We’ve been reporting for a while that social media can bum you out. A new study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal bears that out. The study focused specifically on teens, and it found that teen girls that use social media more than two hours a day have higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. […]
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It wasn’t that long ago that everybody from parents to clergymen to U.S. senators were all aflutter about the kid-destroying characteristics of videogames. These days, however, its not so much parents screaming at the kids to turn off the videogames as it is parents urging them to sharpen their button-mashing skills. You know, so they […]
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Movies? TV? Those things are soooo 2015 for today’s youth. YouTube is where it’s at. That’s what Common Sense Media found in its fresh-off-the-presses 2019 “Media use by Tweens and Teens” census. While tweens and teens aren’t increasing their screen time consumption at the rapid pace we’ve seen over the last decade or two, how […]
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Being a tween or teen has probably never been an easy thing. But the pressures faced by adolescents today—especially girls—are amplified in many ways by technology and social media. Author, speaker and regular Focus on the Family Broadcast guest Jessie Minassian has thought a lot about these issues. Her website, Life, Love and God: Where […]
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This past week, Lauren Daigle broke Christian music records as her song, “You Say,” became the longest running No. 1 hit on Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs chart. At 63 weeks in the top spot, it has beaten out Hillsong UNITED’s “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)” which previously held the top spot, according to The Christian […]
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They say numbers don’t lie. And if that’s true, then the online gaming world may have a problem on its hands, especially in light of a new study by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Before you throw up your hands and digitally turn away grumbling about studies, let me pile on a whole bunch of numbers […]
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This just in: Fortnite Battle Royale, the wildly popular online shooter game, isn’t as wildly popular as it once was. Part of that dip is apparently the fault of Fortnite itself: Players were disgruntled with the tweaks made to the game in recent weeks and moved away from it—at least temporarily. But simple game fatigue […]
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When 13 Reasons Why debuted on Netflix two years ago, many voices offered a strong word of caution regarding the graphic depiction of a teenage girl’s suicide in the first season’s final episode. Experts worried that the scene could act as a trigger for young or emotionally vulnerable viewers. Plugged In reviewer Paul Asay wrote, […]
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You may never have heard the term “burner phone” before. But if you’ve seen a spy movie in the last, oh, 20 years or so, you already know what a burner phone is. Simply put, a burner phone is typically a cheap, disposable, low-tech mobile phone with an anonymous phone number that can’t be tracked […]
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This is the third part of a three-part series examining the connection between our entertainment/media culture and mental health, the latter of which is a growing problem for America’s youth. Last week, Paul Asay unpacked the ways that movies and TV depict characters struggling with mental illness. This week, we focus on what researchers are […]
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Underneath the reviews, the blog posts, the vodcasts and Twitter missives, Plugged In is built on one basic premise: Media matters. The entertainment we consume—the stories we watch and read and listen to and play—impact us deeply, and on levels we might not fully realize. Obviously, the relationship between entertainment and its real-world impact is […]
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How much would you pay to see a movie? Ten bucks? Fifteen? Wait for it to hit Redbox and $1.75? How ‘bout $10,000? That’s how much opening-weekend tickets for Avengers: Endgame are going for on eBay in some places, according to Fandango.com. And while that might seem a bit overpriced, get this: Someone spent $15,000 […]
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The world was horrified last week when news spread of the horrific shooting that claimed the lives of 50 people at two New Zealand mosques on March 15. And though similar mass shootings around the world have become a terrible recurring story over the last couple of decades, such wanton carnage increasingly has a disturbing […]
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We’re in our second day of unveiling nominees for our world-renowned, mightily coveted Plugged In Movie Awards. And in this installment, we turn our attention to movies suitable for teens. This doesn’t mean that they’re solely for teens, of course. Many adults don’t mind watching superheroes do their thing. By default, this tends to be […]
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‘Tis the season to hand out gifts. But in our harried culture, not everyone has time to write letters to Santa Claus these days. And since Kris Kringle doesn’t have a Twitter account (or does he?), we at Plugged In thought we’d ask for a few presents for some culture’s movers and shakers. So Santa—can […]
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