The Sun-Sentinel reports that a 13-year-old boy accidentally shot his 6-year-old sister in the chest with a handgun at their Oakland Park home over the weekend. It was later revealed that there was no supervision at home at the time of the shooting.

The accident was reported by Justin Latourette, a neighbor, after he heard a gunshot a little before 7 p.m. He recounted the scene of when they were wheeling the young giri into an ambulance:

“Her shirt was bloody, and you could see through a piece of gauze that she had a hole in her chest above the heart. Her eyes were wide open in a blank stare, like she was in shock. I’ll never forget that look.”

Thankfully, the young girl who has now been identified as Angela Divin is said to be improving after she was listed as critical over the weekend.

Statistics from the Children’s Defense Fund suggest that accidents like this one aren’t uncommon, and that parents need to do a better job of securing guns while educating children about the danger of firearms. In fact, the Fund found that one-third of all households with children under 18 have a gun in the house, and more than 40 percent of those households don’t store said guns in a inaccessible, or locked, location.

The AP is reporting that three teenagers from the small town of Versailles, Indiana died this week after a collision involving two trucks at an intersection. The teenagers – 18-year-old Samantha Hanson, 17-year-old Timothy Bowman and 18-year-old Jacob Vogel – died at the scene. There were three other teens involved in the crash, and they’ve been taken to local hospitals.

The teens were at a day-long FFA event, but decided to head out at 9:30 a.m. Shortly after, the trucks collided after both reportedly ran a four-way stop. The police say the Dodge truck in the accident hit the Ford F-250 broadside thus causing the deadly crash.

Versailles has been no stranger to tragedy over the past few months as multiple teenagers have lost their lives on the roads. The report states that 18-year-old died while texting and driving, and a 15-year-old was killed in an ATV crash. The small town also lost a popular teacher in a plane crash.

Reuters reports that a new Dutch study looked to map the relationship between pot use and psychosis in teenagers. The study’s lead author, Merel Griffith-Lendering, equated the question to asking which came first – the chicken or the egg? In other words, do teenagers developer psychosis from smoking pot or do teenagers smoke pot to treat psychosis? The interesting find is that both were happening at the same time.

The study surveyed over 2,000 Dutch teenagers who were aged 14, 16 and 19. The teenagers were questioned about their pot use, and then took a psychosis vulnerability test. The results found that those who smoked pot at age 16 developed psychotic tendencies by age 19. The reverse held true as those who exhibited psychotic tendencies at age 16 had started smoking pot by age 19. As is the case in most studies like this, correlation does not imply causation. The study’s authors say that genetics may play a role in the use of pot in teenagers.

So, what do the researchers have to say about their findings? Most agree that marijuana use is not harmless, especially in the developing brains of teenagers. Griffith-Lendering says that prevention programs should take this new found information into account when approaching marijuana use in teenagers. There are better ways to treat psychosis than drugs, and those who are already smoking pot should be made aware that they are at risk of developing psychotic tendencies, such as hallucinations and schizophrenia later in life.

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For one, you can hardly be a teenager these days without being online as 95% are reportedly plugged in and 80% use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and, well, pretty much any site that includes some sort of socializing, which is basically everything on the internet these days. What’s more, and in what can only be described as a mistake of youth, one-third of teens say they use Facebook as a place to find love. That’s more than the 20% of teens who are still hoping to find that special someone within church communities.

While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with using sites like Facebook to go looking for love, this doe-eyed quest for some tender loving care on Facebook unfortunately leaves kids vulnerable to some creepy doings. 34% of teen girls and 16% of boys say they have received unwanted attention from the opposite sex. What’s worse, 75% of teens – 68% of girls and 19% of boys – don’t tell their parents whenever online communication reaches that creeepy, icky, uncomfortable feeling.

“Teens today increasingly face pressure to live up to peer expectations and are basically growing up faster than the normal standards,” said Stanley Holditch, online family safety advocate with McAfee. Holditch’s assessment is reflected in some of the teens’ responses, as study participants laments that “everyone (on Facebook) is putting out there what they do with their boyfriends and there is some pressure to do the same.” As if being a teenager didn’t have enough natural difficulty, the fact that people are only ever posting things on Facebook of happy events and happy photos is giving teenagers an inferiority complex because they feel pressured to keep up with the endless newsfeed of warm, fuzzy updates.

Some more information to make you uncomfortably readjust in your chair:

46% of teens feel the Internet influences what their boyfriend or girlfriend expects from them in terms of relationship behavior.

29% of girls say that they have experienced interactions on the Internet with members of the opposite sex that made them feel pressured, uncomfortable or threatened, compared to 18% of boys and 20% overall.

23% of all teens say that they’ve received unwanted attention from the opposite sex online.

And here we thought that cyber-bullying was the big problem to be concerned about on Facebook in regard to teens, which is a somewhat more recent phenomenon. However, creepy people have been lurking in the dark alleys of the internet since the whole thing started, so it shouldn’t be much of surprise that these trolls have crawled out from the slimy bridges they live under and found their way onto social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. As much as Facebook tries to emphasize positive interactions and reinforce happy meal behaviors on the site, it’s trying to break humans from not defaulting into their most basic, reptilian tendencies and being uncouth weirdos.

According to this source, kids today are less likely to use marijuana and cigarettes and more likely to practice safe sex, however, they are less likely to finish high school. Decreased graduation risks might be correlated with the devaluation of college degrees, the shift towards working in business and arts fields that do not always require a high school diploma, and other socio-economic factors.

From: BestEducationDegrees.com

While modern teens are less likely to graduate from high school, they are more likely to believe that they will attend college in the future (58.3% in 1980 vs. 79.2% in 2004).

There is also less excitement or proactive behavior towards obtaining a driver’s license; only 43% of 15-17 year olds had their driver’s license in 2004 as compared to 52% in 1982. Is this because parents can no longer afford to buy their teenagers a car or is it something else?

But does this infographic really tell us anything important about their real differences? Do you think that this infographic is a little too superficial?

Another thing to consider is that this visual has outdated information. Career fields are changing swiftly and I doubt that this graphic truly captures modern tenns’ career aspirations.

What do you take from this visual information?

Nowadays, the door to the information age has been left unlocked for us, and it feels like the way we live is changing drastically every couple of years. My way of life today feels a far cry different from the way it was ten years ago, or even five. But no demographic is a better representative of the times than an era’s teenagers, whose behaviors and spending patterns have not yet started to fossilize. You may shudder at the thought, but the teens you know are giving you a glimpse of what will be normal over the next generation. Hopefully without the hormones. And a comparison of the way teens were a generation ago can really help you visualize how dynamic of a time we live in.

Here’s an infographic from BestEducationDegrees.com that shows us what teens were like back in 1982, and how today’s teens compare:

From: BestEducationDegrees.com

Note the correlation between a more than doubling of students enrolled in Spanish courses, and a more than tripling of the hispanic population in the country. We’ll all be speaking some degree of Spanish by 2040, probably. It’s interesting, too, that 21% more teens are gearing up for college, and SAT scores are (nominally) higher, but high school graduation rates have actually declined.

At least working teens have doubled their earnings. Or have they? Adjusted for inflation, teens are making about five dollars less a week than they were thirty years ago.

Despite all the changes, one thing will always be true of teens. They’ll always have deep, complicated emotions — “that nobody in the world can understand.” Especially you, Mom and Dad.

Here’s how the story in Texas goes. A local thirteen year old teen found herself in a motel room in Plainview, where she thought she was going to meet another teenaged girl she had been conversing with on Facebook. Plainview Police Captain Manuel Balderas said, “I guess the person had sent her a friend request, she accepted it and she got to ‘conversating’ with the girl,” according to KLBK, the CBS affiliate in Plainview.

The two teenagers became friends online as so many people do and agreed to meet in person. Since she was only thirteen, the girl had asked her sister to drive her to a local motel to meet the new friend. When a man answered the door and explained the girl she was supposed to meet was taking a shower it didn’t seem to phase the young teenager and she went past the man and into the room. The man (now a suspect) grabbed the teenager, put tape over her mouth and tried to keep her from making any noise.

“She started screaming as loud as she could. He kept telling her to get quiet and asked if she was with anybody else and she said that her sister was outside waiting for her so I guess the guy got scared and let her go,” said Police Captain Balderas. He also told KLBK the man had registered under a fake name at the motel but police were able to identify and question him. The suspect hasn’t been arrested yet, but it is likely that he’ll be charged with the online solicitation of a minor and unlawful restraint.

I doubt anyone is really all that surprised about a story like this one. It’s a pretty common and sadly way too easily believable scenario for today’s social media world. Our communication rich world is filled with all kinds of opportunities and possibilities including the possibility that predators can still use social networking tools and platforms to find victims. Most importantly, we all must be reminded of these dangers and aware when information is shared so openly with the public.

The survey also found that 76% of parents with kids on Facebook have "friended" their teenagers, while 29% of these teens would un-friend their parents if they were given the option. Heartwarming isn’t it? These kids are twice as likely to un-friend their mothers as opposed to their fathers.

Along with the survey, AOL has released a new product called Safe Social, which provides parents with a "360 degree view of their child’s social networking life". This includes a report card of overall social networking activity and identification of potential red flags.

Safe Social requires consent from the child to allow parents access to their kids’ friends list and what they’re posting on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Parents can even get alerts about potential predator relationships and indications of "at-risk behaviors" like references to alcohol, bullying or suicide.

"Predators, whether bullies or sexual offenders, often masquerade as friends," says John Ryan, AOL’s head of Online Safety and Security. "The key is to unmask them. Safe Social takes an across-the-board look at your kid’s friends and checks them against more than 50 databases and other factors, such as distance, to help you find out if they are, who they say they are."

Safe Social also addresses reputation management issues for teens, giving parents the ability to review postings, uploaded photos in which their kids are tagged, etc.
 

Features include:

- Permissions: Parents can set permissions for individual teens to designate how the account can be used. They can also require that their approval is required when a teen receives money in the account.

- Mobile Features: Parents can use their mobile phones to check account balances and transfer money to their teens’ account. Additionally, teens can check their account balance and easily request money from their parents via simple text message.

- Alerts: Parents can receive alerts notifying them when their teens’ payments exceed a certain amount or when a specified low balance is reached.

- Built-in security: As with all PayPal accounts, the Student Account allows teens to shop online without exposing any financial information.

"As a parent I understand the challenge and stress of raising kids that are financially responsible," says Don Fotsch, PayPal vice president of customer experience and design and parent of six, ranging in age from 8 to 19. "With the Student Account, I know I can give my kids a level of financial independence while remaining on top of my kids’ spending."

Parents have full visibility on the account, and can establish up to four PayPal sub-accounts and transfer funds as needed on a one-time or recurring basis. PayPal giving account holders some back-to-school savings opportunities as well.

AdAge wrote up a survey by Alloy Media + Marketing that found that 96% of teenagers with Internet access use social networking sites at least weekly. Actually, it’s more than just teenagers: even children (okay, “tweens”) as young as nine use social networks with that frequency. Better yet, “nearly half engaged with a brand in the space in the past month.” Their time social networking is now almost on-par with their time spent with the television—and when doing both, the Internet has four times as much of their attention as the television..

So, how should you advertise on teens’ social sites? Samantha Skey, Executive VP of Strategic Marketing at Alloy, stated that the best way to appeal to teens on social sites is to meet them on their terms: don’t interrupt their activities, but, “Enhance or facilitate my social-networking experience. Offer me utilities to enhance my production process or tools to help me better able to express or engage myself.”

What works well?

• Freebies: utilities, cool downloads, exclusive content and other items of value.
• “Mix their music or animate their backgrounds or offer a countdown to a special day,” Ms. Skey said. [You know, widgets.]
• An insurance company could, for example, sponsor educational content or a company could launch a cause-related campaign or a campaign that involves points and rewards for things kids are interested in. “Straight forward old-school reward systems are attractive and enable choice,” she said. [She also said that even brands without “natural youth interest” could reach them this way.]

Also of note: “Certain categories had endemic interest among kids, not surprisingly entertainment and technology. But Alloy was surprised to see a large number of respondents — mostly girls — were also interested in hearing more about categories such as personal-care products.” The survey also found that many teens communicate with their parents on social networks as well.

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