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Dear Friend,
At this special time of year, we at Free Teens USA would like to EXPRESS OUR GRATITUDE to our friends and supporters. In recent years, despite the ups and downs of dealing with government-mandated school lockdowns and other hindrances, we have continued to reach teens with a life-affirming message.
We invite you to become OUR PARTNER in this effort by becoming a one-time or monthly donor, so that we can continue to support teens and parents with information and insights that will lead to happier and more successful lives, families and communities!
Sincerely,
Richard A Panzer, PhD
Founder/CEO
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Doing good is good for you, research shows
Altruism improves happiness, reduces pain and may be fundamental to being human.
By Richard Sima, The Washington Post, November 28, 2024
If you want to increase your happiness and well-being, spend your money, time or energy on someone else.
Research consistently finds that acts of altruism, such as donating money, volunteering or giving blood, benefit both the receiver and the giver — even when the giver does not expect anything in return. Because doing good feels good, altruism can beget more altruism and better well-being.
“If things are hard, you often don’t feel like going out of your way to do the things that will help other people around you,” said Abigail Marsh, a professor of psychology and the interdisciplinary neuroscience program at Georgetown University. “But, in fact, that may be actually one of the best things you could do.”
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Helping others helps our own well-being
In an influential 2008 study, Dunn and her colleagues gave 46 participants a small amount of money ($5 or $20) and told them to either spend it on themselves or someone else. People who spent the money on someone else reported being happier than those who spent it on themselves, regardless of the amount of money.
The initial study was small, but subsequent research replicated the well-being benefits of prosocial spending, including a 2020 study with nearly 8,000 participants.
Other ways of doing good such as volunteering and donating blood can also feel good, and improve mood and well-being, research shows. Volunteering, in particular, may give “a little bit more of that warm glow that you get from seeing how your actions have benefited other people,” Marsh said.
Giving to others seems to literally take away our own pain.
One 2019 study reported that people who performed altruistic acts, such as donating money to orphans, perceived less physical pain when given an electric shock or the pinch of a tourniquet compared with those who earned the money for themselves. Cancer patients even experienced a respite from chronic pain.
(Read the rest of the article!)
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Many young adults report encountering porn from an average age of 12.
Jonathan Haidt, in his bestseller The Anxious Generation, explains the consequences: The more you watch porn in your formative years, the more likely you are to avoid pursuing real-life romantic relationships. Asking a human being out feels riskier, at least emotionally. Porn can’t reject you, or humiliate you, or expect any kind of commitment in return for sexual gratification. And so young people—particularly boys—get hooked on it, and slowly their expectations of beauty, intimacy, partnership, and pleasure are warped, perhaps forever.
Young Americans seem increasingly aware of porn’s impact on them—and are turning against it. Almost two-thirds of men under the age of 25 said they favored making it more difficult to access online pornography in a survey from this July, compared to only half of young men in 2013.
(read more at https://freeteensyouth.org/help-boys-to-escape-porn)
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| | 5 TRAPS Used by TEEN TRAFFICKERS | | A former federal prosecutor explains 5 common traps used by human traffickers, one of which is how traffickers use online social media and gaming to create an illusion of connection by pretending to be a "hot" girl or boy interested in a relationship. | |
Teen Girl Learns She Has HERPES
why didn't anyone WARN her before?
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BECOME A PARTNER
in helping youth!
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5 Reasons you should break up
even when you are in love
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by Dr. Morgan Cutlip, MyLoveThinks.com
So sorry to state the obvious but breakups suck, they are REALLY hard and for some people breaking up is so complicated that they just avoid it all together.
Unfortunately it is a side effect of dating and some times breaking up is totally necessary. I’ve said this so many times to friends and clients, and even experienced this in my own life: breaking up when you love someone is the ultimate challenge.
So I’m hoping to offer those of you out there who are in love but suspecting that you’re not in a great relationship some guidance and some reassurance that you’re doing the right thing. So here it tis my friends, 5 reasons why you should break up even when you’re in love.
1. YOUR PARTNER IS ABUSIVE
To some, this may seem like a clear-cut reason for breaking up. However, the abuse cycle can be incredibly difficult to escape. If you are experiencing any type of abuse be it verbal, physical, mental or sexual—then get out!
So often, abusers are very charming and they use this charm as a way to gain power and control back in the relationship and to help rectify all their wrongs. Do not be fooled—this is NOT a healthy love, this is damaging, confusing and crazy-inducing love. If this sounds familiar, love or not, this relationship needs to end.
2. YOU’RE COMPROMISING YOUR DEAL-BREAKERS
We all have deal-breakers when it comes to dating and relationships. But then there comes along someone so smokin’ hot, or so charming that they erase those deal-breakers right from our memory.
(Read rest of 5 Reasons You Should Break Up Even If You're In Love)
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Letter to Girls Abandoned by Their Fathers
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- Women who were abandoned by a father often feel a strong sense of self-doubt and struggle to love themself
- They have a greater chance of entering relationships in which they are mistreated or not loved.
- Understanding that abandonment is not about them is crucial for healing, but it is not easy.
I was climbing the side of a mountain. I had never had any training, yet there I was, stuck to the side of a large mound of rocks, miles in the sky, attempting to locate my father. I found him just out of reach on the mountainside when, like magic, the mountain grew and expanded, prolonging my journey toward him. I continued scaling the mountainside but while I seemed to get closer and closer, the hoped-for reunion was always just out of reach.
The first few years after my own abandonment, I was in denial. I figured we would talk eventually; my father just needed time to cool down. A decade later, I began to realize that was never going to happen. Even now, as I counsel tearful survivors through their own healing, steadfast in my efforts to help them decrease their own self-blame, I still struggle with understanding that his leaving was not my fault.
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While a significant number of millennials and Gen Zers view marriage as an “outdated tradition” and are opting for just living together instead, many still plan to marry someday, according to a recent survey.
As a survey conducted by the Thriving Center of Psychology found earlier this summer, two in five millennials and Gen Zers (ages 18 to 42) view marriage as an “outdated tradition,” a mindset held by 41% of men and 52% of women.
Eighty-five percent said marriage is not necessary to have a fulfilled and committed relationship, while another 73% believe that getting married in the current economy is too expensive.
But is marriage outdated? New research from the University of Chicago (July 2023) reports that marriage is the “most important” factor of who is happy in America, and that falling marriage rates are a main reason why happiness has declined nationwide.
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TikTok Offers Child Predators Easy Path to Contacting Kids
Since the advent of the internet, child predators have had an easy option to get in touch with minors for sexual relationships. However, TikTok is said to be worsening this problem due to its massive popularity among youngsters. Over 50 percent of American minors are estimated to use TikTok at least once every day. “The audience that’s following these children, a lot of them are adult males that have a sexual interest in children,” Jon Rouse, police veteran who heads a group targeting child sex offenders for Interpol, said to The Wall Street Journal.
“Child sex offenders will gravitate toward where there are children. Pedophiles prefer looking at videos,” he added. Billions of videos are uploaded to the app every month, with numerous minors doing all kinds of things, including talking about personal lives.
TikTok officially only allows individuals who are 13 and older to open an account. Users younger than 16 years are also not allowed to use the direct messaging feature which allows people to converse with each other privately. However, children can still falsify their age and gain access to such features.
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“Her Brain Was Gone”
Marijuana-Induced Psychosis
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Cat Mayberry grabbed her backpack and ran out the door.
“You’ve got to let me go,” Cat replied softly. “Just let me go.”
Trent guided his daughter home, holding the straps of her backpack and using it to direct her, like a joystick. How could this girl, walking like a zombie, be the same girl who just a few years earlier had been a sunny honor student and varsity athlete with the world at her fingertips? Sure, she’d been using marijuana, but to Trent, it was just pot, basically harmless.
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Children Paying the Price
for War on the Family
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AND Magazine
“By far the largest part – eighty percent at least – of crimes against property and against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost connection with home life, or never had any, or whose homes had ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and family…” Jacob A. Reis, “How the Other Half Lives”, writing about New York City’s slums in 1890.
Walk into the worst slums of India and you will see children coming out of hovels in which the average American would not spend the night, wearing clean clothes and walking off to school with smiles on their faces. Mom spends her days trying desperately to scrape together dinner, washing the few clothes the family owns, and sweeping the dirt floor of the one-room shack in which the family lives. Dad toils in the broiling sun at hard, physical labor.
The kids do not become hooligans. The kids do not commit murder. The kids do not roam the streets like wild animals devoid of discipline or morality.
Those children, desperate as their lives are, grow up knowing right from wrong and understanding what it means to be civilized.
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Daddy, Where Have You Been? RAP- PAIN of Abandonment
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Good Tech/Bad Tech...
WORRYING CONCERNS for Parents
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Even when parents intentionally pour extra doses of truth, love and positive messaging into their children, the flow of content from alternative sources, including friends and peers at school, is oppressive at best and mind-altering at worst.
Tragically, it’s all having a dire impact on kids’ perceptions of life, sex and eternal truths about the world around them. Let’s briefly explore just four data points that should absolutely terrify parents:
1. Most kids have seen porn by age 13. Yes, you read that correctly. Your children have (or very likely will) witness the most intimate acts in which two humans can engage before they’re anywhere near adulthood.
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3 Things a Child Crimes Investigator
Won’t Let Her Own Kids Do!
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By Michael Wing, The Epoch times, Jan 7, 2023
With disturbing news of child sex predators—groomers and Balenciaga—being exposed lately, parents are hugging their children a little tighter before tucking them in each night.
Few know better what dangers are lurking out there than child crimes investigator Terra Avilla, 36, of the District Attorney’s Office in Susanville, California.
| | Why Not Take Her for a Test Drive? | |
(Originally published in Boundless.org and TheRuthInstitute.locals.com)
Thinking of moving in with your significant other, just to see if marriage is a good idea? Turns out living together isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
The Census reports a 72 percent increase in the number of cohabiting couples since 1990.
Unfortunately, research shows that cohabitation is correlated with greater likelihood of unhappiness, and domestic violence in the relationship.
Cohabiting couple report lower levels of satisfaction in the relationship than married couples. Women are more likely to be abused by a cohabiting boyfriend than a husband. Children are more likely to abused by their mothers’ boyfriends than by her husband, even if the boyfriend is their biological father. If a cohabiting couple ultimately marries, they tend to report lower levels of marital satisfaction and a higher propensity to divorce.
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Linda Doering: NEVER GIVE UP!
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16 Manipulation Quotes to Help
You Avoid Being Controlled!
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Emotional manipulators use gaslighting and other shifty techniques to get what they want from you. Peruse these manipulation quotes so you can recognize this behavior quickly, and stop it in its tracks.
If you’ve ever been emotionally manipulated—and really, who hasn’t at some point or another?—then it’s likely your experience left you searching for answers. In fact, psychoanalyst Robin Stern, PhD, co-founder and Associate Director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, tells The Healthy that sheer confusion is one of the hallmark signs that someone’s just taken you for a ride.
Read rest of
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