Bed Times

I figured that since many of you expressed an interest in having bad times for your teenagers if you become parents someday that it would be beneficial for you to know what you're going up against. You'd be surprised at how little parents know or want to know about their teenagers' sleeping behaviors. 12% of the teenagers I surveyed had bed times while 62% of the parents I surveyed said they enforced bed times. Somewhere along the way 50% was lost. When I asked parents what time their teenagers went to bed not a single answer was after 11 pm, and yet 42% of the answers teenagers gave were over 11 pm. Once again nearly half of these teenagers are lost.  The discrepancies show how difficult it is to actually enforce a bed time.
The studies I found showed that parental influence with bed times is positive in helping teenagers get more sleep and I came to the same conclusion with my own study, but it's difficult. In my study, teenagers with bed times had more difficult times falling asleep and waking, and they fell asleep on average an hour after their bed time.
My research certainly isn't the end all to sleep research, but I do believe that there is a general discrepancy between how much sleep teenagers get versus how much parents think they get which accounts for a general lack of parental influence on sleep.
By my percentages, there's a 50/50 chance your kids will not be on the same page as you with their sleeping habits. It seems to me, that being aware of how much sleep your teenagers are getting is most important in deciding whether they need a bed time or not.
I know my mom and sister both filled out the survey, and their numbers were certainly off, and I know they're even more off with my youngest sister. It might be easy to say you'll have bed times for you kids, but it won't be easy to enforce it.

Have a very nice summer everyone!

The Effect of Advertising on Pre-teens

For the preliminary research of my final paper, I looked into the effect of advertising on pre-teens in order to provide a basis for my study. I found that it is proven fact that younger children and teens are greatly affected my advertising, not only because of their quest for identity and the struggle to fit in, but their impulsivity and desire to buy things that are "cool". I found this video which illustrates this well and also embodies some of the final conclusions of age-related advertising influence that I was able to draw from my final study.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1KWofXSt6c

Have a great summer everyone! :)

Adolescence as a Social Construction

Hey guys,

After our last class I started thinking about the idea of adolescence being a social construct. I thought that idea was really interesting because I can see how it may be a social construct but there's also no denying the biological changes that define this life stage. So I got on the internet and started reading more about this debate and I came across this article that Professor Kenneth J. Saltman wrote that basically identifies adolescence as a socially constructed stage because it varies from culture to culture but also has a biological standpoint that has to be taken into account. It's a short article, only about six pages so you guys should definitely check it out. It's been a great semester! Have a great summer guys!

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/cmayo/www/EPS%20427/Saltman.pdf

Nushi Baksh

Teens and Cosmetics

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/fashion/29tween.html?_r=1

This article discusses several things we've mentioned periodically throughout our course. The first being how tweens and teens are affected by marketing, especially that of cosmetics. The girl mentioned in this article is age 11 and has started wearing more "sophisticated" makeup, to which her mother has reacted by buying her makeup and taking her to get a makeover. The question asked by the author is about the parent's action; is it poor adult judgment or progressive parenting? There's also the idea of whether makeup sexualizes young girls by making them look more like adults. Given our discussions about how younger girls nowadays are already somewhat more mature when it comes to appearance and interests, how can we view their move towards more sophisticated makeup and the role of parents in this stage? Moreover, what do we make of shows such as "Toddlers and Tiaras" in which parents very actively encourage physical makeovers of their toddlers?

Differences in how Males and Females Process Television Advertisements

Throughout the semester we have discussed the differences between males and females across a variety of topics. One of the many topics this idea has applied to is the topic of the media. We have discussed how the media influences adolescence, and how this differs among gender. A study done for the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media titled, "Adolescent Evaluation of Gender Role and Sexual Imagery in Television Advertisements" yields some interesting finds.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15506878jobem4703_7

This study's participants were 227 males and 158 males aged 13-16 from selected public schools. Students were offered anything from 6$-10$ to participate. The most interesting idea that I gained from the study was the result analyzing the fifth hypothesis of the experiment: The more traditional gendered and sexist beer ads, with and without sports content in them, will elicit more counterarguments compared to other ads, from females than males. The results stated that, in response to hypothesis five, "more overall counterarguments resulted if the ads presented traditional gender roles, higher sexist or sexual imagery, and were targeted to males, compared to ads with less traditional gender roles, and low sexism or sexual content." This result may seem expected and appropriate, however, what can we make of this in terms of how the media influences gender roles? Does this mean that the media influences females more than males in regards to gender roles, or vice versa? I am interested to see what you think.

Napping

Since my presentation I’ve been looking into adolescents and napping, and I’ve found that there are a very limited number of studies on the effects of napping and adolescents other than it being just thrown in with the sleep they get at night.  I did find one study with 231 adolescent participants that was done to test a correlation between napping and dysfunctional cognitions and negative effects. I was most interested in the number of nappers verse non-nappers in their sample. 65, or 32%, were nappers, which they defined as adolescents that habitually napped at least twice a week compared to 140, or 68%, who were non-nappers. So the nappers were still a significant third of the group compared to my number of kids that have bed times. Napping could be an alternative to going to bed earlier because  teenagers seem to have an easier time self-regulating naps, no one tells them to take them, they just listen to their bodies and sleep. Interestingly enough the study seemed to conclude that napping was not wholly positive.

 “…nappers demonstrated significantly more dysfunctional cognitions, anxiety, and stress symptoms, when compared to non-nappers. In contrast, no significant difference was found for depression.”

It doesn't seem to be an extensively researched and discussed topic which I find surprising considering how many teenagers do take naps.

I found the study on EBSCO so you'll probably have to log in if you'd like to read it, but here's the link.
EBSCOhost Link
Its title is "Adolescent napping behavior: Dysfunctional cognitions and negative affect." if the link doesn't work.

Drinking Laws

Hey Everyone,

I have been doing a little reading in between frantic writing for all my finals, and I came across a quote I liked from an addiction expert by the name of Stanton Peele LINK. He said, “Making hard-and-fast rules creates the sense that alcohol is some magical potion.” So in combination with the discussion we had in class about teen partying and laws related to teens' age restrictions, should we lower age restrictions, especially for drinking? European countries, that have little to no stigma about drinking and have for a long time. Their laws show this, as well as the statistics of drink and drive accidents. 

What do you think?