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Preschoolers may spend more time on smartphones or tablets than their parents realize, and some use apps intended for teens and adults, researchers report. A new study tracked mobile device use among 350 children aged 3 to 5 over nine months and compared their findings with parents’ estimates of their use. Preschoolers with their own smartphones or tablets averaged two hours of screen time a day. Nearly three-quarters of their parents underestimated it. More than half of kids used devices for an hour or more, including 15% who spent at least four hours a day on mobile devices. Thirty-four percent of kids in the new study had their own digital device, according to the findings published recently in the journal Pediatrics. Kids in the study used between one and 85 apps. The most commonly used apps included YouTube, YouTube Kids, browsers, and streaming services such as Netflix. However, some apps related to gambling, violent games and general audience games without restrictions on the data they collect or share with third-party advertisers. “We found that most parents miscalculated their children’s time on mobile devices,” said lead author Dr. Jenny Radesky, a behavioral pediatrician at Michigan Medicine’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor. “They may also not be aware of what content is being shared or what apps are being marketed to children while they’re using… read on >

Many people under stay-at-home orders have turned to online yoga as a way to manage the stress. And a new research review suggests they’re onto something. The review, of 19 clinical trials, focused on the benefits of yoga for people with clinical mental health conditions ranging from anxiety disorders to alcohol dependence to schizophrenia. Overall, it found yoga classes helped ease those patients’ depression symptoms. And while the trials focused on in-person classes for people with formal diagnoses, there are broader implications, the researchers said. “Definitely, if you’ve thought about trying yoga, now is a great time to take the opportunity,” said Jacinta Brinsley, lead author on the review and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Australia School of Health Sciences in Adelaide. With yoga teachers worldwide now offering live-stream classes, she noted, people have a chance to find something that is right for them in their own homes. “Sometimes it takes a few tries to find the right type [of yoga],” Brinsley said. “Enjoyment is a really great indicator that it’s a good fit.” In general, physical activity is a recommended part of managing mental health disorders, according to Brinsley. Yoga — which combines physical movement with breathing exercises, meditation and other “mindfulness” practices — has been the subject of many studies. Some have found it can ease depression. That said, there… read on >

More than one-quarter of popular English-language COVID-19 information videos posted to YouTube are misleading, researchers warn. There are posts, for example, falsely claiming that drug companies already have a cure for COVID-19, but won’t sell it, and that different countries have stronger strains of coronavirus, a new study finds. YouTube viewers “should be skeptical, use common sense and consult reputable sources — public health agencies or physicians — to fact-check their information,” said study lead author Heidi Oi-Yee Li, a medical student at the University of Ottawa in Canada. With billions of viewers, YouTube has enormous potential to bolster or hamper public health efforts, Li and her colleagues said in background notes. But what they turned up in their recent YouTube search is “alarming,” Li said. “In an ideal world, social media platforms should take more responsibility for content uploaded,” she said. But “this is an unrealistic expectation, given the billions of users uploading information every second across the globe.” Li’s team did a simple keyword search for “coronavirus” and “COVID-19” on March 21, 2020. After compiling the top 75 videos for each of the search words, the team excluded all non-English clips, those exceeding an hour, duplicates, and anything not actually about COVID-19. The remaining 69 videos had already been viewed nearly 258 million times, they said. Just under one-third (29%) were clips from… read on >

In a finding that illustrates how distracted driving laws are saving lives, researchers report that car crash deaths among teens plunged by one-third during a period when the number of U.S. states with such laws on the books tripled. “We found that states which had primary enforced distracted driving laws had lower fatal crashes involving 16- to 19-year-old drivers and passengers,” said study author Dr. Michael Flaherty. He’s an attending physician in pediatric critical care medicine with both Massachusetts General Hospital and the Shriners Hospitals for Children in Boston. Flaherty explained that “primary” distracted driving laws are the kind that authorize police to pull over a driver specifically because of a distracted driving infraction. In all, 40 states had that kind of law in place to ban texting while driving by 2017. By 2017, another six states had so-called “secondary” texting bans on the books, meaning distracted driving could only be cited if a driver was already pulled over for another reason. Beyond texting alone, 34 states had banned all cellphone use among novice drivers by 2017, Flaherty added, while 12 states had banned all cellphone use among drivers of all ages. To assess the impact of those laws, Flaherty’s team reviewed statistics on 38,000 fatal crashes, drawn from U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. They indicated that between 2007 and 2017, the overall… read on >

The coronavirus pandemic has led many older adults to postpone medical care, a new survey finds. The University of Chicago survey found that 55% of U.S. adults aged 70 and older experienced a disruption in their medical care during the first month of social distancing. Thirty-nine percent put off non-essential care and 32% delayed primary or preventive care since social distancing began. And 15% said they delayed or canceled essential medical treatment, the survey found. “The first month of social distancing in America certainly saved lives, and yet it also created a situation where many older adults are not getting the care they need to manage serious health conditions,” said Dr. Bruce Chernof. He is president and CEO of the SCAN Foundation, an independent charity focused on care of older adults, that co-sponsored the survey. “As our nation grapples with when and how to reopen, the health care system will reckon with unaddressed medical needs and learn how to maximize new protocols to care for older adults with complex needs in flexible, person-centered ways,” Chernof added in a foundation news release. The researchers found that older adults are worried about delays in getting support to manage their medical conditions. Many doctors, however, are using telehealth to keep tabs on their patients. Nearly 25% said that their doctors had reached out to them since the start… read on >

Sparse traffic on U.S. roads during the coronavirus pandemic has spawned a spike in speeding and other types of reckless driving, the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) says. Here are some examples. Police in Colorado, Indiana, Nebraska and Utah have clocked drivers going more than 100 miles per hour on highways. In Los Angeles, cars are going as much as 30% faster on some streets, prompting changes to traffic lights and pedestrian walk signals. In New York City, automated speed cameras issued 24,765 speeding tickets on March 27 — nearly double the number issued daily a month earlier — despite far fewer cars being on the road. Some states have lower crash rates but more serious crashes. Car crash death rates are on the rise in Massachusetts, and pedestrian deaths are on the rise in Nevada and Rhode Island. Car crashes and related deaths in Minnesota are more than double what they were at the same time period in previous years, and half of the deaths were due to speeding or careless/negligent driving. “While COVID-19 is clearly our national priority, our traffic safety laws cannot be ignored,” GHSA executive director Jonathan Adkins said in a news release from the association. “Law enforcement officials have the same mission as health care providers — to save lives.” If you must drive, he said, “buckle up, follow the… read on >

Low-dose aspirin may reduce the risk of several types of digestive tract cancers, according to a team of researchers in Europe. For the new study, the researchers analyzed 113 studies investigating colon/rectal (“bowel”), head and neck, esophageal, stomach, liver, gallbladder, bile duct and pancreatic cancers in the general population. The studies were published up to 2019. The investigators concluded there was a link between regular use of aspirin — taking at least one or two aspirin pills a week — and a significant reduction in the risk of all these cancers, with the exception of head and neck cancer. The study was published April 16 in the journal Annals of Oncology. For colon/rectal cancer, extensive evidence stemmed from 45 studies. “There are about 175,000 deaths from bowel cancer predicted for 2020 in the European Union, of which about 100,000 will be in people aged between 50 and 74,” said study senior author Dr. Carlo La Vecchia. He’s a professor of epidemiology in the school of medicine at the University of Milan, Italy. “If we assume that regular use of aspirin increases from 25% to 50% in this age group, this would mean that between 5,000 to 7,000 deaths from bowel cancer, and between 12,000 and 18,000 new cases could be avoided if further studies show that aspirin does indeed cause the reduction in cancer risk,”… read on >

Today’s youngsters are as socially skilled as previous generations, despite concerns about their heavy use of technology, like smartphones and social media, new research shows. The researchers compared teacher and parent evaluations of more than 19,000 U.S. children who started kindergarten in 1998 — six years before Facebook appeared — with more than 13,000 who began school in 2010. That’s when the first iPad came on the market. “In virtually every comparison we made, either social skills stayed the same or actually went up modestly for the children born later,” said study lead author Douglas Downey, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University. “There’s very little evidence that screen exposure was problematic for the growth of social skills,” he added in a school news release. Both groups of youngsters had similar ratings on interpersonal skills — such as the ability to form and maintain friendships and get along with people who are different — and on self-control, such as the ability to control their temper. The only exception to the overall findings was that social skills were slightly lower for children who accessed online gaming and social networking sites many times a day. “But even that was a pretty small effect,” Downey said. “Overall, we found very little evidence that the time spent on screens was hurting social skills for most children,” he added.… read on >

An analysis of Twitter data suggests that Americans are heeding social distancing and other safety recommendations during the coronavirus pandemic, researchers say. Officials have told people to limit travel, stay home and distance themselves to slow the spread of the virus. “The question though is how effective are these policies? Once you tell people to stay home, it doesn’t mean everyone listens,” said research leader Mark Dredze, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “It’s important for us to understand on an ongoing basis if people are actually listening to these directives,” he said in a Hopkins news release. But how do experts know people are staying put? For this study, they used location data from Twitter. It showed that the movement of Americans between March 16 and 29 was 52% of what it was between Jan. 1, 2019 and March 16, 2020. People’s movements in some states didn’t fall as much as in other states, particularly states with firm social distancing measures, according to the researchers. The analysis of nearly 400 tweets by 3.7 million users found the greatest reductions in movement in Washington, D.C. (63%); Alaska (62.5%); Washington state (58.8%); New Jersey (58.3%), and Maryland (57.6%). The smallest reductions in movement were in Wyoming (21.5%); Oklahoma (30.9%); Mississippi (35.4%): Iowa (36%), and Idaho (36.4%). Similar research has been conducted by others,… read on >

If you feel like the news about coronavirus is growing worse by the hour, then it might be time to take stock: How much do you really need to know? As the pandemic unfolds, and people routinely wake up to uncertainty, it is necessary to stay informed, psychologists say. At the same time, they caution, remember that media overload is real. And it may raise anxiety to a level that does more harm than good. “The data show that the harm does not come from staying informed in a reasonable way — like reading your morning paper every day,” said Dana Rose Garfin, an assistant adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine’s School of Nursing. And in the midst of a pandemic, she pointed out, a little worry is normal and necessary. “Some amount of concern is a good thing, so that we’re not complacent,” Garfin said. “We want to be aware of — and following — public health guidelines.” But there is such a thing as too much. “There’s a big difference between staying informed and having the news on all day long, repeating the same things,” said Garfin, co-author of a commentary on coronavirus media exposure that was recently published in the journal Health Psychology. Beyond the amount of news, the content matters, too: News outlets have taken to tracking daily death… read on >