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Let’s Get Medical: Salt & Ice Challenge

In the age of social media, adolescents are able to utilize digital peer pressure to influence behavior of vulnerable teens and tweens. The recent internet phenomena circulating social media sites is the Salt and Ice Challenge (SIC).

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Clinical Dilemma: “Underreporting vs Risk of Contagion”

I’ve had hesitations posting about this story due to my view on contagion and the importance of following recommended guidelines on reporting on suicide.

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Encouraging Kindness

I enjoy seeing the kindness of youth. I see it everyday and it helps to balance out some of the negativity in the world. It’s important that we all teach kindness from a young age.

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Ask Amanda: Self-Esteem

“Dear Amanda, I have a teenage daughter who is on social media. I worry about her self-esteem and her comparing herself to other girls on social media. How do I help her develop strong self-esteem in this social media visually driven world we are immersed in?”

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Ask Amanda: PokémonGo

“Dear Amanda, I have two children: a girl in middle school and a boy in high school. They have become obsessed with the PokémonGo app. It has been all over the news about thieves using it to lure kids to areas and robbing them. I feel that I should make them delete the app. What should I do?”

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Ask Amanda: Technology Addiction

“Dear Amanda, I’m working with parents that are struggling with their kids’ behavioral outbursts when they take away their device. It’s almost like they have an addiction to their phone or tablet. I’ve heard of internet addiction, but is there device addiction?”

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Tinder & Setting Expectations

I regularly talk to kids about apps. Over the past year, I’m starting to hear about Tinder with the senior aged kids. Part of my work is teaching them to recognize red flag behaviors, indicators for grooming and not going to meet people in person that they meet on Tinder (or other sites such as Craigslist).

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Snapchat Updates

Snapchat just did a pretty large update Tuesday with some new features. While there are some new fun ways to use Snapchat now, it has yet to be determined how the features could potentially be misused.

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