Ritu Chatterjee
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
When kids use artificial intelligence tools, 42% of the time it's for companionship, where kids engage with a chatbot for an ongoing conversation.
And frequently, nearly 40% of the time, those conversations involve violent role-playing.
Scott Collins is chief medical officer at Aura.
These conversations also tend to be longer, he says, compared to when they use AI for help with homework.
Among 13 to 17-year-olds, kids who spend more time online are also more stressed out by their digital lives.
Researchers looked at long-term health data for more than 50,000 people who had survived breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer.
to understand long-term risks of depression in this group.
The risk was highest for breast cancer survivors with more than 13% developing depression 5 to 10 years after their cancer diagnosis.
Colorectal cancer survivors had the next highest risk with nearly 12% getting a depression diagnosis over a similar time period.
Being eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare increased the risk of developing depression, as did pre-existing anxiety.
The findings are published in JAMA Oncology.
The new study in JAMA Network Open found that a week of social media detox led to reductions in symptoms of anxiety, depression and insomnia in people aged 18 to 24.
Psychiatrist Dr. Amir Afkami is at George Washington University and wasn't involved in the new study.
He says those with insomnia should limit nighttime scrolling, whereas people with social anxiety should try other strategies.
Those who use social media when bored, he says, should try a walk or a run instead.
Researchers recruited nearly 400 young adults and tracked their social media use for two weeks using an app.
On average, the participants use Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and other social media for about two hours a day.