been an uptick in daily teen internet users, from 92% in 2014-15 to 97% today. In addition, the share of teens who say they are online almost constantly has roughly doubled since 2014-15 (46% now and 24% then).These are some of the findings from an online survey of 1,316 teens conducted by the Pew Research Center from April 14 to May 4, 2022

Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022 — https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/

Remember my earlier post I Thought I Told You To Put That Phone Down! This earlier post has additional links to other posts on the topic of social media addiction.

Technology addictions, also commonly known as digital addictions or internet addictions, are often overlooked due to the acceptance that society has placed on using digital devices. Technology addictions often go unnoticed by loved ones because the addicted individual may appear as though they are tending to something important such as work-related tasks on their digital device, when in reality hiding behind the screen is something extraneous. When a technological problem does develop and is noticed it is often not viewed as being an imminent risk akin to an addiction to alcohol or drugs because not only is it more acceptable, but it is also not viewed as being acute or deadly. Despite these beliefs, pathological technology use can indeed be pervasive and detrimental to one’s health and well being. In a growing digital age there is a rapid expansion of digital use and subsequent potential for problematic pathological technology use to ensue.

https://www.familyaddictionspecialist.com/blog/the-6-most-common-types-of-technology-addiction

The link provided above is neither an endorsement or evidence of a previous or existing patient-therapist relationship.

Although I will admit to a quasi-addiction to You Tube for new music.