Christin M. Ogle

Digital social technologies, such as social media and online multiplayer video games (MVGs), have ushered in an era of peer relationships that evolve online, in addition to in person. This report reviews existing research about the dual role of social media and MVGs in shaping youth social connectedness, recognizing both their potential benefits and their associated risks on youth mental health. By providing evidence-based insights, it aims to inform strategies that optimize these technologies' advantages while safeguarding youth mental health and well-being. This report reviews peer-reviewed literature, clinical recommendations, reports, and surveys that assess youth usage of social media and MVGs and their associated psychological and physical health outcomes. Social media provides many opportunities for peer connection, including self-expression and social support, fostering positive social development and well-being. MVGs combine entertainment with collaboration, further strengthening social bonds. However, the use of these technologies has also been linked to negative outcomes, including social isolation, depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. Publically-available, evidence-based resources can provide caregivers and professionals with guidance and clinical recommendations regarding youth social media and MVG use. Digital social technologies have become increasingly user-specific and immersive as the internet evolves and social media algorithms become more powerful. Additional research is required to understand how current youth usage of these technologies impacts physical and psychological outcomes. Future research should also investigate the differences in usage, outcomes, and the efficacy of treatments across youth sex and age.

Objective: Between 2005 and 2022, more than 315,000 grave violations were verified against children in wartime, including killing, physical maiming, exploitation, and forced displacement. While the resulting harm to children is widely recognized, the profound toll on professionals who witness and respond to these tragedies remains under examined. This article explores the psychological and occupational impacts of exposure to child casualties during wartime on healthcare providers, military personnel, journalists, and mortuary affairs workers. Method: Google Scholar, PsycINFO, PsychNET, and PubMed were searched for literature examining the impact of pediatric death and injury on healthcare professionals, service members, journalists, and mortuary affairs workers in wartime settings. Supplementary searches were conducted to identify supportive evidence from literature addressing impacts in non-conflict contexts. Results: Evidence varied across professions, but impacts examined included moral injury, secondary traumatic stress, heightened emotions, including guilt, anger, helplessness, and grief, as well as professional challenges such as self-questioning, and burnout. Potential mechanisms exacerbating distress include loss of trust in the goodness of the world, cynicism, and hopelessness, personal identification with children, and perceived lack of adequate skills or a sense of professional failure. Conclusions: Findings underscore the urgent need for tailored strategies to sustain the well-being and effectiveness of professionals confronted with child casualties in war. In response, the article highlights promising individual-level and organization-level strategies for building resilience and growth, and promising interventions for professionals requiring clinical care.

Firearm-related injuries and fatalities among youth in the United States represent a critical public health crisis. Secure firearm storage (i.e., keeping guns unloaded, locked, and stored separately from ammunition) is a proven strategy to reduce these risks. However, many households do not consistently adopt these practices. This review examines four key family-level factors that influence firearm storage decisions: (a) early firearm socialization, (b) family decision-making dynamics, (c) other household safety practices, and (d) parent understanding of child development and motivations regarding storage. Findings indicate that interventions may benefit from empowering parents to reflect on their early firearm socialization experiences, improving their understanding of children’s development, integrating firearm safety into broader household safety frameworks, and promoting collaborative decision-making in multi-adult households. Future research should further investigate how these factors intersect to shape firearm storage practices, including the long-term effects of early firearm exposure through longitudinal studies, and variations across diverse family structures and contexts, including multigenerational households.

This study examined predictors of child and parent offender removal from the home following substantiated incidents of child neglect in U.S. Army families. Case records (n = 390) were coded to identify neglect types and incident characteristics associated with removal in prior studies. Results indicate that the removal of a child and the removal of a parent from the home following an incident of neglect are associated with distinct neglect types and incident characteristics. In bivariate analyses, failure to provide physical needs (FTP), family mental health problems, and co-occurring abuse were each associated with higher odds of child removal. In multivariate analyses, offender substance use, co-occurring abuse, and early parenting, but not FTP, were associated with child removal. Interaction models indicated that high-severity FTP incidents in families with mental health problems were more likely to result in child removal compared with other neglect incidents. In contrast, incidents involving emotional neglect and service member offenders were associated with higher odds of parent removal. Findings advance understanding of the characteristics of neglect incidents associated with family separations, which can improve the judiciousness of legal decisions regarding removal actions and inform prevention efforts that effectively protect children from harm while minimizing disruptions to family integrity.

Throughout the last two decades, research on poly-victimization (PV) has evolved from examinations of a core set of past-year victimization types in youth samples to investigations of a broad range of victimization types experienced during variable time intervals in diverse samples of varying ages. As the concept of PV expands, greater clarity regarding the definition and measurement of PV is needed to advance understanding of its risk and protective factors as well as its associated outcomes. This scoping review aimed to (a) identify approaches used to operationally define and measure PV across studies and (b) synthesize empirical findings concerning risk factors and outcomes associated with PV. A systematic search of peer-reviewed research published before 2022 across 12 databases yielded 98 studies that met inclusion criteria. Study characteristics including the research design, sample type, victimization timeframe, operational definition(s) of PV, measurement of PV, analytic methods, and key findings were synthesized across studies. Findings indicated that the majority of reviewed studies were cross-sectional investigations that utilized categorical measures of lifetime PV in samples of youth. Results also demonstrated that PV is robustly associated with a broad range of predictors, including mental health symptoms and diagnoses as well as family- and community-level factors. PV is also associated with numerous adverse outcomes including depression, anxiety, suicidality, substance use, and delinquency across diverse study types and populations. Future research that examines the conditional effects of PV is needed to identify subgroups of individuals at higher risk of adverse outcomes following PV and modifiable targets for interventions.