Tag: 16-year-old
Why Congress Keeps Failing to Protect Kids Online
Roughly a decade has passed since experts began to appreciate that social media may be truly hazardous for children, and especially for teenagers. As with teenage smoking, the evidence has accumulated slowly, but leads in clear directions. The heightened rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide among young people are measurable and disheartening. When I worked for the White House on technology policy, I would hear from the parents of children who had suffered exploitation or who died by suicide after
Scenes From Ukrainian Summer Camp
Summer camp, at its purest, is like Never-Never-Land—a place that exists only in childhood or in memories of it: lake swimming, tree climbing, secret telling, frog catching, and youth everlasting. When I found myself recently on a train platform in Lviv, Ukraine, surrounded by teenagers heading to summer camp in the Carpathian Mountains, such wholesome pleasures seemed almost ridiculously out of reach.
The train was running late, for one thing. And shortly after we’d learned of the delay, an air-raid
How to Build a Happy Life: How to Prioritize Joy
In adulthood, many of us are forced to recalibrate our relationship with joy. As responsibilities multiply exponentially, time grows limited, and challenges mount, it becomes harder to make time for fun, let alone remember what it feels like. As we explore the key components of happiness—pleasure, joy, and satisfaction—we ask the foundational question: What really brings me joy?
In this special-edition, bonus episode of How to Build a Happy Life, the psychotherapist and Atlantic contributing writer Lori Gottlieb demystifies
Influencers With Tourette’s Find a Niche on TikTok
Halfway through our conversation, Glen Cooney calls me a four-letter word often cited as the most offensive in the English language. But that’s okay. He doesn’t mean it.
Cooney has Tourette’s syndrome, which causes tics, twitches, and—in some people—a symptom called coprolalia, which the Tourette Association of America characterizes as “the involuntary outburst of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks.” Living with the disorder is tiring, because of both the tics themselves and the effort of trying to