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Tag: children

  • 5 parenting practices that have changed since you were a baby

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    (CNN) — Parenting is not for the faint of heart. It can take new parents a beat or two to fully tune in to what their baby’s cries could mean. So many small but consequential decisions need to be made on a daily, if not hourly, basis. There are also questions. Many questions.

    At a time when misinformation abounds, pediatrician Dr. David Hill is the calm voice of reassurance and reason, grounded in science. He encourages new parents to ask their baby’s pediatrician questions, including about any advice they find on the internet.

    “People come to me with stuff all the time,” Hill said, noting the importance of forging a solid parent-pediatrician relationship. That trust, he said, is what’s “going to steer us through this swamp of misinformation and disinformation that’s out there right now.”

    Hill is a father of five in a blended family who has been in practice for more than 25 years. He has been the associate medical editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ book “Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5, 8th edition,” and is slated to be the editor-in-chief for the next edition. He also cohosts the academy’s podcast “Pediatrics On Call.”

    “The question I get the most often from new parents, and even those who have been at it for a while is, is this normal?” Hill told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently on his podcast, Chasing Life.

    “As somebody who’s seen probably over 10,000 children … it is a joy for me to almost always be able to reassure, and be like, ‘Yeah. That’s fine. They do that. Kids do a lot of weird things, and they do a lot of things at their own pace,” Hill said. “Normal can be all over the map.”

    You can listen to the podcast’s full episode here.

    Hill said he strongly urges parents to seek out trusted, reliable sources for guidance. “Sources of information that have been validated, that use real data,” he said. “And honestly, talk to your child’s doctor — develop that relationship, because that’s what we’ve dedicated our lives to doing.”

    Hill works closely with the AAP on the organization’s parent-facing information. “I do that because I know, over decades of experience, how dedicated everybody in that group is to making sure we get this right, including being willing to get egg on our faces and say, ‘You know what? We were wrong,’ when we were wrong,” Hill said. “And that’s really critical. Anybody who’s never wrong, I don’t trust, because none of us is perfect.”

    During the decades Hill has been in practice, he has witnessed some of the babies he saw at the start of his career become parents themselves. During that time, he has also watched the science of child health evolve.

    “What I tell these new parents is sometimes the complete opposite of what I said when they were babies!” he said via email.

    Here are the five biggest changes Hill has seen over his career.

    Safe sleep practices

    Sleep guidelines literally flipped in 1994, when Hill finished medical school. That year, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development launched the first “Back to Sleep” campaign urging parents to put their baby to sleep on their back. Before then, parents had been told to put an infant to sleep on the belly to avoid aspiration.

    But that’s not all. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission banned drop-side cribs from the marketplace in 2011 and warned against inclined sleepers in 2019, Hill said. And the Safe Sleep for Babies Act, signed into federal law in 2022, outright banned the sale of drop-side cribs and crib bumpers that could potentially suffocate infants.

    He noted that in 1990, there were 154 sudden unexpected infant deaths per 100,000 babies, a number that fell 44% to a low of 86 in 2011. (It has since gone up to 100 deaths per 100,000 in 2022).

    “While some of those deaths are from mysterious or unavoidable causes,” he said, “many could still be prevented by following all the safe sleep guidelines, including not only placing infants on their backs to sleep, but never co-sleeping (and) avoiding soft bedding.”

    Advice to prevent food allergies

    Complete avoidance is out, and small exposures are in.

    “I still remember in 2015 searching all the drawers in our practice for outdated infant feeding handouts that, if parents followed them, could put their babies at increased risk of developing life-threatening food allergies,” Hill said. “These handouts told parents to avoid giving their infants and toddlers anything containing peanuts or eggs until they turned at least 2 years old, even 3 if they had eczema or a family history of allergies.”

    But, Hill said, in 2015, the results of the LEAP trial confirmed what some earlier studies had suggested: “That it wasn’t early peanut exposure that had caused a doubling of peanut allergies in the preceding decade. It was the advice in these handouts!” he said.

    Now parents and guardians are advised to introduce peanut-containing products and eggs along with other solid foods in the first year of life, as soon as babies are safely taking solids, usually around 6 months of age.

    Preventing babies from having any exposure to potential allergens apparently left their immune systems oversensitive when they finally did encounter them later on.

    Umbilical cord care

    Umbilical cords used to be treated with a messy (for doctors) purple “triple” dye — an antiseptic to keep bacterial infections at bay. Now, the recommendation in well-resourced countries and communities is to let the cord dry on its own — and to keep a close eye on it.

    “The purpose of the dye was to prevent potentially dangerous infections of the umbilical cord and surrounding tissues (omphalitis),” Hill said. “Then, a few brave souls, perhaps fed up with their dry-cleaning bills, decided to see what would happen if we used alcohol instead of the dye. It turned out … nothing.”

    Hill said the next step was to just let the cord dry on its own, taking care not to trap it in a wet or soiled diaper for extended periods and to avoid soaking it at bathtime. That practice is where the guidance stands today.

    Some known risk factors for omphalitis, Hill said, include low birth weight, prolonged rupture of membranes or prolonged labor, maternal infection, nonsterile delivery or home birth, and improper cord care.

    “If you see the skin around the belly button turning red or notice an unusually foul discharge, get your baby seen,” he advised.

    What about bathing? Should new parents avoid baths until the cord falls off? “Advice on this one varies, but it’s not clear there’s any more danger from a brief immersion than from a sponge bath,” he said.

    New and better vaccines

    The vaccination schedule for infants and children has been updated throughout the years as new shots become available, offering better protection against childhood scourges.

    “My dad is also a pediatrician, and I grew up hearing horror stories of babies suffering from meningitis and sepsis. It seems my dad was always dashing off to the hospital to perform spinal taps,” Hill recalled. “This started to change, however, in 1985, when a vaccine against Haemophilus influenza B, one of the most dreaded infections of childhood, came out.

    “In training and early in my career, I saw awful infections from another bacteria, pneumococcal pneumonia. These infections became much rarer in 2000, when the first pneumococcal vaccine for children came out,” he said. “Since then, that vaccine has expanded from covering seven subtypes of pneumococcus to covering as many as 23.”

    Just in the past year, Hill said he witnessed another infantile infection he dreaded, RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, plummet in frequency and severity thanks to both vaccines for expectant mothers and antibody injections for babies.

    Considering the big picture

    Another change involves a paradigm shift in the way pediatricians think about health and well-being, Hill said.

    “In pediatrics, one of those tectonic shifts hit in 1998, the year I started practice and the year the ACEs Study came out,” he said, referring to a study that looked at adverse childhood experiences. Those potentially traumatic events include physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse; the death of a parent; mental illness; or violence or substance abuse in the household, any of which can create toxic stress in a child, leading to changes in brain development and affecting future mental, physical and emotional health.

    “Many people had noticed that traumatic events in childhood … seemed to impact later health,” Hill said. “The ACEs Study measured and quantified the extent and duration of these effects, and the results were more dramatic and longer-lasting than anyone had guessed.”

    An explosion of research followed, Hill said, which led to a new approach in pediatrics.

    “Every child faces stressful events, some severe enough to impact their health. But the safe, stable, nurturing relationships that children build with the adults around them can protect them,” he explained. “Understanding these interactions inspires trauma-informed care, an effort to work with families to address the stresses in their lives and to build those emotional connections that can help their children thrive.”

    Under this approach, Hill said, pediatricians pivoted from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to asking “What happened to you, and how can we help?”

    “A key concept here is the ‘good enough parent,’” he said. “No parent is perfect, but perfection is not required to be safe, stable, and nurturing.”

    As a parent himself, Hill said that thought “brings me a sigh of relief.”

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    Andrea Kane and CNN

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  • Fake Labubu dolls pose safety hazard to kids, Consumer Product Safety Commission warns

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    Viral plush toys called Labubus are taking over the internet, but it has also inspired counterfeits. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the fraudulent dolls can break apart easily and are small enough to lead to choking hazards.

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  • German Kids Go To School With Giant Cones. Here’s Why.

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    Back-to-school season in the U.S. involves a number of fun rituals, like shopping for classroom supplies, picking out a special first-day outfit and taking photos with a personalized sign. On the first day of school in Germany, however, you’ll see an even more striking sight.

    German children mark the transition to school by carrying large paper cones on their first day of classes. The cones — which seem larger than the kids themselves — are brightly colored and sometimes have ornate decorations.

    Westend61 via Getty Images

    German school cones come in many different colors with a variety of designs.

    But what’s the deal with these cones? What’s inside them? And where did they come from? We turned to some German cultural experts to find out.

    What is the school cone?

    “A Schultüte ― also known as a ‘school cone’ or ‘cone bag’ in some parts of Germany ― is a cardboard container in the form of a pointed cone that schoolchildren carry with them when they start school,” Amrei Gold, head of public relations for North America at the German National Tourist Board, told HuffPost.

    She noted that German children receive these cones from their parents on their first day of elementary school, which typically occurs around age 6. The Schultüte is very large and can be fully rounded and cone-shaped or appear more like a pyramid on a hexagonal base.

    A little girl in Dresden poses with her cone in September 2021.

    picture alliance via Getty Images

    A little girl in Dresden poses with her cone in September 2021.

    “The school cones are usually filled with sweets and small gifts such as crayons or other school supplies,” Gold explained. “The name ‘sugar cone,’ which is common in some areas for the school cone, comes from filling it with sweets.”

    She joked that perhaps the idea of having to attend school every day for the next 12-13 years requires “sweetening” with treats and gifts. The Schultüte is also a big photo opportunity, as many kids pose with their cones and sometimes a sign reading “My First Day of School.”

    “The cone has been a tradition for a long time and is an important part of the very first day of school for children in Germany,” said Kirsten Bencker, who works in the language department at the Goethe-Institut in Munich. “The point of the cone is to highlight the transition from one status to another. This transition is connected with many changes for the child and for the family and this is to be emphasized through a ritual.”

    Where did this tradition come from?

    “The custom of giving school starters a Schultüte on the first day of school has been practiced in Germany since the 19th century, but the roots go even back into the 18th century,” Gold explained. “Historically it has its roots in Saxony and Thuringia, but is well-known across Germany today.”

    She pointed to early evidence from the autobiography of Saxon theologian Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider, who began school in 1781 or 1782 and recalled receiving a bag of candy from the schoolmaster.

    German children with school cones in 1960.

    ullstein bild via Getty Images

    German children with school cones in 1960.

    “Twenty years later, when Johann Daniel Elster started school in Benshausen, Thuringia, in 1801, it is even said that he received a large bag of sugar from the cantor ‘according to old custom,’” Gold added. “Further evidence comes from Jena in connection with the city cantor Georg Michael Kemlein in 1817, Dresden in 1820, and Leipzig in 1836.”

    Early versions of the tradition involved telling kids that there was a special “school cone tree” at their teacher’s house or on the school grounds. Once the school cones grew big enough, it would be time to pick them and start school.

    “The custom became widespread not at least because of a children’s book called ‘Zuckertütenbuch für alle Kinder, die zum ersten Mal in die Schule gehen’ (‘Sugar cone book for all children going to school for the first time’) by Moritz Heger,” Bencker explained, noting that the 1852 book suggested that teachers pick the cones for their students from this special tree.

    A German child with a Schultüte circa 1920.

    ullstein bild via Getty Images

    A German child with a Schultüte circa 1920.
    A mother passes a school cone to her daughter in 1927.

    ullstein bild Dtl. via Getty Images

    A mother passes a school cone to her daughter in 1927.

    Edible treats were the dominant contents of school cones at that time.

    “In his childhood memories, ‘When I Was a Little Boy,’ Erich Kästner describes his first day of school in Dresden in 1906 and his ‘sugar cone with the silk bow,’” Gold noted. “When he wanted to show the bag to a neighbor, he dropped it and the contents fell on the floor: He was ‘up to his ankles in sweets, chocolates, dates, Easter bunnies, figs, oranges, tartlets, waffles and golden May bugs.’”

    Although the Schultüte started as a predominately central German tradition, the practice caught on elsewhere.

    “Berlin was the first big city outside of the original areas in which school cones became common ― although they were still rare before the First World War,” Gold said. “Only gradually did the custom catch on in the south and west.”

    Students with school cones in Berlin in 1966.

    picture alliance via Getty Images

    Students with school cones in Berlin in 1966.

    Following the division of Germany after World War II, traditional round cones around 28 inches long were the standard practice in West Germany, while those in East Germany opted for hexagonal Schultüte around 33 inches long.

    “Nowadays, the tradition is a widespread tradition in whole Germany and also Austria and the German-speaking part of Switzerland,” Bencker noted. “The central German regions where it began are also the areas where a very distinctive custom has developed around this school cone ― big family parties, ordering cakes with the name of the children at a bakery for the first day.”

    How do you put together a school cone?

    “While you can buy prefabricated cones at the store, many parents make their own school cones, with or without their children,” Bencker said. “Generally speaking, children can be very creative in decorating their sugar cones.”

    Indeed, there are many online tutorials explaining how to make a Schultüte with thick paper products like poster board ― though cardboard and plastic can also be used. These days, there are also more sustainable school cones made of fabric, which can be turned into cushions.

    Many families put together very ornate cone designs.

    Westend61 via Getty Images

    Many families put together very ornate cone designs.

    “If the parents are not going to make the school cones, they are either bought ready-made or made by the children themselves in kindergarten,” Gold said, adding that in the past, godparents were often the ones giving kids their school cones. “The largest manufacturer of school cones in Germany is Nestler GmbH Feinkartonagen in Ehrenfriedersdorf. It produces over 2 million school cones a year.”

    In addition to the traditional sweets, cones these days may also be filled with school supplies, books or something to play with.

    First graders arrive with their cones for their first day of school on Aug. 13, 2020, in Oberpleis, Germany.

    Andreas Rentz via Getty Images

    First graders arrive with their cones for their first day of school on Aug. 13, 2020, in Oberpleis, Germany.
    A variety of Schultüten on display waiting to be picked up by first graders at an elementary school in Kleinmachnow, near Potsdam, in August 2015.

    picture alliance via Getty Images

    A variety of Schultüten on display waiting to be picked up by first graders at an elementary school in Kleinmachnow, near Potsdam, in August 2015.

    Some schools even have guidelines for the maximum size of students’ cones, and there might be a designated enrollment day before the first day of classes when children receive their cones and take photos. And the tradition is no longer explicitly limited to the beginning of primary school.

    “Today, small cones of candy are sometimes handed out at the transition from elementary school to secondary school or at the beginning of an apprenticeship or study,” Gold said. “However, they are still primarily associated with the beginning of school.”

    Of course, if you want to make yourself a Schultüte for no reason whatsoever, who’s to stop you?

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  • YouTube to begin testing a new AI-powered age verification system in the U.S.

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    YouTube on Wednesday will begin testing a new age-verification system in the U.S. that relies on artificial intelligence to differentiate between adults and minors, based on the kinds of videos that they have been watching.

    The tests initially will only affect a sliver of YouTube’s audience in the U.S., but it will likely become more pervasive if the system works as well at guessing viewers’ ages as it does in other parts of the world. The system will only work when viewers are logged into their accounts, and it will make its age assessments regardless of the birth date a user might have entered upon signing up.

    If the system flags a logged-in viewer as being under 18, YouTube will impose the normal controls and restrictions that the site already uses as a way to prevent minors from watching videos and engaging in other behavior deemed inappropriate for that age.

    The safeguards include reminders to take a break from the screen, privacy warnings and restrictions on video recommendations. YouTube, which has been owned by Google for nearly 20 years, also doesn’t show ads tailored to individual tastes if a viewer is under 18.

    If the system has inaccurately called out a viewer as a minor, the mistake can be corrected by showing YouTube a government-issued identification card, a credit card or a selfie.

    “YouTube was one of the first platforms to offer experiences designed specifically for young people, and we’re proud to again be at the forefront of introducing technology that allows us to deliver safety protections while preserving teen privacy,” James Beser, the video service’s director of product management, wrote in a blog post about the age-verification system.

    People still will be able to watch YouTube videos without logging into an account, but viewing that way triggers an automatic block on some content without proof of age.

    The political pressure has been building on websites to do a better job of verifying ages to shield children from inappropriate content since late June when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Texas law aimed at preventing minors from watching pornography online.

    While some services, such as YouTube, have been stepping up their efforts to verify users’ ages, others have contended that the responsibility should primarily fall upon the two main smartphone app stores run by Apple and Google — a position that those two technology powerhouses have resisted.

    Some digital rights groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy & Technology, have raised concerns that age verification could infringe on personal privacy and violate First Amendment protections on free speech.

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  • IBD and Cannabis  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Smoking cannabis may help with symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the short term, but it may make the long-term prognosis worse.

    As this study asks, “Medical Marijuana: A Panacea or Scourge?” For 5,000 years, cannabis “has been used throughout the world medically, recreationally, and spiritually.” It was even prescribed by American physicians “for a plethora of indications” from the mid-19th century to the 1930s, a fact that’s often used by medical marijuana proponents as evidence justifying the modern medical applications.” But the field of old-timey medicine is “fraught with potions and herbal remedies,” not to mention bloodletting and other questionable and harmful remedies.

    Skeptics criticize the medical marijuana movement as the “‘medical excuse marijuana’ movement,” insinuating that children with epilepsy and the terminally ill are being “used as a ‘Trojan horse’ for the legalization of recreational cannabis use” or to peddle “outlandish claims” about “miracle cancer cures,” frustrating researchers in the field who just want to get at the science.

    For example, what about the therapeutic use of cannabis for inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis? Conventional therapies work mainly by suppressing the immune system to try to tamp down inflammation. “Given the limited therapy options and known adverse side effects with chronic use” from these drugs, people suffering from these diseases often need to have inflamed sections of their bowels removed surgically, so it’s clear why there’s so much interest in alternative approaches.

    About one in six IBD patients who use marijuana say it helps with their symptoms, so researchers decided to put it to the test. Thirteen patients with IBD were given a third of a pound of marijuana to smoke at their leisure over a period of three months, and they reported feeling significantly better with “reported improvement in general health perception, social functioning, ability to work, physical pain, and depression.” There wasn’t a control group, so it’s unknown if they would have improved anyway or what role the placebo effect may have played. It’s like some of the studies of cannabis used for pediatric epilepsy that had response rates exceeding 30 percent and a frequency cut in half in a third of the kids. Amazing results until you realize you can sometimes get similarly amazing responses from giving kids nothing but a sugar pill placebo, as seen below and at 2:21 in my video Friday Favorites: Cannabis for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). That’s why it’s critical to do randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials, but there weren’t any on cannabis and IBD until 2013. 

    For 21 patients with Crohn’s disease, nothing seemed to help. So researchers randomized them to either smoke two joints a day of marijuana or a look-alike placebo. The results? Ninety percent of those in the cannabis group got better, compared to only 40 percent in the placebo group. Shown below and at 3:11 in my video is a graph of their symptom scores. As you can see, there was no big change in the placebo group over the two-month study, but the cannabis group cut their symptoms by about half. 

    The researchers acknowledge that long-term cannabis use is not without risks, but it may be a cakewalk compared to the potential adverse—and even life-threatening—side effects of some of the more powerful conventional therapies, so the study was heralded in a paper entitled “High Hope for Medical Marijuana in Digestive Disorders.”

    The study was funded by a medical marijuana advocacy organization, the main supplier in the country, in fact. So, expectations may have been placed on the participants about how much better they would feel—in other words, they may have been primed for the placebo effect. But the researchers controlled for that, right? Those getting the real cannabis did significantly better than those randomized to get the placebo. But the point of a placebo is that it is indistinguishable from the real thing, so the participants don’t know which group they’re in—the control group or the treatment group. How can that be accomplished with a psychoactive drug? It can’t, which is the problem. The researchers tried to hide which group participants were in by only recruiting patients who had never tried cannabis before in the hopes that they wouldn’t notice placebo pot, but, unsurprisingly, most of them did. So, we’re basically left with another unblinded study. The researchers asked a bunch of subjective questions, like “How are you feeling?” and those who pretty much knew they were taking the drug said they were feeling better.

    There were no significant changes in objective lab values, like CRP, a sign of inflammation, so perhaps the “cannabis may simply be masking symptoms without affecting intestinal inflammation.” Another indicator that it may not be affecting the course of the disease itself is how quickly the symptoms rebound. Two weeks after the study ended, those in the cannabis group were right back to where they started, as shown here (see week 10) and at 5:05 in my video. 

    So, “there was no difference in objective inflammatory markers to indicate disease modification. Given the rapid rebound…to pretreatment levels after the 2-week washout period, it seems more plausible that cannabis ameliorated the symptoms of Crohn’s disease, rather than actually modulating the disease.” That may be, but the symptoms are terrible. A reduction in pain is a reduction in pain. Indeed, “from the point of view of the patients, a marked symptomatic improvement and ability to resume normal life is not trivial, even if inflammation persists.” Of course, what if cannabis somehow makes the disease worse in the long run?

    A survey study published the following year found that cannabis provided the same immediate symptomatic relief but was associated with a worse disease prognosis over time. Patients with IBD reported that cannabis improved their pain, cramping, and diarrhea, but use for more than six months by Crohn’s patients appeared to be a strong predictor of them ending up in surgery; they had five times the odds of going under the knife. There are two possible explanations for this: It’s quite possible that the increased disease severity led to the cannabis use and not the other way around. The alternative explanation: “Cannabis use may worsen the prognosis of IBD, leading to greater surgeries and hospitalizations.”

    This is why we need prospective clinical trials where people are followed over time to see which came first. Until then, perhaps we should consider cannabis use for IBD as “potentially harmful.” Not just to err on the side of caution, but because there was a study on hepatitis C patients that found that daily cannabis use was associated with nearly seven times the odds of worse liver fibrosis, which is like scar tissue. If cannabis really does make fibrosis worse, that may explain why cannabis users with IBD may be more likely to require surgery. 

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Vegans and Iodine Deficiency Risk  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Most plant-based milks are not fortified with iodine.

    “Adequate dietary iodine is required for normal thyroid function.” In fact, the two thyroid hormones are named after how many iodine atoms they contain: T3 and T4. “Given that iodine is extensively stored in the thyroid gland itself, it can safely be consumed intermittently,” so we don’t need to consume it every day. However, our overall diet does need a good source of it. Unfortunately, the common sources aren’t particularly health-promoting: iodized salt and dairy foods. (Iodine-based cleansers like betadine are used on cows “to sanitize the udders, resulting in leaching of iodine in the milk.”) Iodine may also be added to cattle feed, and some commercially produced breads contain food additives with iodine.

    If you put people on a paleo-type diet and cut out their dairy and table salt, they can develop an iodine deficiency, even though they double their intake of seafood, which can also be a source of iodine. What about those switching to diets centered around whole plant foods? They also cut down on ice cream and Wonder Bread, and if they aren’t eating anything from the sea, like seaweed or other sea vegetables, they can run into the same problem.

    A three-year-old’s parents reported striving to feed her only the healthiest foods, and her diet included only plant-based, unsalted, and unseasoned foods. She got no unprocessed foods, but she also got no vitamin supplementation, which could be deadly. Without vitamin B12, those on strictly plant-based diets can develop irreversible nerve damage, but in this case, a goiter arose first, due to inadequate iodine intake.

    In another case of “veganism as a cause of iodine-deficient hypothyroidism,” a toddler became ill after weaning. Before weaning, he was fine because his mother kept taking her prenatal vitamins, which fortunately contained iodine.

    Most vegetarians and vegans are apparently unaware of the importance of iodine intake during pregnancy, “for the neurodevelopment of the unborn child, similar to their omnivorous counterparts.” The American Thyroid Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have recommended that women, even just planning on getting pregnant, should take a daily supplement containing 150 micrograms (mcg) of iodine, yet only 60 percent of prenatal vitamins marketed in the United States contain this essential mineral. So, despite the recommendations, about 40 percent of prenatal vitamins don’t contain it. “Therefore, it is extremely important that women, especially when pregnant, breastfeeding, or planning a pregnancy, read the labels of their multivitamin supplements to ensure that they are receiving an adequate amount of iodine.”

    Women of reproductive age have an average iodine level of 110 mcg/liter, which is fine for nonpregnant individuals, but we’d really like women to get at least 150 mcg/liter during pregnancy. (It’s basically a 24-hour urine test, in which iodine sufficiency is defined as 100 mcg/liter of urine in nonpregnant adults; the average vegan failed to reach this in the largest study done to date, one out of Boston.)

    The recommended average daily intake is 150 mcg per day for most people, which we can get in about a cup and a half of cow’s milk. Regrettably, plant-based milks aren’t typically fortified with iodine and average only about 3 mcg per cup. Although many plant-based milks are fortified with calcium, researchers found in the largest systematic study to date that only 3 out of 47 were fortified with iodine. Those that were fortified had as much as cow’s milk, but those that weren’t fell short, as you can see at 3:30 in my video Are Vegans at Risk for Iodine Deficiency?. 

    Plant-based milk companies brag about enriching their milks with calcium and often vitamins B12, D, and A, but only rarely are attempts made to match iodine content. The only reason cow’s milk has so much is that producers enrich the animals’ feed or it comes dripping off their udders. So, why don’t plant-milk companies add iodine, too? I was told by a food scientist at Silk that my carrageenan video played a role in the company switching to another thickener. Hopefully, Silk will see this video, too, and consider adding iodine, or maybe another company will snatch the opportunity for a market advantage.  

    The researchers conclude that individuals who consume plant-based milks not fortified with iodine may be at risk for iodine deficiency, unless they consume alternative dietary iodine sources, the healthiest of which are sea vegetables, which we’ll cover next.

    Doctor’s Note:

    This is the first in a four-video series on thyroid function. The next three are: 

    For more on iodine, see the related posts below.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • What About Elderberry, Echinacea, and Cranberries for Colds and the Flu?  | NutritionFacts.org

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    How effective are flu shots, elderberries, echinacea, and cranberries?

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that everyone over the age of six months get a routine flu shot every year, unless you have some sort of contraindication, such as an allergy to any of the vaccine’s components. CDC recommends getting vaccinated by the end of October, but it may even be beneficial when received in December or later. How effective are flu vaccines? It depends on the year, but, as you can see below and at 0:33 in my video Friday Favorites: Elderberry Benefits and Side Effects: Does It Help with Colds and the Flu?, the flu vaccine typically reduces the risk of getting the flu by about 40 to 50 percent.

    So, in healthy adults, we can say with moderate certainty that we can decrease our risk of influenza from about 2 percent each year down to just under 1 percent. Older adults may get a similar relative risk reduction, but the baseline risk is higher and the consequences greater, so the absolute benefits are greater, too. In kids, flu vaccines shine; there’s a high certainty of evidence of a substantial drop in risk. But even in this kind of best-case scenario, there’s still a risk with vaccination, so what else can we do?

    In the United States alone, each year, Americans experience millions of cases of influenza and hundreds of millions of colds. What about elderberry supplements? In a test tube, elderberry extracts can inhibit pathogens, including the flu virus. In a petri dish, it can rev up the production of flu-fighting molecules from human immune system cells, like tumor necrosis factor, as much as nearly 45-fold. Elderberry juice can help mice fight off the flu. But what about actual people?

    The first clinical trial was published back in the 1990s: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial to treat flu-like symptoms. Researchers found that the odds for improvement before the fifth day in those in the treated group were more than 20 times the odds of the participants in the control group (p < 0.001). Two subsequent double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trials showed similar accelerated healing in the elderberry groups, as you can see here and at 1:54 in my video. 

    I was excited to see this study—“Elderberry Supplementation Reduces Cold Duration and Symptoms in Air-Travelers”—given a 200-city book tour I was embarking on. It was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 312 economy class passengers. While taking elderberry didn’t seem to prevent people from coming down with cold symptoms, the duration and severity of symptoms in those who did get a cold seemed to have been lessened, and they suffered an average of about five days instead of seven.

    A similar study using the herb echinacea found a lessening of symptom scores, but it was of only borderline statistical significance. Nevertheless, even though most of the individual trials didn’t find statistically significant improvements, when all such studies were compiled, it seems there may be about a 20 percent decrease incidence of colds, as seen below and at 2:50 in my video.

    Note, though, that there is a concern about publication bias and selective reporting. A number of findings and some entire studies seem to be MIA, suggesting that negative studies may have been quietly shelved. So, we aren’t really sure about echinacea, but all the elderberry studies seem to have positive results, suggesting elderberry supplementation “provides an effective treatment option when advanced or more invasive care [more serious treatment] is not warranted.” This conclusion came from someone with apparent conflicts of interest, though. In fact, each of the four elderberry studies was funded by the elderberry product companies themselves.

    Any other berries that might be helpful? A randomized, placebo-controlled, interventional study—funded, predictably, by Ocean Spray—found that the gamma-delta-T-cells of those drinking a low-calorie cranberry juice beverage for ten weeks appeared to be proliferating at nearly fivefold the rate. These immune cells “serve as a first line of defense.” Though the study participants didn’t get fewer colds, they did seem to suffer less, but not enough to prevent days missed from work or an impairment of their activities, as shown here and at 3:56 in my video. 

    At least cranberries have never been reported to cause pancreatitis. A man taking an elderberry extract not only suffered an attack of acute pancreatitis, a sudden painful inflammation of the pancreas, but it went away when he stopped it, then reappeared again years later when he tried taking it again, which suggests cause-and-effect. Why take elderberry extracts when you can just eat the elderberries themselves? Well, cooked are fine, but “consuming uncooked blue or black elderberries can cause nausea and vomiting.”

    I found out the hard way, as I explained in an answer to the question, “What was the worst day of your life?” in my London Real interview on my How Not to Die book tour. It turns out elderberry fruits form cyanide, such that eight people had to be medevacked out after someone brought freshly squeezed elderberry juice to a gathering.

    Doctor’s Note:

    Here’s the London Real interview I mentioned.

    What else can we do for the common cold? See the related posts below.

    And, speaking of cranberries, Can Cranberry Juice Treat Bladder Infections?. Watch the video to find out. 

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • USDA ban on school lunch fees for low-income families begins in 2027

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    The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that students eligible for free or reduced-price school meals cannot be charged processing fees, also known as junk fees, beginning in 2027.

    School districts currently work with processing companies to offer cashless payment systems for families. But the companies can charge “processing fees” for each transaction. By law, students who are eligible for reduced price meals cannot be charged more than 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch. With processing fees, however, families can end up paying 10 times that amount. Processing companies charge as much as $3.25 or 4% to 5% per transaction, according to a recent report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

    For families with lower incomes who can’t afford to load large sums in one go, processing fees can arrive weekly or even more frequently, increasing costs disproportionately. Families that qualify for free or reduced lunch pay as much as 60 cents per dollar in fees when paying for school lunches electronically, according to the report.


    Brain-boosting nutrition tips for busy families

    04:25

    The new Agriculture Department’s policy becomes effective starting in the 2027-2028 school year. With this rule, the USDA will lower costs for families with income under 185% of federal poverty guidelines, which equals $57,720 for a family of four.

    “USDA and schools across America share the common goal of nourishing schoolchildren and giving them the fuel they need to learn, grow and thrive,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement Friday. “While today’s action to eliminate extra fees for lower-income households is a major step in the right direction, the most equitable path forward is to offer every child access to healthy school meals at no cost. We will continue to work with Congress to move toward that goal so all kids have the nutrition they need to reach their full potential.”

    The decision by the USDA follows a CFPB report that found online school meal payments predominantly affect low-income families. School lunch fees collectively cost families upwards of $100 million each year, according to the report.

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture has mandated that school districts inform families of their options since 2017, but even when parents are aware, having to pay by cash or check to avoid fees can be burdensome.

    “It’s just massively inconvenient,” said Joanna Roa, 43, who works at Clemson University in South Carolina as a library specialist and has two school-aged children.

    Roa said that when her son was in first grade and she saw the $3.25-per-transaction fee for lunch account transactions, she and her husband decided to send him to school with packed lunches instead.

    “A dollar here and there, I expected,” she said. “But $3.25 per transaction, especially here in rural South Carolina where the cost of living is a lot lower — as are the salaries — is a lot.”

    Roa said packing lunch for two kids every day became a burden in both time and effort for two working parents. For the past two years, thanks to surplus funds, her school district has been providing free school lunches which has changed the equation, but Roa said that could end at any point.

    In its review of the 300 largest public school districts in the U.S., the CFPB found that 87% of sampled districts contract with payment processors. Within those districts, the companies charge an average of $2.37 or 4.4% of the total transaction, each time money is added to a child’s account.

    While payment companies maintain that school districts can negotiate fees and rates before they agree to contracts, the CFPB found that complex company structures “may insulate companies from competition and make school districts less likely to negotiate.” Just three companies — MySchoolBucks, SchoolCafe, and LINQ Connect — dominate the market, according to the report.

    Without the ability to choose which company to work with, “families have fewer ways to avoid harmful practices,” the agency said, “including those that may violate federal consumer protection law.”

    ___

    “The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.”

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  • UK apologizes for child’s death in case that made air pollution in low-income areas a national issue

    UK apologizes for child’s death in case that made air pollution in low-income areas a national issue

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    LONDON — The British government has apologized for the death of a 9-year-old girl who is believed to be the first person in the U.K. to have air pollution listed on her death certificate, after a decade-long battle that highlighted the risks vehicle emissions pose to children in low-income communities.

    The apology was part of a settlement announced Thursday in a lawsuit filed by the mother of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who developed severe asthma just before her 7th birthday and suffered severe seizures before she died on Feb. 15, 2013. The government also made an undisclosed financial settlement.

    “Although this isn’t going to bring Ella back, we finally accept this is acknowledgement of what happened to her, and to put the issue of air pollution firmly on the map, that it’s a public health crisis … and something needs to be done about it,’’ Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, Ella’s mother, said after meeting with government officials. “Today it is finally over, but I am going to continue, and I have been reassured by the government that they’re going to be continuing to work with me to clean up the air.”

    Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah fought to reopen the coroner’s inquest into Ella’s death after the so-called Dieselgate scandal revealed how Volkswagen obscured the true level of emissions released by its diesel-powered vehicles. Research by the Royal College of Physicians later showed that about 40,000 deaths can be attributed to outdoor air pollution each year in the U.K., with the burden falling most heavily on low-income communities close to busy roads and other major sources of emissions.

    Ella grew up just 25 meters (yards) from the South Circular Road, a major conduit for traffic along the southern edge of central London.

    Britain’s High Court in May 2019 set aside the findings of the original inquest, which attributed Ella’s death to asthma.

    In December 2020, a second inquest found that air pollution was a contributing factor in Ella’s death, along with acute respiratory failure and severe asthma.

    Throughout her illness, Ella was exposed to levels of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter that exceeded World Health Organization guidelines, Deputy Coroner Philip Barlow ruled. There was also a “recognized failure” to bring nitrogen dioxide levels within the limits set by European Union and domestic law.

    “Ella’s mother was not given information by health professionals about the health risks of air pollution and its potential to exacerbate asthma,” Barlow said. “If she had been given this information, she would have taken steps which might have prevented Ella’s death.”

    The child’s estate, which is administered by her mother, sued the Environment Department, the Department for Transport and the Department of Health and Social Care for compensation over Ella’s illness and premature death.

    The government on Thursday described Ella’s death as a “tragedy,” and said her mother’s public campaign for better air quality had “made a considerable impact.”

    Adoo-Kissi-Debrah said Environment Minister Emma Hardy reaffirmed her commitment to pass legislation that will bring the U.K. in line with WHO standards, according to a statement released by her law firm, Hodge Jones & Allen.

    “On behalf of the government departments who were party to the claim, we again take this opportunity to say we are truly sorry for your loss and to express our sincerest condolences to you as Ella’s mother, to her siblings, and to everyone who knew her,’’ the government said in the statement. “To lose a loved one at such a young age is an immeasurable loss.”

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  • Colorado Big Brothers, Big Sisters guides kids, combats “epidemic of loneliness” – The Cannabist

    Colorado Big Brothers, Big Sisters guides kids, combats “epidemic of loneliness” – The Cannabist

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    When Towani Clarke met 12-year-old Antoniece, she’d been struggling with a way of living she describes as “blinkered,” moving through daily duties from her job at Nordstrom to the yoga classes she teaches to home.

    Clarke came to Colorado four years ago from Zambia, where she founded an Afro-chic women’s clothes company.  She missed the intergenerational contact common in Zambia. Her own children had grown.

    The Denver Post Season To Share is the annual holiday fundraising campaign for The Denver Post and The Denver Post Community Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Grants are awarded to local nonprofit agencies that provide life-changing programs to help low-income children, families and individuals move out of poverty toward stabilization and self-sufficiency. Visit seasontoshare.com for more information.

    Read the rest of this story on TheKnow.DenverPost.com.

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    The Cannabist Network

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  • AI-generated child sexual abuse images are spreading. Law enforcement is racing to stop them

    AI-generated child sexual abuse images are spreading. Law enforcement is racing to stop them

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — A child psychiatrist who altered a first-day-of-school photo he saw on Facebook to make a group of girls appear nude. A U.S. Army soldier accused of creating images depicting children he knew being sexually abused. A software engineer charged with generating hyper-realistic sexually explicit images of children.

    Law enforcement agencies across the U.S. are cracking down on a troubling spread of child sexual abuse imagery created through artificial intelligence technology — from manipulated photos of real children to graphic depictions of computer-generated kids. Justice Department officials say they’re aggressively going after offenders who exploit AI tools, while states are racing to ensure people generating “deepfakes” and other harmful imagery of kids can be prosecuted under their laws.

    “We’ve got to signal early and often that it is a crime, that it will be investigated and prosecuted when the evidence supports it,” Steven Grocki, who leads the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “And if you’re sitting there thinking otherwise, you fundamentally are wrong. And it’s only a matter of time before somebody holds you accountable.”

    The Justice Department says existing federal laws clearly apply to such content, and recently brought what’s believed to be the first federal case involving purely AI-generated imagery — meaning the children depicted are not real but virtual. In another case, federal authorities in August arrested a U.S. soldier stationed in Alaska accused of running innocent pictures of real children he knew through an AI chatbot to make the images sexually explicit.

    Trying to catch up to technology

    The prosecutions come as child advocates are urgently working to curb the misuse of technology to prevent a flood of disturbing images officials fear could make it harder to rescue real victims. Law enforcement officials worry investigators will waste time and resources trying to identify and track down exploited children who don’t really exist.

    Lawmakers, meanwhile, are passing a flurry of legislation to ensure local prosecutors can bring charges under state laws for AI-generated “deepfakes” and other sexually explicit images of kids. Governors in more than a dozen states have signed laws this year cracking down on digitally created or altered child sexual abuse imagery, according to a review by The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

    “We’re playing catch-up as law enforcement to a technology that, frankly, is moving far faster than we are,” said Ventura County, California District Attorney Erik Nasarenko.

    Nasarenko pushed legislation signed last month by Gov. Gavin Newsom which makes clear that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is illegal under California law. Nasarenko said his office could not prosecute eight cases involving AI-generated content between last December and mid-September because California’s law had required prosecutors to prove the imagery depicted a real child.

    AI-generated child sexual abuse images can be used to groom children, law enforcement officials say. And even if they aren’t physically abused, kids can be deeply impacted when their image is morphed to appear sexually explicit.

    “I felt like a part of me had been taken away. Even though I was not physically violated,” said 17-year-old Kaylin Hayman, who starred on the Disney Channel show “Just Roll with It” and helped push the California bill after she became a victim of “deepfake” imagery.

    Hayman testified last year at the federal trial of the man who digitally superimposed her face and those of other child actors onto bodies performing sex acts. He was sentenced in May to more than 14 years in prison.

    Open-source AI-models that users can download on their computers are known to be favored by offenders, who can further train or modify the tools to churn out explicit depictions of children, experts say. Abusers trade tips in dark web communities about how to manipulate AI tools to create such content, officials say.

    A report last year by the Stanford Internet Observatory found that a research dataset that was the source for leading AI image-makers such as Stable Diffusion contained links to sexually explicit images of kids, contributing to the ease with which some tools have been able to produce harmful imagery. The dataset was taken down, and researchers later said they deleted more than 2,000 weblinks to suspected child sexual abuse imagery from it.

    Top technology companies, including Google, OpenAI and Stability AI, have agreed to work with anti-child sexual abuse organization Thorn to combat the spread of child sexual abuse images.

    But experts say more should have been done at the outset to prevent misuse before the technology became widely available. And steps companies are taking now to make it harder to abuse future versions of AI tools “will do little to prevent” offenders from running older versions of models on their computer “without detection,” a Justice Department prosecutor noted in recent court papers.

    “Time was not spent on making the products safe, as opposed to efficient, and it’s very hard to do after the fact — as we’ve seen,” said David Thiel, the Stanford Internet Observatory’s chief technologist.

    AI images get more realistic

    The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline last year received about 4,700 reports of content involving AI technology — a small fraction of the more than 36 million total reports of suspected child sexual exploitation. By October of this year, the group was fielding about 450 reports per month of AI-involved content, said Yiota Souras, the group’s chief legal officer.

    Those numbers may be an undercount, however, as the images are so realistic it’s often difficult to tell whether they were AI-generated, experts say.

    “Investigators are spending hours just trying to determine if an image actually depicts a real minor or if it’s AI-generated,” said Rikole Kelly, deputy Ventura County district attorney, who helped write the California bill. “It used to be that there were some really clear indicators … with the advances in AI technology, that’s just not the case anymore.”

    Justice Department officials say they already have the tools under federal law to go after offenders for such imagery.

    The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 struck down a federal ban on virtual child sexual abuse material. But a federal law signed the following year bans the production of visual depictions, including drawings, of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct that are deemed “obscene.” That law, which the Justice Department says has been used in the past to charge cartoon imagery of child sexual abuse, specifically notes there’s no requirement “that the minor depicted actually exist.”

    The Justice Department brought that charge in May against a Wisconsin software engineer accused of using AI tool Stable Diffusion to create photorealistic images of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and was caught after he sent some to a 15-year-old boy through a direct message on Instagram, authorities say. The man’s lawyer, who is pushing to dismiss the charges on First Amendment grounds, declined further comment on the allegations in an email to the AP.

    A spokesperson for Stability AI said that man is accused of using an earlier version of the tool that was released by another company, Runway ML. Stability AI says that it has “invested in proactive features to prevent the misuse of AI for the production of harmful content” since taking over the exclusive development of the models. A spokesperson for Runway ML didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP.

    In cases involving “deepfakes,” when a real child’s photo has been digitally altered to make them sexually explicit, the Justice Department is bringing charges under the federal “child pornography” law. In one case, a North Carolina child psychiatrist who used an AI application to digitally “undress” girls posing on the first day of school in a decades-old photo shared on Facebook was convicted of federal charges last year.

    “These laws exist. They will be used. We have the will. We have the resources,” Grocki said. “This is not going to be a low priority that we ignore because there’s not an actual child involved.”

    __

    The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

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  • Epigenetics and Obesity  | NutritionFacts.org

    Epigenetics and Obesity  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Identical twins don’t just share DNA; they also share a uterus. Might that help account for some of their metabolic similarities? “Fetal overnutrition, evidenced by large infant birth weight for gestational age, is a strong predictor of obesity in childhood and later life.” Could it be that you are what your mom ate?

    A dramatic illustration from the animal world is the crossbreeding of Shetland ponies with massive draft horses. Either way, the offspring are half pony/half horse, but when carried in the pony uterus, they come out much smaller, as you can see below and at 0:47 in my video The Role of Epigenetics in the Obesity Epidemic. (Thank heavens for the pony mother!) This is presumably the same reason why the mule (horse mom and donkey dad) is larger than the hinny (donkey mom and horse dad). The way you test this in people is to study the size of babies from surrogates after in vitro fertilization. 

    Who do you think most determines the birth weight of a test-tube baby? Is it the donor mom who provided all the DNA or the surrogate who provided the intrauterine environment? When it was put to the test, the womb won. Incredibly, a baby who had a thin biological mother but was born to a surrogate with obesity may harbor a greater risk of becoming obese than a baby with a heavier biological mother but born to a slim surrogate. The researchers “concluded that the environment provided by the human mother is more important than her genetic contribution to birth weight.”

    The most compelling data come from comparing obesity rates in siblings born to the same mother, before and after her bariatric surgery. Compared to their brothers and sisters born before the surgery, those born when mom weighed about 100 pounds less had lower rates of inflammation, metabolic derangements, and, most critically, three times less risk of developing severe obesity—35 percent of those born before the weight loss were affected, compared to 11 percent born after. The researchers concluded that “these data emphasize how critical it is to prevent obesity and treat it effectively to prevent further transmission to future generations.”

    Hold on. Mom had the same DNA before and after surgery. She passed down the same genes. How could her weight during pregnancy affect the weight destiny of her children any differently? Darwin himself admitted, “In my opinion, the greatest error which I have committed, has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the environment, i.e. food…independently of natural selection.” We finally figured out the mechanism by which this can happen—epigenetics.

    Epigenetics, which means “above genetics,” layers an extra level of information on top of the DNA sequence that can be affected by our surroundings, as well as potentially passed on to our children. This is thought to explain the “developmental programming” that can occur in the womb, depending on the weight of the mother—or even the grandmother. Since all the eggs in your infant daughter’s ovaries are already preformed before birth, a mother’s weight status during pregnancy could potentially affect the obesity risk of her grandchildren, too. Either way, you can imagine how this could result in an intergenerational vicious cycle where obesity begets obesity.

    Is there anything we can do about it? Well, breastfed infants may be at lower risk for later obesity, though the benefits may be confined to those who are exclusively breastfed, as the effect may be due to growth factors triggered by exposure to the excess protein in baby formula, as you can see below and at 3:51 in my video. The breastfeeding data are controversial, though, with charges leveled of a “white hat bias.” That’s the concern that public health researchers might disproportionally shelve research results that don’t fit some goal for the greater good. (In this case, preferably publishing breastfeeding studies showing more positive results.) But, of course, that criticism came from someone who works for an infant formula company. Breast is best, regardless. However, its role in the childhood obesity epidemic remains arguably uncertain.

    Prevention may be the key. Given the epigenetic influence of maternal weight during pregnancy, a symposium of experts on pediatric nutrition concluded that “planning of pregnancy, including prior optimization of maternal weight and metabolic condition, offers a safe means to initiate the prevention rather than treatment of pediatric obesity.” Easier said than done, but overweight moms-to-be may take comfort in the fact that after the weight loss in the surgery study, even the moms who gave birth to kids with three times lower risk were still, on average, obese themselves, suggesting weight loss before pregnancy is not an all-or-nothing proposition.

    What triggered the whole obesity epidemic to begin with? There are a multitude of factors, and I covered many of them in my 11-video series on the epidemic in the related posts below.

    We are what our moms ate in other ways, too. Check out: 

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • UK Considers New Smartphone Bans for Children

    UK Considers New Smartphone Bans for Children

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    We know surprisingly little about the impact of smartphone bans in schools, says Sonia Livingstone, a professor at the London School of Economics who studies how digital technologies affect young people. There are relatively few good studies in this area, and those studies that have been done often point in contradictory directions. There is just about enough evidence to suggest that preventing children from accessing their phones improves concentration, says Livingstone, but it’s much harder to say that banning phones leads to less bullying or more play. “The research is just really insufficient for that,” she says.

    Separating out how specific issues like bullying, mental health, sleep time, exercise, and concentration are impacted by smartphones is extremely tricky, says Livingstone. She points to the lack of mental health services for young people and poor pay and conditions for teachers as other potential issues that get overlooked in favor of smartphone bans. Phones might be part of the problem, she says, but they’re also seized upon as an all-purpose solution. “They seem the bit we can do something about,” she says, “and they seem the most obvious new thing.”

    The proposed new bill would also raise the age at which children can consent to allow social media companies to use their date from 13 to 16. “If we can create a version of those apps and a version of smartphones effectively for U16s, it will make it easier for them to clock out and go do real-world activities,” MacAllister told the Today show. The UK already passed a law in 2023—the Online Safety Act—that is supposed to protect children from some kinds of content, but most parts of the act have yet to come into force.

    Rather than focusing on bans, legislators should think more about how to teach children to have healthier relationships with technology and hold tech companies to account, says Pete Etchells, a professor at Bath Spa University and author of Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time. “We need to think about how we design [digital technologies] better, and support people in understanding how to use them,” he says.

    And getting there, according to Etchells, means moving past simplistic narratives like assuming that restricting screen time will lead to more outdoor play. He points to a 2011 law in South Korea that banned children from playing online games between midnight and 6 in the morning. After four years, the ban had made no meaningful difference in terms of internet use or sleeping hours. The law was dropped in 2021.

    “If you talk to any mental health professional, any researcher in this area, they will tell you there’s no such thing as a single root cause for things getting worse or better,” Etchells says. Looking to smartphone restrictions as the main response to the problems facing young people might turn out to be the easy answer rather than the right one.

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    Matt Reynolds

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  • California Is Flooding School Cafeterias With Vegan Meals—and Kids Like It

    California Is Flooding School Cafeterias With Vegan Meals—and Kids Like It

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    Student nutrition directors like Primer say the foundation that allows schools to experiment with new recipes is California’s universal free lunch program. She notes that, when school lunch is free, students are more likely to actually try and enjoy it: “Free food plus good food equals a participation meal increase every time.”

    Nora Stewart, the author of the Friends of the Earth report, says the recent increase in vegan school lunch options has also been in response to a growing demand for less meat and dairy in cafeterias from climate-conscious students. “We’re seeing a lot of interest from students and parents to have more plant-based [meals] as a way to really help curb greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. A majority of Gen Zers—79 percent—say they would eat meatless at least once or twice a week, according to research conducted by Aramark, a company provides food services to school districts and universities, among other clients. And the food-service company that recently introduced an all-vegetarian menu in the San Francisco Unified School District credits students with having “led the way” in asking for less meat in their cafeterias. The menu includes four vegan options: an edamame teriyaki bowl, a bean burrito bowl, a taco bowl with a pea-based meat alternative, and marinara pasta.

    Stewart theorizes that school nutrition directors are also increasingly aware of other benefits to serving vegan meals. “A lot of school districts are recognizing that they can integrate more culturally diverse options with more plant-based meals,” said Stewart. In the past five years, the nonprofit found, California school districts have added 41 new vegan dishes to their menus, including chana masala bowls, vegan tamales, and falafel wraps. Dairy-free meals also benefit lactose-intolerant students, who are more likely to be students of color.

    Still, vegan meals are hardly the default in California cafeterias, and in many places, they’re unheard of. Out of the 25 largest school districts in the state, only three elementary districts offer daily vegan options, the same number as did in 2019. According to Friends of the Earth, a fourth of the California school districts they reviewed offer no plant-based meal options; in another fourth, the only vegan option for students is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I was surprised to see that,” said Stewart.

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  • In Missouri, Halloween night signs were required at the homes of sex offenders. Until now

    In Missouri, Halloween night signs were required at the homes of sex offenders. Until now

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    ST. LOUIS (AP) — Many states have laws designed to keep children away from convicted sexual offenders on Halloween night, such as curfews for those on offender registries and requirements to keep their porch lights off.

    But a Missouri law mandating a sign at the offender’s home was a step too far, a judge ruled.

    A 2008 law required registered offenders in Missouri to post signs on Oct. 31 that read “No candy or treats at this residence.” U.S. District Judge John Ross ruled this month that the provision violated the First Amendment by forcing “compelled speech,” depriving those on the registry “of their freedom to speak in their own words or to not speak at all.”

    The ruling lets stand other provisions of the Missouri law that require people on the registry on Halloween to remain inside their home from 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. and to leave their outdoor lights off.

    The Missouri sign law is unique among states, but some cities and counties have tried similar laws that were either struck down in court or withdrawn as part of lawsuit settlements.

    Ross’ ruling on the Missouri sign law drew a mixed response. Some said extraordinary steps are necessary on a night when children flood the streets and often knock on the doors of strangers. Others said the sign law was unnecessarily cruel — and even counterproductive.

    “I feel like it’s a setback and another example of predators’ rights kind of trumping those of their victims,” said Tara Bishop, a 40-year-old mother of four from southwestern Missouri who operates a Facebook page called Child Predators Exposed with more than 10,000 followers.

    But an extensive examination of crime data published in 2009 in the Sexual Abuse journal found no increased risk of sexual abuse of children on Halloween. Experts say the vast majority of child sexual abuse crimes involve someone known by the victim or the child’s family, and not strangers.

    Janice Bellucci, the lawyer for the Missouri man who challenged the law, said that for those forced to place the sign, the damage is long-lasting.

    “It’s not just stigmatizing you that one day, it stigmatizes you for the rest of your life, as long as you live there,” said Bellucci, who is part of the California-based Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws.

    The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Thomas L. Sanderson of Hazelwood, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb. He was convicted of second-degree sodomy in 2006 after a 16-year-old family friend accused him of sexually touching her. Sanderson, who has maintained his innocence, was sentenced to two years in prison and required to register as a sexual offender for 25 years.

    The Missouri Halloween law was adopted two years later. It is unclear how many of the state’s approximately 26,000 convicted sexual offenders have been charged for violating the statute, or how stringent enforcement has been. The law doesn’t say where the sign must be placed. People on the registry are responsible for making their own signs.

    The lawsuit said Sanderson asked police if he was subject to the law because his conviction happened before its passage. He said he was told he was not, so he continued to host Halloween parties complete with animatronic figures, lights, a bonfire, music and candy, the lawsuit said.

    But the lawsuit said that on Halloween night 2022, police arrived at Sanderson’s home. No sign was posted, and he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for violating the Halloween statute and received probation. He sued last year.

    Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office, in court filings, wrote that the state is duty-bound to protect children who can’t make adequate decisions on their own. Bailey’s office said an appeal is planned.

    “I want Missouri to be the safest state in the nation for children. That includes on Halloween,” Bailey, a Republican, said in a statement.

    Alison Feigh, director of Jacob Wetterling Resource Center at Zero Abuse Project, which focuses on helping institutions prevent, recognize and respond to child sexual abuse, said most assaults happen after offenders build relationships with victims and their families. Tactics like signs are not helpful in keeping children safe, she said in an email.

    “These public signs may give a false sense of security to families while not actually preventing child abuse,” Feigh said.

    Other Halloween sign laws also have faced setbacks.

    In Georgia, the Butts County Sheriff’s Office was sued in 2019, with people on registries alleging that authorities trespassed onto their properties to post signs that caused humiliation and anxiety. The signs read: “WARNING! NO TRICK-OR-TREATING AT THIS ADDRESS!! A COMMUNITY SAFETY MESSAGE FROM BUTTS COUNTY SHERIFF GARY LONG.”

    A federal appeals court panel in 2022 said the signage violated the First Amendment.

    In California, Simi Valley required Halloween signs in the yards of registered sexual offenders until reaching a 2013 settlement in a lawsuit filed by the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws on behalf of five offenders.

    In January, the alliance filed suit after the sheriff’s office in Marion County, Arkansas, created and posted signs and placed them in the yards of those on the registry. The signs read: “Sorry! No Trick or Treat.” The sheriff’s office later agreed to stop posting or requiring the signs.

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  • Christopher Reeve’s kids wanted to be ‘honest, raw and vulnerable’ in new documentary ‘Super/Man’

    Christopher Reeve’s kids wanted to be ‘honest, raw and vulnerable’ in new documentary ‘Super/Man’

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    NEW YORK — Christopher Reeve’s children say they made a point to include all the complexities of their father’s life — his strengths and weaknesses — in the new documentary “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” — because that’s what he would have wanted.

    The film includes family home videos, mixed with interviews and movie clips of Reeve, who famously played Superman in four films, in addition to other acting and directing roles later in his career. Reeve’s three children, Matthew, Alexandra and Will Reeve, say there were no restrictions on topics or video used in their father’s story.

    “He wouldn’t have wanted to be viewed through rose-colored glasses. He would want art and cinema and factual, comprehensive storytelling and that’s what he got,” Reeve’s youngest son, Will told The Associated Press. “It’s important to us to be honest and raw and vulnerable and give a 360-degree view of a very human life, of a very human family.”

    Known as the Man of Steel, Reeve — an avid athlete, sailor, skier and horseman — was nearly killed in a 1995 horse-riding accident that left him paralyzed for the rest of his life. He used his platform to become an advocate for people with disabilities, starting a foundation in his name.

    Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui were able to access some never-before-seen home movies of the Reeve family before and after the accident. “When we started to make the film, one of the things they were adamant (about) is that they will share everything. They will share the archive, but they will share their emotional states … everything,” Bonhôte said. “That was the first time they were going to do it, and they were going to go all out.”

    Reeve had recorded audio of his memoir before he died in 2004, so his narration is used in parts, adding to the film’s intimacy. The actor became a father to Matthew and Alexandra with his first partner, Gae Exton, and the family was living in the U.K. before Reeve decided he needed a break and moved back to the U.S. alone. Exton, who is interviewed in the film, shares compelling memories of that time, and Matthew and Alexandra admit their father was not around regularly during their childhood.

    Other interviews include Susan Sarandon and Glenn Close, who befriended Reeve after he graduated from the Julliard School and started taking on acting roles in New York. Close suggests in the film that Reeve and Robin Williams — Julliard classmates and close friends — had a deep connection and that if Reeve were still alive, Williams likely would be too.

    Reeve’s kids say the process of going through their archives and being interviewed for the film gave them a new perspective and appreciation of their dad. Will Reeve was only 12 when his father died. His mother, Dana, was diagnosed with cancer and died less than 18 months later. Now an ABC News correspondent, Reeve says he was fortunate to have had family and close friends help raise him and considers himself “pretty well-adjusted.”

    “There’s a scenario in which things could have turned out differently,” Will Reeve said. “But because of the values instilled in us by our parents, because of the way that they let us into their lives, the good and the bad, the joyous and the tragic … that prepared us for life’s difficulties and life’s joys.”

    One thing that impressed the directors most in their research was Reeve’s commitment to help others even after he was physically limited in his own life. After becoming a quadriplegic, Reeve and his family were shocked at the lack of resources for people with disabilities and started the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation to help improve quality of life and fund research for a cure for people with spinal cord injuries.

    “He allowed him(self) to have 10 or 15 minutes of self-pity, and then he was on a mission to change the world. And I think that’s very, very inspiring because … the family as a whole, Dana and the kids, they faced a huge amount of difficulties, you know, 24-hour care, the cost,” Bonhôte said. “So he would fight for those that are less privileged than him.”

    Alexandra Reeve Givens has kept up the advocacy in the family, working on the foundation and as a Washington attorney and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology. She said reflecting on her father’s life was powerful.

    “To see those elements of his character that stayed constant throughout his life: the commitment, the intensity, the passion, the strength,“ she said. “Those things changed after the accident and manifested in new ways. That strength suddenly meant something totally different. It was a strength to get up every day.”

    The film is being widely released Friday to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Reeve’s death this month.

    Matthew Reeve— a writer, producer and director —says the film reemphasized lessons the family learned from their parents, including the fragility of life.

    “I think what it also instilled in us very early on was this deep sense of gratitude of everything, from being thankful that he survived the accident to an enduring gratitude that tomorrow is not promised and that you have to really value the present,” he said.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct that Christopher Reeve died in 2004, not 2005.

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  • Members of the Kennedy family gather for funeral of Ethel Kennedy

    Members of the Kennedy family gather for funeral of Ethel Kennedy

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    CENTERVILLE, Mass. — Members of the Kennedy family gathered Monday for the funeral of Ethel Kennedy, the wife of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

    Ethel Kennedy, who raised their 11 children after her husband was assassinated and remained dedicated to social causes and the family’s legacy, died on Thursday at age 96.

    Monday’s funeral, which was closed to the public, took place at Our Lady of Victory, in Centerville, Massachusetts, about 28 miles (45 kilometers) north of Boston.

    Mourners gathered at the church under a cool gray sky. Ethel Kennedy died following complications related to a stroke suffered earlier this month.

    “Along with a lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,” the family statement said in announcing her death.

    President Joe Biden called her “an American icon — a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, an emblem of resilience and service.”

    The Kennedy matriarch, mother to Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last remaining members of a family generation that included President John F. Kennedy. Her family said she had recently enjoyed seeing many of her relatives before falling ill.

    A millionaire’s daughter who married the future senator and attorney general in 1950, Ethel Kennedy had endured more death by the age of 40, for the whole world to see, than most people would in a lifetime.

    She was by Robert F. Kennedy’s side when he was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. Her brother-in-law had been assassinated in Dallas less than five years earlier.

    Ethel Kennedy went on to found the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights soon after her husband’s death and advocated for causes including gun control and human rights. She rarely spoke about her husband’s assassination.

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  • Haiti’s gangs luring more children into crime and sexual abuse, HRW says, as 115 people killed in attack

    Haiti’s gangs luring more children into crime and sexual abuse, HRW says, as 115 people killed in attack

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    Haiti’s rampant criminal gangs are luring more children into lives of crime and sexual abuse, as hunger and poverty in the tiny Caribbean nation drive young people to desperation, according to a report published Wednesday by the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch. Hundreds, possibly thousands more children have joined the violent gangs in recent months, HRW says, with members forcing youngsters to commit crimes and subjecting them to sexual abuse and violence.

    The bloodshed and political chaos that has beleaguered Haiti has shown no signs of abating, with a single gang attack last week in the town of Pont-Sondé, about 40 miles from the capital Port-au-Prince, leaving 115 people dead and at least 16 others seriously wounded, according to local officials.

    Myriam Fièvre, the mayor of the nearby city of Saint-Marc, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the toll from the Oct. 3 attack would likely rise further, as authorities still hadn’t managed to access certain parts of Pont-Sondé. At least three infants were among those killed, according to a previous statement from the United Nations human rights commissioner.

    Haitians plead for protection following gang massacre
    A child reacts as families displaced from their homes after a deadly attack by members of the Gran Grif gang, which stormed through the town of Pont-Sondé, killing dozens of people, stand in a park in Saint-Marc, Haiti, to seek help, Oct. 6, 2024.

    Marckinson Pierre / REUTERS


    The HRW report published Wednesday says the gangs likely started drawing more children into their ranks in response to law enforcement operations against their members by the Haiti Police and the United Nations-backed Multinational Security Support Mission. The MSS mission was recently approved by the United Nations. Led by Kenya, the force has only been partially deployed.

    Criminal groups control almost 80% of Port-au-Prince, and HRW says joining the gangs is often the only option children have to obtain food and shelter. Around 125,000 children suffer from acute hunger in Haiti, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Some 2.7 million people live in gang-controlled territory, including 500,000 children.

    HRW says almost a third of gang members now are believed to be children. A humanitarian worker in the country told HRW the gangs are using social media platforms including TikTok to attract young recruits.

    HRW said girls are sexually abused by gang members and exploited for domestic labor once lured in.

    “The [gang] leaders force them to perform sexual acts with them or their members while others watch,” HRW quoted one humanitarian worker as saying. “They tell them that they are their girlfriends and that they must obey them, but in reality, they exploit them for their pleasure and consumption.”

    FILE PHOTO: The Wider Image: Camping in schools, hungry Haiti families ask: when will normality return?
    Children accompany armed gang members in a march organized by former police officer Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, leader of an alliance of armed gangs, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in a May 10, 2024 file photo.

    Pedro Valtierra Anza/REUTERS


    Boys are often used by the gangs to run errands, act as informants to get information on police activity and to transport weapons, HRW says, though they’re sometimes commissioned to assist in carrying out more serious, violent crimes, including kidnapping and murder. For this, they are fed and often paid — money which the young recruits often use to support family members facing poverty.

    Gang members often use violence to control child soldiers once they’ve been recruited, beating and threatening them if they refuse to follow orders. One boy interviewed by HRW told the organization he originally joined a gang as an 8-year-old orphan, living on the street. He said he was given a gun and told to wear it on his back.

    “Girls are not usually offered incentives for loyalty,” the HRW report says in the report, citing aid workers on the ground. “Instead, they are usually let go after some time, typically when they become pregnant as a result of rape.”

    Despite the spiraling violence, the U.S. government resumed deporting some migrants back to Haiti‘s capital after a pause in the flights. The Biden administration has, however, extended temporary protected status to Haitians in the U.S. until 2025.

    Former President Donald Trump has vowed, if reelected in November, to enact large-scale deportations of migrants, including Haitians.

    HRW says more international aid is desperately needed in Haiti and in its new report, it calls on the country’s transitional government to prioritize initiatives to protect children. The transitional council took power in April with a mandate to start rebuilding Haiti’s crippled civilian government after years of turmoil amplified by the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

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  • TikTok is designed to be addictive to kids and causes them harm, US states’ lawsuits say

    TikTok is designed to be addictive to kids and causes them harm, US states’ lawsuits say

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    More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against TikTok on Tuesday, saying that the popular short-form video app is designed to be addictive to kids and harms their mental health.

    The lawsuits stem from a national investigation into TikTok, which was launched in March 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from many states, including New York, California, Kentucky and New Jersey. All of the complaints were filed in state courts.

    At the heart of each lawsuit is the TikTok algorithm, which powers what users see on the platform by populating the app’s main “For You” feed with content tailored to people’s interests. The lawsuits note TikTok design features that they say addict children to the platform, such as the ability to scroll endlessly through content, push notifications that come with built-in “buzzes” and face filters that create unattainable appearances for users.

    “They’ve chosen profit over the health and safety, well-being and future of our children,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a news conference in San Francisco. “And that is not something we can accept. So we’ve sued.”

    The latest lawsuits come nearly a year after dozens of states sued Instagram parent Meta Platforms Inc. in state and federal courts for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing addictive features that keep kids hooked on their platforms.

    Keeping people on the platform is “how they generate massive ad revenue,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in an interview. “But unfortunately, that’s also how they generate adverse mental health impacts on the users.”

    The legal challenges, which also include Google’s YouTube, are part of a growing reckoning against social media companies and their effects on young people’s lives. In some cases, the challenges have been coordinated in a way that resembles how states previously organized against the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.

    TikTok, though, is facing an even bigger obstacle, as its very existence in the U.S. is in question. Under a federal law that took effect earlier this year, TikTok could be banned from the U.S. by mid-January if its China-based parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t sell the platform by then. Both TikTok and ByteDance are challenging the law at an appeals court in Washington. A panel of three judges heard oral arguments in the case last month and are expected to issue a ruling, which could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    In its filings Tuesday, the District of Columbia called the algorithm “dopamine-inducing,” and said it was created to be intentionally addictive so the company could trap many young users into excessive use and keep them on its app for hours on end. TikTok does this despite knowing that these behaviors will lead to profound psychological and physiological harms, such as anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and other long-lasting problems, the district said.

    TikTok is disappointed that the lawsuits were filed after the company had been working with the attorneys general for two years on addressing to the issues, a spokesman said.

    “We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading,” the TikTok spokesman. Alex Haurek, said. “We’re proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we’ve done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product.”

    The social media company does not allow children under 13 to sign up for its main service and restricts some content for everyone under 18. But Washington and several other states said in their filings that children can easily bypass those restrictions, allowing them to access the service adults use despite the company’s claims that its platform is safe for children.

    The District of Columbia alleges TikTok is operating as an “unlicensed virtual economy” by allowing people to purchase TikTok Coins – a virtual currency within the platform – and send “Gifts” to streamers on TikTok LIVE who can cash it out for real money. TikTok takes a 50% commission on these financial transactions but hasn’t registered as a money transmitter with the U.S. Treasury Department or authorities in the district, according to the complaint.

    Officials say teens are frequently exploited for sexually explicit content through TikTok’s LIVE streaming feature, which has allowed the app to operate essentially as a “virtual strip club” without any age restrictions. They say the cut the company gets from the financial transactions allows it to profit from exploitation.

    The 14 attorneys general say the goal of their lawsuits is to stop TikTok from using these features, impose financial penalties for their alleged illegal practices and collect damages for users that have been harmed.

    The use of social media among teens is nearly universal in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. Almost all teens ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with about a third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.

    High school students who frequently use social media more commonly have persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, according to a new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted last year in which about 20,000 teenagers participated.

    Also on Tuesday, 22 other states including Alabama, Colorado, Florida and Michigan filed an amicus brief urging a Tennessee court to force TikTok to produce documents related to a multistate investigation that those attorney general offices say TikTok is withholding or destroying.

    When TikTok failed to produce the requested information last year, 46 states including Minnesota filed an amicus brief in support of Tennessee. The amicus brief they filed Tuesday supports Tennessee’s continued efforts to compel TikTok’s compliance.

    Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued TikTok, alleging the company was sharing and selling minors’ personal information in violation of a new state law that prohibits these practices. TikTok, which disputes the allegations, is also fighting against a similar data-oriented federal lawsuit filed in August by the Department of Justice.

    Several Republican-led states, including Nebraska, Kansas, New Hampshire, Kansas, Iowa and Arkansas, also previously sued the company, some unsuccessfully, over allegations it is harming children’s mental health, exposing them to “inappropriate” content or allowing young people to be sexually exploited on its platform.

    ___

    Associated Press writers from around the U.S. contributed to this story.

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  • Lingokids Launches New Animated Learning Series “Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales”

    Lingokids Launches New Animated Learning Series “Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales”

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    LOS ANGELES (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Lingokids, the top early learning app for children, today announced the launch of its new animated series, “Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales”. The latest video series from the award-winning learning company invites viewers to join beloved character Baby Bot and his friends on magical adventures in the backyard. Each mini-episode is crafted to engage children in humor and play while imparting important lessons about kindness, compassion, creativity, and honesty.

    “We’re thrilled to welcome ‘Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales’ to the Lingokids family. This engaging co-viewing show offers families a delightful way to bond while learning together,” said Cristobal Viedma, founder and CEO at Lingokids. “This new series underscores our dedication to creating educational entertainment that nurtures crucial social-emotional skills, empowering children to thrive both now and well into the future.”

    The series kicks off with three captivating episodes designed to address common social-emotional topics and life lessons:

    1. The Mysterious Magic Stick: A tale of honesty and respecting others’ belongings.
    2. The Best Nest in the World: An exploration of empathy and appreciating differences.
    3. Bee-YOU-tiful!: A heartwarming story about body positivity and self-acceptance.

    “Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales” is now available on the Lingokids app, where users can enjoy an exclusive 1-week anticipated premiere of new episodes before they get aired on the company’s YouTube channel.

    About Lingokids

    Lingokids is an educational tech and media company dedicated to transforming the way children learn traditional and modern life skills. Through its unique Playlearning™ approach, Lingokids provides engaging, interactive learning experiences, empowering children to lead their own educational journeys. Launched in 2015, Lingokids has become a trusted platform for over 95 million families worldwide, offering the award-winning Lingokids app, podcasts, videos, and more.

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