Health
Excessive phone and screen use tied to manic symptoms for one group, study finds
A recent study from the University of California, San Francisco, indicates that pre-teens with greater exposure to certain types of tech use could be at a higher risk of developing manic symptoms.
Published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, the study analyzed a nationwide sample of 9,243 children in the U.S. between 10 and 11 years old.
Young people who spent more time engaged with social media, texting, videos and video games were more likely to have “inflated self-esteem, decreased need for sleep, distractibility, rapid speech, racing thoughts and impulsivity — behaviors characteristic of manic episodes, a key feature of bipolar-spectrum disorders,” a press release noted.
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“This study underscores the importance of cultivating healthy screen use habits early,” said co-author Kyle Ganson, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, in the release.
“Future research can help us better understand the behaviors and brain mechanisms linking screen use with manic symptoms to help inform prevention and intervention efforts.”
Excessive use of social media, texting, videos and video games by young people of certain ages was linked to a higher risk of mental health issues in a recent study. (Georgijevic/iStock)
Tips for safer use from experts
To mark the Global Day of Unplugging (March 7), Verizon hosted its first-ever “digital wellness summit” in New York City to share insights with the public about the safe use of technology.
Sowmyanarayan Sampath, CEO of Verizon Consumer Group, discussed the importance of setting digital boundaries, especially for kids.
“Digital wellness should be for every age, but really we need a new blueprint as parents, because we’ve never been through this before,” Sampath said at the event in the Big Apple.
“There is a healthier relationship people can have.”
“This digital age is new to us all. There’s no time in history we can reclaim how we handle that.”
In a separate interview with Fox News Digital, Sampath shared compelling statistics on phone use, including findings from Verizon’s 2024 Consumer Connections Report.
Kids and teenagers use social media for four to five hours a day and receive between 250 and 275 notifications daily, the report revealed.
Sowmyanarayan Sampath, CEO of Verizon Consumer Group, at right, is shown at the Verizon Digital Wellness Summit on March 6, 2025, in New York City. At left, actor and talk-show host Drew Barrymore. (Angelica Stabile/Fox News Digital)
Kids were also found to touch and pick up their phones about 150 times per day.
A quarter of these events occurred during school hours.
“This is what sparked us to think there is a healthier relationship people can have,” Sampath said.
Tech’s impact on kids
Dr. Keneisha Sinclair-McBride, attending psychologist at Boston’s Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, also spoke at a panel at the Verizon event and in a follow-up interview with Fox News Digital.
The expert noted that kids spending “hours and hours” of their free time on their phones can be “problematic,” especially considering the possibility that they’ll experience threats such as cyberbullying and hate speech.
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“We know that these are associated with depressive symptoms and other mental health concerns,” she said.
“We also know that there’s so much positive for social connection, learning and fun, so we have to balance those two things.”
She pointed out that some social media apps are “designed to keep you stuck” through the loop of an algorithm.
Socializing with others can have a positive impact on kids’ moods, experts suggested. (iStock)
This problematic use can lead to poorer functioning at work or school and can negatively impact sleep and relationships, Sinclair-McBride warned.
“Are they able to live their life and do the things they want and need to do in a positive way? If there are concerns in any of those areas, that’s usually a sign of something needing to be reassessed.”
Prompts for parents, grandparents
Sinclair-McBride encouraged parents and grandparents to learn about the apps children are using and teach them to be “critical consumers” of content by training them to detect scams, misinformation or AI-generated content.
“Slowing down and being more thoughtful and mindful about what you’re doing is, I think, the first step in modeling that as a parent,” she told Fox News Digital.
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“Parents can also look at their own use and [ask], ‘Am I on my phone too much? Am I too addicted to social media?’”
The CEO also urged adults to set boundaries involving phone use, whether it’s limited to certain spaces in the home or specific times of day.
“When you do things in real life, you feel happier.” (iStock)
‘Create space to have fun’
Sampath shared simple advice for families to ensure a healthy balance between tech use and unplugged activities.
“Go for a movie. Go for a walk. Go and play a game or just hang out with friends. Or just hang out with your family in your kitchen and do fun things,” he suggested.
“I think kids are going to have to be comfortable sometimes doing nothing … reading a book, just hanging out,” he said.
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“Kids are going to have to get way more comfortable doing that – that’s part of a healthy boundary, and it’s part of a good relationship with technology.”
Sampath also encouraged Americans to take advantage of living in areas with “some of the best weather” and “the best natural sights in the world” by exploring outdoor spaces and moving more.
“The time that people spend with digital technology needs to be balanced with real-life stuff, whether it’s sports, the arts, creative activities, reading or actual hands-on, tangible things.” (iStock)
“You want to create space to have fun. You want to create space to play. You want to create space to have physical activity, to have real relationships,” he said.
“It has long-term benefits on mental health … When you do things in real life, you feel happier.”
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Sinclair-McBride echoed the advice to get outside and “touch grass.”
“The time that people spend with digital technology needs to be balanced with real-life stuff, whether it’s sports, the arts, creative activities, reading or actual hands-on, tangible things,” she said.
Experts advocated for kids to be given more time to explore tangible activities and hobbies instead of defaulting to digital. (iStock)
“I think people are in this mindset that this generation only wants to do digital, digital, digital,” she added.
“They still like other stuff, too. We have to give them options, space and freedom to have that time.”
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Eating too much salt has long been linked to high blood pressure, but new research suggests it could trick the immune system into prematurely aging the blood vessels.
A preclinical study recently published in the Journal of the American Heart Association has identified a biological chain reaction that links a salty diet to cardiovascular decay.
Scientists at the University of South Alabama observed that mice on a high-salt diet experienced rapid deterioration in their blood vessel function.
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After just four weeks of high sodium intake, the small arteries responsible for regulating blood flow lost their ability to relax, according to a press release.
The team found that the cells lining these vessels had entered a state of cellular senescence, a form of premature cellular aging in which cells stop dividing and release a mix of inflammatory signals that can damage surrounding tissue.
Excess salt has long been linked to high blood pressure, but a new study goes deeper into its effects on the cardiovascular system. (iStock)
The researchers tried to replicate this damage by exposing blood vessel cells directly to salt in a laboratory dish, but the cells showed no harmful effects.
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This suggests that salt isn’t directly causing damage to the vascular lining but that the real culprit may be the body’s own defense mechanism, the researchers noted.
Excess salt may trigger the immune system to release a molecule called interleukin-16 (IL-16), which acts as a messenger that instructs blood vessel cells to grow old before their time, according to the study.
Excess salt may trigger the immune system to release a molecule called interleukin-16, which acts as a messenger that instructs blood vessel cells to grow old before their time, according to the study. (iStock)
Once these cells age, they fail to produce nitric oxide, the essential gas that tells arteries to dilate and stay flexible.
To test whether this process could be reversed, the team turned to a class of experimental drugs known as senolytics.
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Using a cancer medication called navitoclax, which selectively clears out aged and dysfunctional cells, the researchers were able to restore nearly normal blood vessel function in the salt-fed mice, the release stated.
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By removing the decaying cells created by the high-salt diet, the drug allowed the remaining healthy tissue to maintain its elasticity and respond correctly to blood flow demands.
Excess salt may trigger the immune system into stopping the cells from dividing, the study suggests. (iStock)
The study did have some limitations. The transition from mouse models to human treatment remains a significant hurdle, the team cautioned.
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Senolytic drugs like navitoclax are still being studied for safety, and the team emphasized that previous trials have shown mixed results regarding their impact on artery plaque.
Additionally, the researchers have not yet confirmed whether the same IL-16 pathway is the primary driver of vascular aging in humans.
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Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables was found to have a surprising link to lung cancer among younger non-smokers, early research suggests.
The observational study, led by Jorge Nieva, M.D., of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at Keck Medicine, was presented this month at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in San Diego. It has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Researchers looked at dietary, smoking and demographic data for 187 patients who were diagnosed with lung cancer at age 50 or younger.
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They found that among non-smokers, there was a link between healthier-than-average diets – rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains – and the chance of lung cancer development.
Young lung cancer patients ate more servings of dark green vegetables, legumes and whole grains compared to the average U.S. adult, the researchers found.
Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables was found to have a surprising link to lung cancer among younger non-smokers, early research suggests. (iStock)
The researchers hypothesized that pesticides applied to conventionally grown produce could be a possible factor in the disease association.
“Commercially produced (non-organic) fruits, vegetables and whole grains are more likely to be associated with a higher residue of pesticides than dairy, meat and many processed foods,” according to Nieva. He also noted that agricultural workers exposed to pesticides tend to have higher rates of lung cancer.
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“There is a large subset of lung cancer patients whose disease is not caused by smoking,” Nieva told Fox News Digital.
The disease is becoming more common in non-smokers 50 and younger, especially women – despite the fact that smoking rates have been falling for decades, the researcher noted.
The researchers hypothesized that pesticides applied to conventionally grown produce could be a possible factor in the disease association. (iStock)
“These patients tend to have eaten much healthier diets before their diagnosis than the average American,” he went on. “We need to support research into understanding why Americans – and women in particular – who no longer smoke very much are still having lung cancer,” he said.
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The study did have some limitations, Nieva acknowledged, primarily that it relied on survey data and was limited by the participants’ memories of their food intake.
“Also, the survey participants were self-selected, and this could have biased the findings,” he told Fox News Digital.
“There is a large subset of lung cancer patients whose disease is not caused by smoking.”
The researchers did not test specific foods for pesticides, relying instead on average pesticide levels for certain types of food. Looking ahead, they plan to test patients’ blood and urine samples to directly measure pesticide levels, Nieva said.
Although the study shows only an association and does not prove that pesticides caused lung cancer, Nieva recommends that people wash their produce before eating and choose organic foods whenever possible.
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“This work represents a critical step toward identifying modifiable environmental factors that may contribute to lung cancer in young adults,” said Nieva. “Our hope is that these insights can guide both public health recommendations and future investigation into lung cancer prevention.”
“It is possible that the increased lung cancer risk could be due to pesticide exposure in whole farmed foods, but is by no means certain,” a doctor said. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News senior medical analyst, said the study is “interesting,” but that it “raises far more questions than it answers.”
“It is a small study (around 150) and observational, so no proof,” the doctor, who was not involved in the research, told Fox News Digital.
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“It is possible that the increased lung cancer risk could be due to pesticide exposure in whole farmed foods, but it is by no means certain,” Siegel went on. “How much exposure is needed? How much of it gets into food and in which areas? This requires much further study.”
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Kayla Nichols, communications director for Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network, a distributed global network, said the organization agrees with the study’s conclusion that more research should be done on the rise in lung cancer, particularly in individuals eating diets higher in produce and fiber.
“There is a large subset of lung cancer patients whose disease is not caused by smoking,” the researcher told Fox News Digital. (iStock)
“There is a bounty of existing research that already links pesticide exposure to increased risk of multiple types of cancers,” Nichols, who was also not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital. She called for more research on chronic, low-level exposures to pesticides, as well as more effective policies to protect the public from pesticide residues on food.
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The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, as well as industry partners including AstraZeneca and Genentech, among others.
Fox News Digital reached out to several pesticide companies and trade groups for comment.
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Colorectal cancer, once considered a disease of older age, is becoming a crisis for younger adults. New research shows one group getting hit the hardest – those without a college degree.
A recent study from the American Cancer Society analyzed data from over 101,000 adults aged 25 to 49 who died from colorectal cancer between 1994 and 2023.
While death rates remained stable for college graduates, they climbed significantly for those without a bachelor’s degree, the findings showed.
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For young adults with a high school education or less, the mortality rate rose from 4.0 to 5.2 per 100,000 people, while the rate for those with at least a bachelor’s degree stayed flat, at approximately 2.7 per 100,000.
This does not mean that a degree offers some kind of biological protection, researchers cautioned.
Colorectal cancer, once considered a disease of older age, is becoming a crisis for younger adults. (iStock)
The difference is likely driven by the conditions in which people live and work, which often correlate with education levels, the researchers noted.
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The study suggests that the higher death rates are likely driven by differences in the prevalence of risk factors, including obesity, physical inactivity, smoking and diet, which are “known to be elevated among children and young adults with lower [socioeconomic status].”
Because the study relied on death certificates, researchers couldn’t say exactly why college graduates had better outcomes.
Because the researchers didn’t have the patients’ actual medical records, they couldn’t see things like frequency of screenings or treatment options, which would impact survival outcomes. (iStock)
Certificates typically list the cause of death, age, race and education level, but they do not include a person’s full medical history.
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Because the researchers didn’t have the patients’ actual medical records, they couldn’t see things like frequency of screenings or treatment options, which would impact survival outcomes.
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Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death for men under 50 and the second leading cause for women in the same age group, according to recent statistics.
While colorectal cancer death rates remained stable for college graduates, they climbed significantly for those without a bachelor’s degree, the findings showed. (iStock)
Because the disease is highly treatable when caught early, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) lowered the recommended screening age from 50 to 45 in 2021.
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Common signs and symptoms of colorectal cancer can include a change in bowel habits, such as diarrhea, constipation or narrowing of the stool, that lasts for more than a few days, according to the American Cancer Society.
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Other signs that warrant seeing a doctor include blood in the stool or a persistent feeling of needing to go to the bathroom but being unable to go.
The research was published in JAMA Oncology.
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