EXPLORATIONS
FOMO, Digital Dementia, and Our
Dangerous Experiment
Silence is God0 s rst language;
everything else is a poor translation.
Thomas Keating1
We have all seen them: the chic couple
in a restaurant passionately thumbing
their smartphones while ignoring one
another, each cocooned in his or her
private world. Then there is the etiquette
buster at the movies in the seat in front
of us, who ignores the prohibition of
texting while his smartphone0 s retina-
scorching screen blinds us. And there is
the annoying person in line at Starbucks
who cannot stop messaging long enough
to keep the line moving. All these
individuals have something in common:
They may be suffering from FOMO.
FOMO or FoMO is an acronym for
fear of missing out. It appeared in the
Urban Dictionary as word of the day on
April 14, 2011.2 FOMO is considered a
form of social anxietya compulsive
concern that one might miss an
opportunity for social interaction, a novel
experience, or some other satisfying event,
often aroused by posts seen on social
media sites.3,4 FOMO reects a worry that
friends may be having rewarding experi-
ences from which one is absent.
FOMO FACTS
Research psychologist, Andrew Przy-
bylski of the University of Essex, and
colleagues3 at University of California-
Los Angeles and University of Rochester
have recently published the rst empiri-
cally based investigation of FOMO.
Their ndings:
 FOMO is a driving force behind social
media use.
 FOMO levels are highest in young
people and young men in particular.
 Low levels of need satisfaction and life
satisfaction are linked to high FOMO.
Explorations
| Larry Dossey, MD |
 FOMO is high in those who engage in
distracted driving.
 FOMO is high in students who use
social media during classes.
Evidence suggests that a vicious cycle
operates in individuals with high levels
of FOMO: they end up feeling increas-
ingly lonely because they substitute
social media contact for real face time
with others, which increases their sense
of isolation, which adds to FOMO, and
so on. This suggests that social network
is an oxymoron, because for many it is
not social at all. As former FOMO
victim, Glennon Melton,5 who blogs
for Momastery.com, puts it, I think
too much life spent on social media
can make us perpetually somewhere
else and alone. Maureen Dowd, the
ery New York Times columnist, agrees.
She believes personal electronic devices
sabotage intimacy, saying, The
extension of information obsession to
the eld of intimacywhich is the slow
revelation of one person to another
ruins the mystery, poetry and suspense.
Instead of caressing, there0 s posting;
instead of kissing, there0 s forwarding,
sharing and sending.6
Social media expert and MIT pro-
fessor Sherry Turkle explains in her
book Alone Together how the isolation
works. Some who say I live my life on
my Blackberry are forthright about
avoiding the real-time commitment
of a phone call. The new technologies
allow us to dial down human contact,
to titrate its nature and content
Texting offers just the right amount
of access, just the right amount of
control. Speaking of a 13-year-old
who hates the phone and never listens
to voice-mail, Turkle observes, She is
a modern Goldilocks: for her, texting
puts people not too close, not too far,
but at just the right distance. The
EXPLORE March/April 2014, Vol. 10, No. 2
world is now full of modern Gold-
ilockses, people who take comfort in
being in touch with a lot of people
whom they also keep at bay. Turkle7
sums up the dilemma many face in a
wired world: When is downtime,
when is stillness? The text-driven
world of rapid response does not make
self-reection impossible, but does lit-
tle to cultivate it.
Psychologist John Grohol, an expert
in online mental health and founder of
Psych Central, further elaborates the
FOMO dynamic. Teens and adults text
while driving, because the possibility of
a social connection is more important
than their own lives (and the lives of
others). They interrupt one call to take
another, even when they don0 t know
who0 s on the other line They check
their Twitter stream while on a date,
because something more interesting or
entertaining just might be happening.
It0 s not interruption, it0 s connection.
But wait a minute it0 s not really
connection either. It0 s the potential for
simply a different connection. It may be
better, it may be worsewe don0 t know
until we check. We are so connected
with one another through our Twitter
streams and Foursquare check-ins,
through our Facebook and LinkedIn
updates, that we can0 t just be alone
anymore. The fear of missing out
(FOMO)on something more fun, on
a social date that might just happen on
the spur of the momentis so intense,
even when we0 ve decided to disconnect,
we still connect just once more, just to
make sure.8
Social media that provide the con-
stant opportunity to be liked, to have
friends and followers, and which pro-
vide the continual possibility for a com-
parison of one0 s status, such as
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, are
especially likely to promote FOMO.911
69
ARE YOU ADDICTED TO THE WEB?
Here is an exercise in self-diagnosisthe
questions used by a Chinese team
researching the effect of heavy Internet
use on kids0 brains.12
1) Do you feel absorbed in the Internet
(you remember previous online activ-
ity or long for the next session)?
2) Do you feel satised with Internet
use if you increase your amount of
time online?
3) Have you failed to control, reduce or
give up Internet use repeatedly?
4) Do you feel nervous, temperamental,
depressed or sensitive when trying to
reduce or give up Internet use?
5) Do you stay online longer than ori-
ginally intended?
6) Have you taken the risk of losing a
signicant relationship, job, educa-
tional or career opportunity because
of the Internet?
7) Have you lied to your family mem-
bers, therapist or others to hide the
truth of your involvement with the
Internet?
8) Do you use the Internet as a way of
escaping from problems or relieving
an anxious mood, e.g. feelings of
helplessness, guilt, anxiety or
depression?
The researchers say, You are an Inter-
net addict if you answered yes to
questions one to ve and to at least
one of the remaining questions.
FIGHTING FOMO
I0 ve found that remarking on every
remarkable thing just makes every-
thing less remarkable I have Be
Still tattooed on my wrist because I
know that feelings, creativity,
inspiration, wisdom, peace and the
rest of the good stuff knock during
empty moments.
Glennon Melton, blogger at
Momastery.com5
Martha Beck, the American sociolo-
gist and bestselling author, holds a
bachelor0 s degree in East Asian Studies
and a PhD degree in sociology from
Harvard University. One of her concerns
is the pernicious inuence of social
media in kids0 lives. Beck says, The
social media world that named FOMO
has also made it an epidemic. It0 s hard
70 EXPLORE March/April 2014, Vol. 10, No. 2
not to develop this 21st century form of
anxiety when one glance at your smart-
phone reveals a thousand awesome
things your friendsand enemiesare
doing. As a former FOMO sufferer and
a parent, Beck is concerned with prac-
tical methods by which kids can resist
the fear of missing out.13 Her starting
point is to expose the inherent silliness
of the situation:
OMG, do you have any idea what
you0 re missing right now? Have you
checked Facebook in the last two
minutes? If so, you know that
everyone (and by that I mean every-
one but you) is out there totally
rocking life. Your BFF (that is, your
former BFF) and her new BFF are
trekking through Ladakh. Your col-
lege roommate has built an Internet
empire. Your cousin0 s at a wacky
costume party, LOLno, ROFL!
Right now, everybody out there
(except you) is whirling ravishingly
through the good life! Together! In
ash mobs! What R U doing?
How to resist? Beck0 s Strategy 1:
Realize that FOMO is based on lies. People
who post their activities on social media
sites skim their life and select the incan-
descent moments. This is profoundly
misleading. As Beck says, A powerful
way to ght FOMO is to recognize that
the fabulous life you think you0 re miss-
ing doesn0 t in fact exist. The whole truth
is that most of us spend enormous
portions of our time looking for our
car keys while suspecting there0 s some-
thing biochemically wrong with us. The
whole truth is that today, plenty of us
will spend hours trying unsuccessfully to
muster the energy to bathehours that
will be memorialized in neither pictures
nor words. The whole truth is that if you
could trade places with the people who
give you the most raging cases of
FOMO, you0 d probably nd out they0 re
really, really tired.
Beck0 s Strategy 2: Fight FOMO with
FOMO. Immunize yourself from
FOMO by changing the denition. Let
FOMO mean, say, Feel Okay More
Often or Find One Magnicent
Object by contemplating something at
hand that is wonderful but simple: the
sun, a bowl of soup, your own hand.
Beck0 s Strategy 3: Stop. Be present.
Be still. Be silent. Acknowledge the
wonder that is implicit in this very
moment, and that the important thing
is what is happening here, now, not in
some hyped, imagined, facebooked,
tweeted cyber-fantasy.
DEATH BY INTERNET IN SOUTH
KOREA
For the past ve years, Internet addic-
tion has been considered a public health
crisis in South Korea, the world0 s most
wired nation. The problem became a
national issue after users started drop-
ping dead from exhaustion after playing
online games for days on end.
Almost 100% of South Korean house-
holds have access to broadband infra-
structure. The government estimates that
up to 30% of those under 18 years of age
are at risk. To combat the problem, over
200 counseling centers and hospitals
now offer treatment by more than
1000 trained Internet addiction counse-
lors, at no cost to the affected
individual.14
Severely affected kids can be sent to
Internet detox boot camp. An example
is the Jump Up Internet Rescue School
near Seoul, the rst of its kind in Korea
and perhaps the world. Part boot camp,
part rehab center, the school resembles
programs around the world for troubled
youth. Drill instructors drive young
men through military-style obstacle
courses, counselors lead group sessions,
and there are even therapeutic work-
shops on pottery and drumming, said
The New York Times in an in-depth
report.15
Concerns continue to increase in
South Korea. Researchers are now con-
cerned with digital dementia, a term
coined in that country to describe a
deterioration in cognitive abilities fre-
quently seen in people who have suf-
fered head trauma or brain diseases.
South Korean physicians studying this
phenomenon say that heavy Internet use
may overdevelop the left side of the
brain and leave the right side under-
developed. Attention and memory span
are affected, along with impulse control.
Many heavy Internet users, which
includes 18% of those between 10 and
19 years of age who use their smart-
phones for more than seven hours a day,
cannot perform simple memory tasks
such as recalling their own phone
numbers.16
Explorations
 While digital dementia may be too
strong a term for some forms of cogni-
tive dysfunction associated with heavy
Internet use, the aberrations are real
nonetheless. Blogger Glennon Melton,
mentioned above, spent 40 days without
logging on to anything after realizing she
had become seriously Internet-addicted.
Only then did she recognize how her
obsessive Internet habit had changed her
over the years. When I was detoxing
from social media, she wrote, I realized
that I was thinking in status updates. It
seemed I had trained my brain to trans-
late everything I experienced throughout
the day into 140 characters or less.
Everything complex became simple,
everything beautiful became ordinary,
everything three-dimensional quickly
became just two. A week passed before
I stopped automatically translating every
indescribable moment, sunset or con-
versation with my kids into two sen-
tences. I had to learn to stop shoving life
into tweets and just let things be wild
and big again.5
BRAIN DAMAGE DOCUMENTED
An alarm went off in China in 2008.
That year an extensive survey reported in
China Daily found that 9.7% of Chinese
Internet users between 13 and 30 years
of age suffer Internet addiction.17 An
Internet addict was dened as someone
whose life, career, and interpersonal
relations are harmed by Internet use.
The Chinese emphasized three criteria:
First, a person feels happier or more
self-fullled online than in the real
world. Second, he feels upset, depressed,
or panicked when being cut off from the
Internet for any reason. Third, he lies to
the family members about how long he
spends online. Among the addicted,
68% were males.18
Especially worrisome is a rigorous,
controlled study utilizing state-of-the-
art brain scanning technology to study
the brains of 18 Internet-addicted uni-
versity students in China who spent 8
13 h a day playing games online. They
were compared with 18 Chinese univer-
sity students who spent less than two
hours a day on the Internet.19 Scientists
found signs of atrophy of gray matter in
the brains of all the heavy Internet users.
The longer their Internet addiction
continued, the more serious the
Explorations
damage. The researchers also found
changes in the white matter lying
below the gray-matter cortex.
Western researchers have praised the
quality of this study, but are disturbed
by its ominous ndings. Psychologist
Aric Sigman, a fellow of London0 s Royal
Society of Medicine, called the study a
wake-up call. He said, It strikes me as a
terrible shame that our society requires
photos of brains shrinking in order to
take seriously the common-sense
assumption that long hours in front of
screens is not good for our children0 s
health.20
Some laypersons responded to the
study by coming to the defense of the
Internet. One American teacher said,
It0 s not internet per se, it0 s spending
the hours playing games online that
deadens parts of the brain. Reading
interesting/provocative articles or watch-
ing a thought-provoking video segment
can only stimulate the brain0 s faculties
This is just throwing the internet under
the bus.21 The teacher offered no
empirical evidence to back up his
opinion. Some researchers heartily
disagree, saying that its overall screen
time and the attendant social isolation,
not Internet content, which matter
most.22
AWAKE AND ONLINE
What is the relevance of shrinking brains
in China to the situation in the U.S.?
If your kids are awake, they0 re prob-
ably online, said a report on media use
by kids in The New York Times in January
2010.23 The average young American
now spends practically every waking
minuteexcept for the time in school
using a smart phone, computer,
television or other electronic device.
The basis for these observations is a
2009 national survey by the Kaiser
Family Foundation, Generation M2:
Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-
Olds.24 The study found that kids
between 8 and 18 years of age spend
more than seven-and-a-half hours a day
with such devices. And that does not
count the hour and a half they spend
texting, the surveyors said, or the half-
hour they talk on their cell phones.
Furthermore, as a result of media multi-
tasking, such as surng the Internet
while listening to music, they cram
EXPLORE March/April 2014, Vol. 10, No. 2
nearly 11 h of media content into those
seven-and-half hours.
The authors of the Kaiser study say
they were shocked. Following a similar
survey in 2005, they concluded that the
use of electronic devices could not
possibly grow further. Their 2009 study
found several worrisome trends, such as
the correlation of heavy media use with
behavioral problems and lower grades.
What are parents to do? Some experts
suggest they simply get over it. Pediatri-
cian Michael Rich,25 director of the
Center on Media and Child Health of
Children0 s Hospital Boston, says that
media use among kids is so pervasive
that it is time to stop arguing over
whether it is good or bad and accept it
as part of children0 s environment, like
the air they breathe, the water they drink
and the food they eat. This conclusion
horries experts such as the Royal
Society0 s Aric Sigman, quoted above.
Who can stand idly by when we now
know that heavy Internet use in
adolescence is correlated with shrinking
brains?
FRIENDS DON0 T LET FRIENDS TEXT
AND DRIVE
It is not just brains that are at risk from
FOMO. Entire bodies are.
Texting while driving is now the lead-
ing cause of death for teen drivers. Dr.
Andrew Adesman, associate professor of
clinical pediatrics at the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine, and a team of
investigators estimate that, nationwide,
more than 3000 teens die annually and
300,000 sustain injuries from texting
while driving. This exceeds the estimated
2700 young people who die each year as
a result of driving under the inuence of
alcohol, and the 282,000 who are treated
in emergency rooms for injuries suffered
in alcohol-related motor-vehicle crashes,
according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. In the Ades-
man study, 49% of teen boys admitted
to texting while driving, compared to
45% of girls. We have very strong
taboos against drinking and driving,
Adesman said. Kids don0 t drink and
drive every day. But some kids are out
there texting and driving seven days a
weekand they admit it.26
Cell phone use while driving is a
public menace and is epidemic.
71
According to Carinsurance.org, 56% of
teens talk on the phone while driving.
Talking on a cell phone slows young
drivers0 reaction time to that of a 70-year
old and doubles the likelihood of an
accident. Texting while driving is much
worse. It makes a crash 23 times more
likely and caused 1.3 million crashes in
2011 alone.27
The connection with FOMO is clear.
As we have seen, psychologist Andrew
Przybylski and his colleagues have
demonstrated that FOMO is high in
those who engage in distracted driving.
What about role models? The pro-
blem is that it isn0 t just teens who are
texting; a large proportion of moms,
dads, and grandparents do the same. In
a recent California survey of 715 adults
between the ages of 30 and 64 years,
nearly two-thirds admitted to using a
cell phone while driving with children in
the car, and one-third acknowledged
texting while driving. And in a nation-
wide survey of 1700 teens conducted by
an insurance company, 91% report that
their parents talk on cell phones while
driving, 88% say mom and dad speed,
and 59% of teens have seen their parents
text while driving.28
Add it all up and what do you get?
According to the National Highway
Trafc Safety Administration, at any
given daytime moment, more than
100,000 drivers are texting, while more
than 600,000 drivers are using handheld
phones while operating a car.29
Is take the train a good way to escape
the plague of auto drivers who are
talking or texting? It did not work in
Spain on July 24, 2013, when 79 people
were killed and scores injured when the
driver derailed his train on a tight curve,
traveling 119 miles an hour, while talk-
ing on his cell phone. Or in 2008, when
a Metrolink commuter train ran head-on
into a freight train in the Chatsworth
district of Los Angeles, killing 25 people,
while the engineer was distracted while
texting a message to a teenage train buff.
DISTRACTED WALKING
Bonnie Miller, an Indiana mother,
nearly drowned in March 2012 when
she fell from a pier into Lake Michigan
while texting, but was rescued by her
husband. In August 2012, a Philadelphia
man fell from a pedestrian platform
72 EXPLORE March/April 2014, Vol. 10, No. 2
onto train tracks after being distracted
by a text, but a Good Samaritan helped
him get out of harm0 s way. In February
2011, Ryan Robbins, 19, after a night
out in Melbourne, Australia, acciden-
tally walked over a short railing in a
parking lot while texting a friend and
plunged to his death.30
While everyone has heard of dis-
tracted driving, the dangers of dis-
tracted walking are only now
beginning to draw attention. A recent
Ohio State University study estimates
there were about two million pedestrian
injuries related to mobile phone use in
2010, and that this gure is likely to
double by 2015 if current trends con-
tinue. The researchers found that most
pedestrian injuries occurred while talk-
ing rather than texting.31 (This gives
new meaning to walkie talkie.)
Individuals most likely to be injured
by distracted walking are 2125 years
old, an age group that is also at high
risk for FOMO.
It is not just sprained ankles. It is also
broken bones, dislocated shoulders, and
concussions. It is undoubtedly deaths as
well, but because dead people do not
report what they were doing at the
moment of injury, reliable statistics
about pedestrian fatalities due to the
use of portable electronic devices are
hard to come by.
One wag has suggested that iPhone
stands for idiotPhone, since the walkers
using them often appear to be in a kind
of techno-stupor.
OUR DANGEROUS EXPERIMENT
Back to the brain. What do we know
about heavy Internet use that is reason-
ably certain?
We know that FOMO is a driving
force behind high levels of Internet use.
We know that eight hours or more of
daily Internet involvement with video
games is correlated with brain shrinkage
and damage in adolescents. We know
that American children in general are
already at this threshold of use, aver-
aging between seven and eight hours of
screen time daily. We do not know all we
need to know about the relative impact
of different Internet content on the
brain. Is heavy exposure to online edu-
cational material as damaging to young
brains as playing video games? Or does
overall screen time trump content, what-
ever the content may be?
Because we are not certain of the
answers, this means that our children
are unwitting subjects in a colossal,
frightening human experiment whose
outcome is potentially disastrous. The
possible injury is not limited to a shrink-
ing cerebral cortex. There are cancer
concerns as well, in adults as well as
children. As Devra Davis, professor of
epidemiology and the director of the
Centre for Environmental Oncology at
the University of Pittsburgh Cancer
Institute, describes the risk of personal
electronic devices, Because the latency
between exposure and brain cancer
could be 20 or 30 years we are
basically treating ourselves like lab rats
in an experiment without any
controls.32
What should parents do? Doing noth-
ing is not a good option. As editor-in-
chief, Richard Horton, of The Lancet has
said, We must act on facts and on the
most accurate interpretation of them,
using the best scientic information.
That does not mean that we must sit
back until we have 100 percent evidence
about everything. When the health of
the individual is at stake we should be
prepared to take action to diminish
those risks even when the scientic
knowledge is not conclusive33
Parent comes from Latin words that
mean to bring forth. The etymology
implies a strategy, a plan of action. In
order to bring forth children in their
fullness, parents need to value the still-
ness that can come from wisely limiting
the use of mind-numbing, attention-
stealing, brain-shrinking electronic gad-
gets. This is Martha Beck0 s Strategy 3,
Stop. It is cyber-insider, Glennon
Melton0 s Be Still wrist tattoo. It is
transcendentalist Ralph Waldo
Emerson0 s wise silence. It was my
mother0 s Go outside and play.
Adolescent brains come one per kid,
with no replacement parts. Their brains
are malleable, fragile, vulnerable, breath-
takingly promising, and indescribably
precious, but they are not wise.
That is why parents must be.
REFERENCES
1. Keating T Spiritualityandpractice.com.
Available at: http://www.spiritualityand
Explorations
 practice.com/practices/practices.php?
id=28&g=1. Accessed October 28, 2013.
2. FOMO. Urbandictionary.com. Available
at: http://www.urbandictionary.com/
dene.php?term=fomo. Accessed Octo-
ber 27, 2013.
3. Przybylski AK, Murayama K, DeHaan
CR, Gladwell V. Motivational, emo-
tional, and behavioral correlates of fear
of missing out. Comput Hum Behav.
2013;29(4):18411848.
4. Fear of missing out. Wikipedia. Available
at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_
missing_out. Accessed October 27, 2013.
5. Melton G. 5 reasons social media is
dangerous for me. Hufngtonpost.com.
Available at: http://www.hufngton
post.com/glennon-melton/5-reasons-so
cial-media-is-dangerous-for-
me_b_4023674.html. Accessed October
28, 2013.
6. Dowd M. From love nests to desire
surveillance. Nytimes.com. Available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/
opinion/sunday/dowd-from-love-nest
s-to-desire-surveillance.html?ref=opi
nion. Accessed November 3, 2013.
7. Turkle S. Alone Together. New York, NY:
Basic Books; 2012;15.
8. Grohol J. FOMO addiction: the fear of
missing out. Psychocentral.com. http://psy
chcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/
14/fomo-addiction-the-fear-of-missing-
out. Accessed October 27, 2013.
9. Kellner S. Is FOMO depriving us of our
ability to exist in the present and take
pleasure in the here and now? Indepen-
dent.co.uk. Available at: http://www.inde
pendent.co.uk/voices/comment/is-fomo-
depriving-us-of-our-ability-to-exist-in-the-
present-and-take-pleasure-in-the-her
e-and-now-8449677.html. Accessed Oct-
ober 27, 2013.
10. Cohen C. FoMO: do you have fear of
missing out? Telegraph.co.uk. Available at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/
womens-life/10061863/FoMo-Do-you-
have-a-Fear-of-Missing-Out.html.
Accessed October 27, 2013.
11. Kandel JJ. Internet addiction on campus:
the vulnerability of college students.
Cyberpsychol Behav. 1998;1(1):1117.
12. Harris S. Too much internet use can
damage teenagers. Dailymail.co.uk. Avail-
able at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
sciencetech/article-2015196/Too-interne
t-use-damage-teenagers-brains.html.
Accessed October 27, 2013.
Explorations
13. Beck M. Fighting FOMO: 3 strategies to
beat your fear of missing out. Hufngton-
post.com. Available at: http://www.huf
ngtonpost.com/2013/08/02/fomo-fear-
of-missing-out_n_3685195.html.
Accessed October 28, 2013.
14. Internet addiction around the world. Pbs.
org. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/
wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/vir
tual-worlds/internet-addiction/interne
t-rescue-camp.html. Accessed October
27, 2013.
15. Fackler M. In Korea, a boot camp cure for
web obsession. Available at: http://www.
nytimes.com/2007/11/18/technology/
18rehab.html?pagewanted=all. Accessed
October 27, 2013.
16. Ryall J. Surge in digital dementia. Tele-
graph.com.uk. Available at: http://www.
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/
southkorea/10138403/Surge-in-digital-de
mentia.html. Accessed October 27, 2013.
17. Netizen. Wikipedia. Available at: http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netizen. Accessed
October 27, 2013.
18. One tenth of young netizens suffers
Internet addiction. Chinadaily.com.cn.
Available at: http://www.chinadaily.
com.cn/bizchina/2008-01/18/con
tent_6406002.htm, Accessed October 27,
2013.
19. Yuan K, Qin W, Wang G, et al. Micro-
structure abnormalities in adolescents
with internet addiction disorder. PLoS
One. 2011;6(6):e20708 (Accessed Octo-
ber 30, 2013); http://www.plosone.org/
article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.
0020708.
20. Sigman A, Harris S. Too much internet
use can damage teenagers. Dailymail.co.
uk. Available at: http://www.dailymail.
co.uk/sciencetech/article-2015196/
Too-internet-use-damage-teenagers-
brains.html. Accessed October 27, 2013.
21. Peter. Comment to article by Harris S.
Too much internet use can damage
teenagers. Dailymail.co.uk. Available at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/
article-2015196/Too-internet-use-dama
ge-teenagers-brains.html. Accessed Octo-
ber 27, 2013.
22. Sigman A. Well connected? the biologi-
cal implications of social networking
Biologist. 2009;56(1):1420 (Accessed
October 28, 2013).
23. Lewin T. If your kids are awake, they0 re
probably online. New York Times. Avail-
able at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/
EXPLORE March/April 2014, Vol. 10, No. 2
01/20/education/20wired.html. Accessed
February 18, 2010.
24. Generation M2: media in the lives of 8-
to 18-year-olds. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Available at: http://www.kff.org/entme
dia/mh012010pkg.cfm. Accessed Febru-
ary 18, 2010.
25. Rich M. Quoted in: Lewin T. If your kids
are awake, they0 re probably online. New
York Times. Available at: http://www.
nytimes.com/2010/01/20/education/
20wired.html. Accessed February 18,
2010.
26. Kilgore C. Despite laws, almost half of
teens text while driving. Internalmedicine-
news.com. Available at: http://www.inter
nalmedicinenews.com/index.php?
id=2049&type=98&tx_ttnews%
5Btt_news%5D=143685&cHash=
da03e20e36. Accessed October 30, 2013.
27. Deadly driving: a look at teen driving.
Carinsurance.org. Available at: http://
www.carinsurance.org. Accessed October
30, 2013.
28. Macario D. Busted by our teenagers:
Parents0 bad driving behavior. Today.
com. Available at: http://www.today.
com/moms/busted-our-teenagers-par
ents-bad-driving-behavior-1B5952446.
Accessed October 30, 2013.
29. Ricks D. Study: texting while driving
now leading cause of death for teen
drivers. Newsday.com. Available at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/
study-texting-while-driving-now-leading-
cause-of-death-for-teen-drivers-1.
5226036. Accessed October 30, 2013.
30. Texting while walking blamed in the
nationwide increase of pedestrian deaths.
Dailymail.co.uk. Available at: http://www.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2388351/
Texting-walking-blamed-nationwide-in
crease-pedestrian-deaths.html. Accessed
October 20, 2013.
31. Grabmeier, J. Distracted walking: Injuries
soar for pedestrians on phones. Research-
news.osu.edu. Available at: http://research
news.osu.edu/archive/distractwalk.htm.
Accessed October 30, 2013.
32. Health Canada has little to say about
cellphone risks for kids. CBC.ca. Avail-
able at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technol
ogy/health-canada-has-little-to-say-about-
cellphone-risks-for-kids-1.779188.
Accessed October 30, 2013.
33. Horton R. The new public health of risk
and radical engagement. Lancet. 1998;352
(9124):251252.
73