Our ancestors lived outdoors. They exercised hard every day, whether from tending the land or chasing prey animals. They woke with the sun and went to sleep not long after sundown.

If you’ve been following the news in the last few weeks, you’ve heard about the investigations into Facebook and Instagram, including their detrimental impact on pre-teens and teens.

Here’s another reason it’s so important that parents know what their kids are doing online.

Marijuana is now legal for recreational use by adults in 10 states and the District of Columbia, and for medical use in 34 others. Its growing acceptance may lull both parents and teens into thinking it’s a relatively harmless substance.

HOW AND WHY TO BRING BACK AND ENGAGE THE VOLUNTEER, THE PARENT, AND THE COMMUNITY

Many years of solid research have shown that when parents engage more deeply in their children’s lives, they are far less likely to turn to such unhealthy behaviors as smoking, drinking, or using drugs.

Teens have always had issues with self-esteem. The captain of the football team, the head cheerleader, and the “in” crowd were present long before social media came along.

Our kids have been through so much in the past 18 months; first being yanked from school, their teachers, and their classmates, then sheltered at home, worrying about a pandemic they didn’t understand, and now sent back to school with the coronavirus still raging.

If you could do one thing to give your kids a 50% better chance of not using drugs and getting into destructive behaviors, would you do it?

In just over a decade, smartphones have become an essential part of our lives, especially for adolescents. According to the Pew Research Center, while 77 percent of American adults have a smartphone, that number soars to 95 percent among teens.

Oddly, though, a device that is universally thought to better connect people may be having the opposite effect, at least among teenagers. Several recent surveys (taken before the pandemic) seem to show that since 2012 loneliness, depression, and incidents of self-harm increased sharply among adolescents in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

The research is finding a marked correlation between the rise of smartphone use and loneliness, a recognized predictor of depression and mental health issues.