Social media promotion, ease of access increase risk of adolescent inhalant misuse

 

Two new studies offer insight into the factors that coincide with adolescent inhalant use in the U.S., a dangerous pastime that can have lifelong — or life-ending — consequences.

The first report, described in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, found that millions of Americans were exposed to content about recreational nitrous oxide use from just 30 videos posted on social media in early 2025. Some of the videos included demonstrations of how to use inhalants.

The second study, detailed in the journal Preventive Medicine, found that younger teens are more likely than older adolescents to engage in inhalant misuse and that adolescent girls, in particular, are more likely than boys to develop inhalant use disorder, a condition defined as a “problematic pattern of use of a hydrocarbon-based inhalant substance leading to clinically significant impairment or distress.”

American Indian/Native Alaskan adolescents also were at higher risk of inhalant use disorder, and youth with other behavioral warning signs, particularly those who had engaged in fighting, stealing or cannabis use, were also found to be at higher risk.

Recreational inhalant use can include inhaling fumes from nitrous oxide cannisters, spray paints, glues or other sources of volatile hydrocarbons. Users report experiencing brief but intense highs when they engage in this activity.

“Inhalant use can cause serious harm, including neurologic damage, hearing loss, liver and kidney dysfunction, cardiac arrhythmias, psychological dependence and even sudden death after a single episode of use,” said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign health and kinesiology professor Rachel Hoopsick, who led the two studies with University of Mississippi public health professor Andrew Yockey, the corresponding author of both papers. Yockey will join the U. of I. health and kinesiology faculty in August 2026.

For the social media study, the researchers reviewed 30 videos related to nitrous oxide use that were posted in English on YouTube and/or TikTok between January and March 2025. They coded the videos for messenger/influencer characteristics, thematic content and engagement metrics.

The analysis revealed that even single videos about inhalant use had broad reach.

“Videos averaged 23 million views, 64,753 likes, and 9,500 shares. Half depicted personal experiences, 16.7% demonstrated use, and 10% promoted free trials,” the researchers wrote. “Most messengers were perceived as male (70%) and Black/African American (73.3%).”

None of the videos included age restrictions or health warnings, and content “frequently framed use as socially acceptable or entertaining.”

The “free trial” videos provided links or addresses offering free nitrous oxide products.

“The legal ambiguity surrounding the use of nitrous oxide for recreational purposes, its accessibility and affordability make it an attractive option for youth seeking a quick high, while online videos on sites like Instagram or TikTok often downplay or fail to mention potential risks,” Yockey said.

The Preventive Medicine study analyzed data from the 2021 and 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a nationally representative survey conducted in the U.S. The study found that 0.7% of adolescents 12-17 years of age reported having used inhalants in the month prior to being surveyed, 2.2% had used inhalants in the year prior and 0.2% met the criteria for inhalant use disorder. While the prevalence was low, these percentages suggest that well over half a million adolescents in the U.S. used inhalants in those years.

“Younger adolescents reported higher use — perhaps because these are some of the first drugs they try,” Yockey said. “We also know, from this study and others, that youth who report inhalant use are significantly more likely to engage in other substance use, including alcohol, cannabis, nicotine and prescription drug misuse.”

Behavioral problems also coincided with inhalant use, including fighting and stealing, the team found.

The finding that adolescent girls and American Indian/Native Alaskans were more likely to meet the criteria for inhalant use disorder will require a closer look at the social and environmental factors driving those vulnerabilities, the researchers said.

“These studies reinforce the idea that inhalant use disorder should be understood less as an isolated substance-specific problem and more as a marker of underlying behavioral and psychosocial dysregulation in high-risk adolescents,” Yockey said.  

“Inhalants remain one of the least studied and least discussed substance-use categories, despite the seriousness of their health risks,” Hoopsick said. “Our work suggests that we still know too little about how social and digital environments shape perceptions of inhalants, especially nitrous oxide, and how that may influence normalization and use among youth.”

The paper “Social media portrayals of nitrous oxide normalize use and encourage youth exposure” is available online. DOI: 10.15288/jsad.25-00301

The paper “Adolescent inhalant misuse in the United States: Findings from the 2021–2023 national survey on drug use and health” is available online. DOI: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2026.108567

Standardized testing and scripted lessons are failing both teachers and students

 

Is it time to ditch scripted lessons and heavily-packed curricula to focus on individual student growth?

This is the question posed by education expert Geoff Masters, who argues that age-based expectations are not serving all children well, while scripted lessons are failing teachers and students alike.

Masters, the former head of the Australian Council for Educational Research, asks how well children are served by a system in which two pupils in the same class can differ by six or more years of learning but are taught the same material.

He argues this system fails children at either end of the scale – those who are struggling and those who are unchallenged. He asks what if, instead of holding all pupils of the same age to the same learning expectations, we based expectations on where individuals are in their comprehension and individual growth.

“Too many students in our schools are being poorly served and left behind by machineries of schooling not fit for purpose,” Masters warns.

The problem with standardisation

Masters argues there is a fundamental flaw in the current system: the assumption that all students in the same grade are equally ready to learn the same material.

Research shows that children in the same classroom can have up to a seven-year difference in their reading and mathematics comprehension. This vast variation, Masters argues, is ignored by a system that prioritises standardisation over individual needs.

“By the middle years of school, many students have not learnt what the curriculum expected them to learn much earlier in their schooling,” Masters explains. He cites data showing how, across 38 developed countries, almost a third of 15-year-olds have difficulty demonstrating 5th and 6th grade mathematics content.

The picture in Australia

Masters’ arguments are presented against a backdrop of Australia’s declining performance in international assessments like PISA. Between 2012 and 2022, there was no significant improvement in Australian students’ performances in reading, mathematics or science. In fact, long-term declines have been recorded across all three areas.

“Despite decades of reforms, the machinery of schooling has not delivered the improvements we need,” Masters says. “It’s time to question whether prescribing what every student must learn in each grade of school and testing to see whether they have learnt it is the best way to optimise learning and improve performance.”

Masters also explains how those who start the year behind are likely to stay behind. He explains: “When the curriculum expects all students in a grade to be taught the same content at the same time, those who begin well below grade level are disadvantaged. This disadvantage is compounded when students are required to move from one grade curriculum to the next based on elapsed time rather than mastery. Students who lack essential prerequisites often fall further behind as each grade’s curriculum becomes increasingly beyond their reach.”

The future of learning

Masters instead argues for a system that meets students where they are in their learning, rather than where their age or grade dictates they should be. He proposes replacing age-based expectations with personalised learning plans that track individual growth.

“Improved performance depends on meeting each student where they are with personally meaningful, well-targeted learning opportunities that build on what they already know,” Masters explains. “This approach includes all students, including neurodiverse children and others with special needs.”

This approach would not only benefit students, he suggests, but also empower teachers to use their professional expertise to design tailored learning experiences.

One of the most concerning trends in education, in Masters’ view, is the rise of scripted lessons.

“Scripted lessons turn teaching into the delivery of ready-made solutions created outside the classroom,” Masters says. “They undervalue teachers’ expertise in what is arguably the essence of effective teaching: establishing where individuals are in their learning and designing opportunities to promote further growth.”

Masters calls for a return to professional autonomy, where teachers are trusted to make decisions in the best interests of their students.

Masters envisions a future where education systems embrace diversity and difference.

“Rather than expecting students to fit the expectations of schooling, the challenge is to redesign school structures and processes to better meet the needs of individual learners,” Masters concludes.

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DOI

10.4324/9781003757122 

Kids’ mental health, behavior top triggers of parent stress

 

Parental stress continues to rise, but what’s weighing on moms and dads today is largely the mental health of their children.

A new national survey conducted by Ipsos on behalf of The Kids Mental Health Foundation, founded by Nationwide Children’s Hospital, finds nearly all parents (97%) of children under 18 felt stress related to parenting in the past month, with one in four parents (30%) saying they experienced stress “often.”

The national survey of more than 1,000 parents across the United States also reveals among those that felt parental stress in the past month, two of the top sources of that stress were children's behavioral issues (35%) and children's emotional or mental health (26%). Nearly half of stressed parents feel it also makes their children more anxious or worried (46%).

“Parents today are aware of the importance of focusing on children’s mental health when it comes to raising them. The problem is that this generation of parents is the first to try and do this,” said Ariana Hoet, executive clinical director of The Kids Mental Health Foundation and a pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children’s. “So, we hear, ‘I don't have a model. I don't know how to talk about mental health. I don't know how to build mental wellness in my home.’ Parents are constantly worried, ‘Am I doing it wrong?’”

Dr. Hoet recommends that parents take care of their mental health, too, because their stress can set the tone for the home. Dr. Hoet encourages parents to be intentional with noticing what causes stress, making changes where possible, and finding time for connection and joy. Then, parents can support their children with daily habits that build healthy homes, which includes daily conversations with their kids, strengthening routines and managing behaviors.

“What we're recommending is based on research. It's what helps parents build their children’s mental health,” said Dr. Hoet. “Parents can feel like, ‘OK, I know exactly what to do’ and take that stress away from the decision making.”

Dr. Hoet stresses that small changes in the way we interact with our kids can make a difference in the mood of the home and decrease everyone's stress.

Allison Tomlin, a mom of two boys in Hilliard, Ohio, relies on Kids Mental Health Foundation resources as a parent and a teacher. She said that, ultimately, children just want to feel heard.

“A lot of times, parents are so focused on the fix that they dismiss the feelings. Then kids shut down because if they're not being seen as a person first and just a problem. Kids are often like, ‘Well, I'm just not going to have that conversation,’” Tomlin said. “We're having the hard conversations. We're talking about the feelings. We're talking about the emotions. And sometimes as uncomfortable as it is for adults, it's just a privilege to be able to be raising kids in a time where we're putting mental health as a priority.” 

Dr. Hoet says parents don’t have to be perfect all the time. If they make a mistake, both sides can grow from it.

“Just model what it's like to make mistakes, what it's like to apologize and take accountability, and you'll be OK,” Dr. Hoet said. “You're repairing the relationship. The relationship is what matters.”

The Kids Mental Health Foundation offers free, evidence-informed resources to help parents and caregivers understand common stress triggers and to parent with less stress and more confidence at home.

For more information and free kids’ mental health resources, please visit KidsMentalHealthFoundation.org.

 

Survey Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the United States by Ipsos on the KnowledgePanel® from Feb 27 to March 2, 2026, and surveyed 1,081 U.S. parents with at least one child under the age of 18 in their household. This poll is based on a nationally representative probability sample and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level, for results based on the entire sample of parents. The margin of sampling error takes into account the design effect of 1.04.

New Teaching Math to Young Children for Early Numeracy

 

The new Teaching Math to Young Children Toolkit (REL 2026–009) is now available for early childhood teachers and school and systems leaders. Developed by REL Appalachia in collaboration with educators, this toolkit supports preschool, pre-kindergarten, and kindergarten teachers in implementing the recommendations from the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide Teaching Math to Young Children, with a focus on early numeracy. The toolkit provides a comprehensive and flexible professional learning experience that helps teachers bring to life four evidence-based practice guide recommendations: Teach number and operations using a developmental progression. Dedicate time each day to teaching math and integrate math instruction throughout the school day. Use progress monitoring to ensure that math instruction builds on what each child knows. Teach children to view and describe their world mathematically.   The interactive professional learning modules include videos that explain math concepts and model effective instruction in authentic early childhood settings, as well as classroom activities aligned directly to each module to support immediate application of new learning. The toolkit also includes resources for school and district leaders to help institutionalize support for professional learning and sustain implementation of evidence-based instructional practices.   Together, the resources constitute a practical, research-based toolkit to strengthen early numeracy instruction and support young children’s long-term academic success.   To access the toolkit, please visit: https://ies.ed.gov/regional-educational-laboratories-toolkits.

Cycles in U.S. suicide rates and a long-term crisis among youth

 

Key Points:

• Researchers analyzed 122 years of U.S. mortality data to create the most comprehensive long-term picture of national suicide trends ever assembled.
• U.S. suicide rates exhibit a cyclical pattern, rising and falling approximately every 10 to 25 years, with peaks occurring during periods of major social upheaval.
• Suicide risk among young people has been rising steadily for more than half a century, affecting each new generation earlier in life.

IMPACT: The findings support the idea that suicide cannot be understood solely as a matter of individual psychology or biology, but that social context matters – a viewpoint that may spark a fresh approach to prevention efforts. 

Suicide rates in the United States follow striking, decades-long cycles likely shaped by broad social forces, according to a major new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). But beneath that long-term rise-and-fall pattern, researchers uncovered a deeply concerning and persistent trend: suicide risk among young people has been rising steadily for more than half a century, affecting each new generation earlier in life.

This study by the REDUCE (Reduce Early Death by Uncovering Causal Explanations) workgroup led by Nina de Lacy, MD, of Huntsman Mental Health Institute at the University of Utah, draws on an unprecedented 122 years of U.S. mortality data, from 1900 to 2021. By combining historically fragmented federal records into the new STACK (Suicide Trends and Archival Comparative Knowledgebase) dataset —the research team, which includes scientists from the University of California at San Diego, Indiana University, and several other units across the University of Utah, offers the most comprehensive long-term picture of U.S. suicide trends ever assembled.

“This is one of the first times we’ve been able to step back and see suicide clearly in a long-term historical context," de Lacy says. "What we found challenges the idea that today’s suicide crisis is purely recent or driven only by individual mental health factors. Suicide appears to be powerfully shaped by what’s happening in society — economically, socially, and culturally — and those forces operate over decades.”

Suicide moves in cycles, unlike most other causes of death

The researchers found that overall U.S. suicide rates exhibit a rare cyclical pattern, rising and falling approximately every 10 to 25 years. Peaks occurred during periods of major social upheaval, including growing industrialization in the early 1910s, the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the women’s rights movement of the 1970s.

“Very few causes of death behave like this,” de Lacy says. “Heart disease, cancer, and motor vehicle deaths generally decline when effective interventions are introduced. Suicide doesn’t follow that pattern. It fluctuates, reverses direction, and resists long-term reduction.”

Despite these cycles and a recent uptick beginning in the early 2000s, the study shows that U.S. suicide rates are not currently at their highest historical levels, countering frequently made claims based on data covering shorter time frames. However, the researchers estimate that, if the nation had consistently maintained its lowest observed age-specific suicide rates, 372,365 deaths could have been prevented between 1969 and 2021.

A youth crisis that began decades earlier than previously thought

The most troubling finding, the researchers note, is the long-term rise in suicide among young people. While public attention often focuses on recent increases among adolescents and young adults, the study found that this trend began in the mid-to-late 1950s — far earlier than previously recognized.

“What we’re seeing is not a short-term spike but a generational shift,” de Lacy said. “Each successive generation has faced higher suicide risk at a younger age than the one before it. That pattern has now persisted for more than 60 years.”

Historically, suicide risk was highest among older adults. Over time, that age divide has narrowed as rates declined among older Americans but climbed among those under 35, including children and adolescents. Today, suicide is among the leading causes of death for people ages 10 to 34.

Surprising shifts in geography and method

The analysis also revealed several unexpected changes in suicide risk patterns:

• Living in large metropolitan areas has emerged as a protective factor, with consistently lower suicide rates than in rural and smaller urban areas since the early 1980s.
• While suicide rates remain higher in rural areas overall, recent increases have been especially pronounced among women in rural and smaller urban communities.
• Suicide by hanging has risen sharply since the 1980s among both males and females, forming what the researchers describe as a “hidden epidemic” that has received less attention than firearm-related deaths, which continue to account for the majority of suicide deaths.

Rethinking suicide as a social phenomenon

The findings reinforce the idea that suicide cannot be understood solely as a matter of individual psychology or biology. Social context matters, often in ways that unfold slowly over generations.

“We can observe them, but we have been mystified by suicide trends over decades,” said Bernice Pescosolido, PhD, a study co-author and director of the Irsay Institute for Sociomedical Research at Indiana University. “But this study and this new dataset are opening up new ideas that we really need to think about.”

De Lacy agrees, emphasizing the implications for prevention efforts.

“If suicide risk rises and falls with broader social conditions, then prevention has to go beyond the clinic,” she said. “We need tailored strategies that address connectedness, community, economic stability, and the lived experience of entire generations, not just interventions targeted at individuals after they’re already in crisis.”

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available. The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24 hours a day in the U.S. by calling or texting 988.

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.251995112 

Middle school math teachers’ pedagogical knowledge of computational thinking

Math achievement of middle school students has been declining in many large cities in the Midwest. One approach that educators have taken to support student math learning has been to incorporate computational thinking (CT) practices into math instruction. CT is a set of practices that help students break down problems, look for patterns, and design step-by-step solutions. Research has shown that students’ CT knowledge is highly correlated with math achievement. Although interventions are available to support teachers in learning to integrate CT into their instruction, there are few brief and reliable measures that directly assess middle school teachers’ knowledge of how to integrate CT into math instruction. Such measures can alert local and state education agencies if there is a need to strengthen this ability in teachers in their schools. These measures are also critical for evaluating the effectiveness of CT integration into professional learning interventions. In response to this need, and as part of the ENgagement and Achievement through Computational Thinking (ENACT) partnership, REL Midwest developed and tested the Computational Thinking–Pedagogical Content Knowledge (CT–PCK) Survey for middle school math teachers. Key findings from the CT–PCK Survey include the following: Evidence from a sample of in-service math teachers at two urban middle schools supports the use of the survey as a valid and reliable tool to measure teachers’ overall knowledge of how to integrate CT into math instruction. On average, teachers answered about 10 of the 16 survey items correctly (61% correct). About a quarter of teachers answered 7 or fewer items correctly (44% correct), and about a quarter answered 13 or more items correctly (81% correct). These findings suggest that the survey is well suited for use by teachers with varied ability to integrate CT into math instruction. Teachers who have traditional teaching certifications and teachers with five or more years of teaching experience scored significantly higher on the survey, suggesting that knowledge of how to integrate CT into math instruction is related to teacher training and expertise. Access the report on the Institute of Education Sciences website.

Physics can be hard. Mindfulness may help

 

The high stakes and intimidating reputation of physics classes can lead to plenty of stress for students new to the discipline. In fact, may students say it feels psychologically threatening, leading to worry and self-doubt.

"For some, these doubts can contribute to disengagement–providing short-term relief at the expense of longer-term success," wrote the authors of a new research study from Pitt's Learning Research & Development Center. 

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found a way to help students build resilience in the face of these emotions: mindfulness. After five days of training, students reported feeling less threatened and more engaged in their coursework.

This research also suggests mindfulness can support learning and persistence across STEM courses by helping students build resilience in how they interpret and respond to stress. 

For more information, contact Professor Brian Galla, gallabri@pitt.edu