One in four teens face violence, higher substance use

One in four U.S. adolescents is exposed to violence in their neighborhood, and those teens are more than twice as likely to use cigarettes, alcohol or drugs to cope, according to a new study from The University of Texas at Arlington.

Published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, the study was led by UT Arlington School of Social Work Professor Philip Baiden and drew on national data from the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Researchers analyzed responses from 20,005 adolescents ages 12 to 18, offering new insights into early pathways to substance use, a persistent public health concern.

“Our study reminds us that violence is not a rare or isolated experience for many young people—it is a daily reality,” Dr. Baiden said. “Youth exposed to neighborhood violence often carry the psychological weight of chronic stress, fear and trauma. Many turn to alcohol, marijuana, vaping or other substances to self-medicate or numb the emotional impact of these experiences.”

According to the 2024 National Institute on Drug Abuse annual report, 58.3% of individuals ages 12 or older reported using tobacco, vaping nicotine, alcohol or an illicit drug in the prior month. Substance misuse contributes to preventable illness and death nationwide.

Catherine LaBrenz, coauthor of the study and a UTA School of Social Work associate professor, noted that previous research has shown neighborhood violence can alter how the brain processes emotions.

“When teens experience chronic fear or trauma, it can increase vulnerability to substance use,” Dr. LaBrenz said.

The researchers examined five substance categories: cigarette smoking, alcohol use, electronic vaping products, marijuana use, and prescription opioid misuse. Exposure to neighborhood violence was associated with higher odds of using all five substances, even after controlling for demographics, mental health symptoms, physical activity and bullying involvement.

The study also revealed several notable patterns. Cyberbullying is more strongly linked to substance use than traditional school bullying. In addition, students who participate in team sports tend to report higher rates of alcohol use.

“Cyberbullying is distinct in that it follows adolescents everywhere—there is no escape,” Baiden said. “If someone is bullied on a school playground, it’s traumatizing but you could brush it off and might be able to outgrow it. When it is cyberbullying, it spreads widely, persists indefinitely and you don’t know who has access to it, which makes its emotional impact even more traumatic. You can’t just delete it.”

The study also identified a nuanced relationship between team sports and substance use. Participation in team sports such as football, for example, was linked to increased alcohol use.

“Team sports can offer structure, belonging and social support, but they also expose adolescents to peer cultures where alcohol use may be normalized,” Baiden said. “That helps explain why we see increased odds of drinking among youth who participate.”

Baiden and LaBrenz said the findings could help inform policies and prevention strategies aimed at reducing substance use among adolescents. Further research will focus on specific populations and potential interventions.

“It’s not enough to document adverse effects,” Baiden said. “We want to identify interventions that counselors, mental health professionals and social workers can use when working with youth who experience neighborhood violence.”

UTA Social Work professors Angela J. Hall and Joshua Awua were contributing authors to the study.

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Journal

Journal of Affective Disorders

DOI

10.1016/j.jad.2025.120626 

Most college students rebounded after pandemic, but to varying degrees

 

New research from Michigan State University finds that in the four years after the COVID-19 pandemic upended campus life, the majority of college students successfully bounced back. Students experienced rising life satisfaction and declining loneliness and, surprisingly, even a fonder remembrance of online classes from the early days of the pandemic.

The study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, is one of the few longitudinal studies to come out of the pandemic. Researchers tracked the same 248 college students from 2020–21 through 2025.

The study — which sampled MSU students — found broad improvements in psychological functioning. Participants reported higher life satisfaction, less loneliness and seeing friends more often in person again.

Largest of all, participants reflected more fondly on their online courses nearly five years after the initial shift to online learning. They also reported having a preference for in-person and hybrid work and learning opportunities over fully remote options.

“The fact that people now see remote learning more favorably — even though they hated it at the time — tells us something important about how we design flexible education and work options going forward,” said William Chopik, co-author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Psychology. “People’s preferences for remote versus in-person work are tied to who they are as people and how they might work or learn best, so blanket policies probably aren’t the best approach.”

Personality traits were a small predictor of outcomes years following the pandemic. Extraverts reported higher life satisfaction and lower loneliness, while more anxious people struggled a bit more with loneliness over time. 

“This study gives us a clearer picture of how personality matters more during crises but less so once things stabilize,” said Logan Gibson, co-author and undergraduate research associate. “It’s reassuring to know that people aren’t locked into bad outcomes just because of their personality traits.”

However, researchers emphasize that the findings suggest that one-size-fits-all approaches to postcrisis recovery may leave vulnerable individuals behind.

“We’re hoping this helps organizations and mental health professionals understand that while most people are resilient, not everyone rebounds at the same rate,” said Chopik. “If you know that certain people might need extra support during big transitions, you can actually do something about it. This could help schools and workplaces design better support systems instead of assuming everyone’s fine once restrictions lift.

By Shelly DeJong

Read on MSUToday.

Effects of Age on Entry toWomen's Education on their Careers and Children

This study examines the causal effect of higher age age at commencing women's education on their wages, non-wage job amenities, and spillovers to children, finding that women born just before the cutoff are more likely to complete some college, and experience multi-dimensional career gains that grow over the life cycle: greater employment and earnings, as well as more professional and higher-status jobs, more socially meaningful work, and better working conditions. 

Children’s early-life health and prenatal inputs improve in tandem with career improvements, consistent with professional advances spurring—not hindering—infant investments. Career gains are concentrated in jobs that require exactly some college, the same schooling margin shifted by the cutoff, which indicates that increased post-secondary education is the primary channel for these effects. 

Together, the results show that women's college attendance generates large career returns—from both wages and amenities—that strengthen over time and produce meaningful benefits for children.

Charter Schools and Achievement of Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities (SWDs) encompass a sizable share of charter students and have an array of individualized needs. Charter schools may operate differently than traditional public schools with respect to SWDs and special education (SPED), as funding incentives may induce charter schools to underserve SWDs. Nonetheless, there is little empirical evidence regarding how enrollment in charter schools affects SWDs’ educational environments and outcomes. 

This study uses data from Michigan to estimate charter impacts using a heterogeneous difference-in-differences model that compares students who enter charters to students who have not yet but will eventually enter charters, finding that charters are slightly more likely to identify students as SWDs after charter entry. 

While assignments to SPED programs increase comparably, there is a significant reduction and subsequent reversion in time spent in SPED-specific environments and services provided. Despite these changes, SWDs realize achievement and attendance gains after charter entry at similar levels to non-SWDs.

Embedding critical thinking from a young age

 Education systems need to focus more on independent critical thinking and rational, evidence-based learning and problem-solving to find answers to many of the unprecedented environmental, social and economic challenges facing humanity, experts say.    

Scientists from around the world, including Flinders University microbiologist Dr Jake Robinson, have called for a radical refocus of school curricula from early years to high school to include more critical thinking and learning skills to empower students to ‘think outside the box’.

“Cultivating deep, critical and systems-oriented thinking is no longer optional (but) essential in the face of global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and health crises,” the experts say in an open-access editorial in Microbial Biotechnology.

“Fostering these capacities must begin early in life, within educational systems designed not just to transmit information but to nurture thoughtful, engaged and capable citizens.”

Joining fellow microbiologists and scientists in Europe, China, India, the Middle East and North and South America, the editorial article warns digital technology, artificial intelligence and misinformation is “enhancing biases and numbing our ability to think clearly and reach sensible decisions”.

“There is an urgent need to rapidly roll out effective education program in which critical thinking teaching is solidly embedded,” says Dr Robinson, from Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering.

“Critical thinking, and especially the cultivation of the habit of asking ‘why’ and requiring plausible justification for policies or actions, is a shield against bias, prejudice, propaganda, misinformation and the incessant pressures of social media.

“It promotes a healthy mind and the attainment of the developmental potential of individuals.

“The very young are not able to comprehend the complex abstract issues underpinning critical thinking, so embedding the teaching of critical thinking in a suitable educational context, and integrating it into curricula, is another challenge.”

Tools such as the International Microbiology Literacy Initiative’s MicroChats provide class discussion topics to encourage children to imagine the application of each element in other contexts to reinforce principles and hone critical thinking skills.

By introducing children to microbiological concepts that affect daily life – such as food spoilage, hygiene, disease transmission and fermentation – the resource creates real-world contexts for critical reflection.

Dr Robinson, whose third book The Nature of Pandemics: Why Protecting Biodiversity is Key to Human Survival has just been published, says many answers to age-old problems in scientific discovery have relied upon imagination to solve.

“Education is often reduced to the transmission of knowledge, yet in an era of climate disruption, biodiversity decline, and social injustice and unrest, learners require more than facts and skills,” he says in another Microbial Biotechnology editorial.

“Students must develop adaptive capacities that enable them to question, critically analyse, imagine, act, and empathise.  One such fundamental capacity is imagination, which is frequently undervalued in science education, particularly in fields considered ‘hard’ sciences.

“Microbiology offers a compelling context for better cultivating imagination because its study requires learners to visualise invisible worlds, connect them to ecological and human health, and explore how such knowledge might be applied to societal challenges.”

Dr Robinson says microbiology education is one topic that can overcome curricular, resource and cultural barriers to encourage collective imagination and help to democratise learning, expand world views, and promote a sense of responsibility, citizenship, and stewardship.

“More than rote learning, education is key to realising the potential of an individual, and to cultivate the capacities that learners need to question, adapt and imagine.”

The articles – ‘Scientists' warning to humanity: The need to begin teaching critical and systems thinking early in life’ and ‘Creative futures in education: Building ‘imagination infrastructures’ for microbiology and beyond’ (2025) –  have been published by Microbial Biotechnology (Wiley Online) DOI: 10. 10.1111/1751-7915.70270 & DOI: 10.1111/1751-7915.70284.

Trust in PhD advisor predicts a good grad school experience

 

The advisor-advisee relationship is central to most doctoral education models. Yet not all students trust their advisors. Danfei Hu, Jonathan E. Cook, and colleagues sought to examine the importance of this relationship to success and wellbeing in graduate school. The authors focused on the first year of graduate school, a time in which PhD students adapt to their role as scholars and in which large numbers of students drop out. 

In a prospective longitudinal study of 558 incoming PhD students, primarily in STEM fields, at three US research universities, the authors found that PhD students’ academic motivation and well-being declined over the course of the year. However, those with greater-than-average trust in their advisors early in doctoral training reported greater motivation, including more interest in research and their field of study, higher self-efficacy, stronger academic belonging, greater academic self-control, and more optimism about their academic career. 

Those with greater-than-average trust in their advisors also reported greater well-being, including greater life satisfaction, less psychological distress, and less burnout. Moreover, PhD students with higher-than-average trust in their advisors submitted more manuscripts during their first year, submitted more applications for fellowships and grants, were awarded more fellowships and grants, reported that they had developed exciting research ideas more often, and experienced a greater sense of accomplishment. Importantly, trust in an advisor mattered just as much for students regardless of their gender, race, socioeconomic status or academic field. 

According to the authors, these longitudinal findings underscore a plausible causal role of advisor trust in shaping a successful and healthy PhD journey and suggest that strengthening trust between advisors and advisees could help PhD students thrive in their doctoral education.

Younger children experience persistent symptoms following concussion

When most people think of concussion, the first type of patient that  comes to mind is a youth athlete. However, concussion is also common in early childhood, largely  due to kids’ naturally exploratory behavior as they experience and learn their world. A new study  from researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital finds that while a toddler’s concussion  experience is often different than an older child’s, symptoms can last just as long. 

The study, published today in Pediatrics, examined patients ages 6 months to 6 years, and found that  similar to older children and adults, about one fourth of children younger than six years of age who  experience a concussion will develop prolonged symptoms, which can affect learning and behavior later in childhood. 

“Because of their size differences and weaker muscles, young children are more likely to sustain a  brain injury,” said Sean Rose, MD, lead author of the study, pediatric neurologist and co-director of  the Complex Concussion Clinic at Nationwide Children’s. “This study helps emphasize that younger  children with a head injury should be appropriately evaluated to determine if treatments or other  services are needed.” 

Younger children sustain concussion mostly due to falls, as opposed to older children who are more  often injured in a sport setting. Because of their inability to report their own symptoms, traditional  concussion symptom scales can fail to detect them. Post-concussion symptoms can include  behavioral changes, excessive irritability, appetite changes, decreased social engagement,  stomachaches and increased dependence/clinginess. 

In school-aged children and adults with concussion, symptoms that last longer than one month are  considered Persisting Symptoms after Concussion (PSaC). This study adds – for the first time – knowledge about PSaC in younger children, although more research is needed to determine the  clinical infrastructure needed to assess and care for these children.