The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruption in social interactions. In this study, the authors tested if walking a dog will change human interactions and found that walking with a dog increased social interaction.

In this study the authors sought to understand the influence of implicit social pressure on prosocial behavior (voluntary acts that benefit someone else) in adolescents age 12–19. They considered how participants divided money between themselves and four teammate they did a school project with. Despite being shown examples of how to divide money (social pressure), their results showed that both boys and girls were unaffected by prosocial, neutral, and antisocial pressures.

Social media usage is predicted to impact teen well-being and emotional status. This study sought to assess the impact of teen technology usage on their social lives. Surveys of 8th and 9th graders were used to assess compare technology usage between males and females as well as and how social media usage impacts the perception of social environment at school.

The authors were interested in whether they could observe the effects of climate change by analyzing historical temperature data of two U.S. cities. They predicted that they should observe a warming trend in both cities. Their results showed that despite yearly variations, warming trends can be observed both in Rochester, NY and Seattle, WA which fit the predictions of climate change forecasts.

Because humans live in societies, they may feel social pressure to conform to majority opinions. This follow-up study explores whether teenagers are likely to change their opinions to match others’, particularly in ambiguous situations.

Research suggests that less effective styles of parenting tend to negatively affect grades, and more effective styles tend to produce higher grades. In this study, the authors verify previous research and confirm such relationships in a sample of African American students in a college preparatory program. By obtaining students’ perception of their school’s climate and parent’s parenting styles by various methods, the authors determined correlated these perceptions to student grades. They found no significant relationship between school climate and academic achievement.

Here the authors investigate the use of social media in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in affecting their ability and opportunities to interact with others. They found that higher usage of Internet correlated with less severe anxiety symptoms and improved social skills.

We are changing our environment with steadily increasing carbon dioxide emissions, but we might be able to help. The authors here use a computer program called Community Climate System Model 4 to predict the effects of spraying small particles into the atmosphere to reflect away some of the sun's rays. The software predicts that this could reduce the amount of energy the Earth's atmosphere absorbs and may limit but will not completely counteract our carbon dioxide production.

Climate change is an important and contentious issue that has far-reaching implications for our future. The authors here compare primary temperature and precipitation data from almost 200 years ago against the present day. They find that the average annual temperature in Brooklyn, NY has risen significantly over this time, as has the frequency of precipitation, though not the amount of precipitation. These data stress the need for more ecologically-conscious choices in our daily lives.

With the COVID-19 pandemic necessitating the transition to remote learning, disruption to daily school routine has impacted educational experiences on a global scale. As a result, it has potentially worsened reading achievement gaps typically exacerbated by long summer months. To address literacy skill retention and pandemic-induced social isolation, the non-profit organization ByKids4Kids has created a reading program, “Kindles4Covid Virtual Reading Buddies Program,” to instill a structure for youth to read together and connect with the convenience of Amazon Kindle devices. In this article, the authors determine the efficacy of their invaluable program by assessing changes in reading frequency and self-reported connectedness among program participants.