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Archives > Volume 7 Issue 73 - December 8, 2009 Teen Internet addicts more likely to self harm...Teenagers who are addicted to the Internet are more likely to engage in self-harm behavior, according to an Australian-Chinese study. MSNBC News story here 
Researchers surveyed 1,618 adolescents aged 13 to 18 from China's Guangdong Province about behavior such as hitting themselves, pulling their own hair, or pinching or burning themselves, and gave them a test to gauge Internet addiction.
Internet addiction has been classified as a mental health problem since the mid-1990s with symptoms similar to other addictions. The test found that about 10 percent of the students surveyed were moderately addicted to the Internet, while less than one percent were severely addicted. The students ranked as moderately addicted to the Internet were 2.4 times more likely to have self-injured one to five times in the past 6 months than students without an addiction, said Dr. Lawrence Lam from the University of Notre Dame Australia. The moderately-to-severely addicted students were almost five times more likely than non-addicted students to have self-injured six or more times in the past 6 months, Lam and his colleagues from Guangzhou's Sun Yat-Sen University reported. They said this suggested that Internet addiction is an independent risk factor for self-injurious behavior. Experts interpret Internet addiction, among other things, as feelings of depression, nervousness, moodiness when not online, which only go away when the addict gets back online. Fantasizing or being preoccupied about being online are other signs of Internet addiction. See eGuide/depression and eGuide/online safety for more information about depression and internet safety. Pope calls Irish church leaders to Vatican to discuss abuse report... Pope Benedict XVI has asked the president of the Irish bishops' conference and the archbishop of Dublin to come to the Vatican to discuss "the painful situation of the church in Ireland" following a report detailing the church's failures in addressing clerical sexual abuse. Catholic News Service story here Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the pope's meeting with Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh, Northern Ireland, president of the Irish bishops' conference, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin would take place December 11. 
The spokesman said the meeting would include the nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, and the heads of several Vatican offices dealing with sex abuse and related issues.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led by U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, has a special section that deals with priests accused of sexual abuse. The promoter of justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, handles the cases brought against allegedly abusive priests. Officials of the congregations for Bishops and for Clergy also were expected to participate Father Lombardi said the pope wanted to discuss and have Vatican officials evaluate the findings of the so-called Murphy Report, which was released November 26. See vol7_iss71 for more information. The report by the independent Commission of Investigation, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, looked specifically at the handling of some 325 abuse claims in the Archdiocese of Dublin during the period from January 1975 to May 2004. As a consequence of the Murphy report, an Irish bishop flew to Rome yesterday to hand in his resignation after days of angry and intense pressure over his handling of cases of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. The Independent news story here Donal Murray, Bishop of Limerick, gave every sign of acting with great reluctance, after spending some days apparently playing for time in the hope of keeping his post. But the wave of shock and horror which followed publication of a damning report, which revealed a systematic high-level church cover-up of the abuse of children by priests, is in effect sweeping him from office. Meanwhile, Catholic sex-abuse victims' groups are decrying a Vatican decision to clear a former high-ranking Long Island priest, and longtime friend of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, of sex-abuse allegations. ABC News story here The Diocese of Rockville Centre announced on Friday that the Catholic Church had found Monsignor Alan Placa not guilty of molesting teenage boys, an allegation that first surfaced in a local grand jury investigation in 2002. The grand jury report concluded that Placa could not be prosecuted criminally because the statute of limitations had expired. For more information on clergy abuse, see eGuide/clergy abuse. In other news... 
Facebook has joined forces with five Internet groups to help protect kids, the social-networking site said. CNN News story here "We believe that the only way to keep kids safe online is for everyone who wants to protect them to work together," Elliot Schrage, a Facebook vice president, said in a statement Sunday. "The formation of a board to advise specifically on safety issues is a positive, innovative and collaborative step toward creating a more robust safety environment, and we are thrilled that such a well-respected, trusted group of organizations has joined us in this endeavor." Making up the advisory board are Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, WiredSafety, Childnet International and the Family Online Safety Institute. Facebook's announcement comes less than a week after it added new privacy features, including the ability for users to select who can see each post made to the Web site. The highlight is deciding which Facebook friends see updates, photos or other posts at the time they're posted - "something many of you have asked for," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said. A letter on the Web site said that, in the next couple of weeks, Facebook's roughly 350 million users will be asked to review and update their privacy settings. A message on the site will explain the changes and take users to the page where they can update the settings, Zuckerberg said. See also eGuide/MySpace and Facebook for more safety information.
Kids are more and more Web-savvy these days. They play games, work on their vocabulary and do math exercises - all online. But some of those kid-friendly Web sites they go to may be opening doors to other content parents don't want them to see. ABC News story here Parents might think Nickelodeon's Web site Nick.com is worry-free. Robin Stoehr never thought twice about her kids, 8 and 11, using it until she saw games like Naughty Baby-Sitter and Spank the Monkey. "I wouldn't have imagined that they could get in there so quickly and easily and see things that they shouldn't be seeing," Stoehr said. By clicking "more" on Nick.com's Games site, her kids could tap into racy and even violent adult-themed games. And while those Games are hosted on a different Web site, the Nickelodeon logo was still on top. How is this happening? Nick.com links to AddictingGames.com, another site the company owns. There is notification on Nick.com to signal when a user is leaving for AddictingGames.com, Nickelodeon told ABC News in a statement. (CLICK HERE to read the full statement) Nickelodeon says it is constantly reviewing its policies and hired Internet safety lawyer Parry Aftab, executive director of Wiredsafety.org. Aftab has been closely watching a proliferation of sites she says are blurring the lines between child and adult content.
On the morning of the 2007 shooting massacre that rocked the country, Virginia Tech officials had begun to lock down administrative buildings and some staffers even warned their families nearly 90 minutes before the rest of campus was notified that a gunman was on the loose, according to a new report released by Virginia's governor Friday. CNN News story here Officials charged with sending the campus alert on the first shootings in West Ambler Johnston dormitory did not do so until 9:26 a.m. on April 16, 2007, according to the report by Arlington-based System Planning Corporation's TriData division, an independent public safety consulting firm. That was more than two hours after police discovered the first two victims in the dormitory at 7:24 a.m. And at least two members of the "Policy Group" - the group charged with sending the alert - told their family members of the shooting prior to notifying the campus, according to the report. But the university refuted that claim, saying in a statement that staffers not part of the group told family members of the shooting. The university did not identify those staffers, nor did the report identify the group members who notified family members. The group is comprised of nine vice presidents and support staff, and chaired by the university president. See vol5_iss27, vol5_iss28, and vol5_iss29 for more on this story.
Within 2 years of having sex for the first time, half of teenage girls may be infected with at least one of three common sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), according to results of a new study. Often, those girls are infected by the age of 15. Fox News story here Researchers followed 386 urban adolescent girls aged 14 to 17 for up to 8 years. Within 2 years of becoming sexually active, half of the girls were infected with at least one of three common sexually transmitted organisms: Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, or Trichomonas vaginalis - the organisms that cause chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis, respectively. The researchers found that a quarter of the women had acquired their first STD by age 15, most often Chlamydia. "Repeated infections were very common," study investigator Dr. Wanzhu Tu, of Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis told Reuters Health by email. "Within 4 to 6 months (depending on the organism) after treatment of the previous infection, a quarter of the women were re-infected with the same organism." Tu said young women are at risk of STDs as soon as they become sexually active, but recommendations are lacking about when it is appropriate to begin screening. "These young women are vulnerable to STDs, but because of their younger age, they may not be perceived by health care providers as having STD risk, and thus are not screened in a timely manner."
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