Internet Linked to Health in Adolescents

Internet Linked to Health in Adolescents - MedPage Today

Teenagers who are heavy users of the Internet -- spending more than two hours a day online -- appear to have an increased risk of depression as well as some somatic complaints, Swiss researchers reported. On the other hand, they found a similar association with an apparent increased risk of depression among teens who didn't use the Net at all, according to Pierre-André Michaud, MD, of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine in Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues. The finding suggests that regular Internet use is now "normative behavior without major health consequence" but that physicians should be alert for extremely high or low levels of use, Michaud and colleagues argued online in Pediatrics. Using the Internet is now a commonplace activity among young people, the researchers noted, raising health concerns that have primarily focused on heavy users. To examine the issue, Michaud and colleagues turned to the 2002 Swiss Multicenter Adolescent Survey on Health, a nationally-representative survey of teens ages 16 to 20 years in either high school or vocational school. More than 7,200 participants -- 3,906 boys and 3,305 girls -- were divided into four categories according to the intensity of their Internet use. Heavy Internet users were defined at those who were online two or more hours a day, regular Internet users were online several days a week for less than two hours a day, and occasional users logged in no more than an hour a week. The fourth category was Internet nonusers -- teens who reported no Internet use at all in the month before the survey. For multivariate analyses, the regular users were regarded as the reference group. Michaud and colleagues also asked about participants' perceived health, depression, overweight, and somatic complaints like headaches, back pain, and insufficient sleep. The researchers found there were more heavy Internet users among the boys -- 7.3% versus 2.2% among girls -- but a similar proportion of nonusers, at 16.4% among both sexes. Most boys and girls were either regular or occasional users -- 44.9% and 31.4%, respectively, for boys and 41.5% and 39.8%, respectively, for girls. Multivariate analysis showed a U-shaped relationship between Internet use and some health issues, the researchers reported. Specifically: Male heavy users and nonusers both were significantly more likely to report depression, with relative risk ratios of 1.36 and 1.31, respectively. Girls at all levels of use reported significantly more depression than regular users, but the heavy users had the highest relative risk ratio, at 1.86. Nonusers and occasional users had relative risk ratios of 1.46 and 1.24, respectively. Male heavy users were 78% more likely to report being overweight than regular users. The relative risk ratio was 1.78, with a 95% confidence interval from 1.07 to 2.95. Male nonusers were significantly more likely to report frequent back pain, with a relative risk ratio of 1.87. Female heavy users were significantly more likely to report insufficient sleep, with a relative risk ratio of 1.91. Michaud and colleagues cited some limitations to their study, noting that young people not attending school were not assessed, which may limit that applicability of the study results. The authors also cautioned that the data were collected in 2002 -- before the explosion of multimedia technologies that have made Internet access easier. The study also did not look at the effects of specific activities online, they reported. Its generalizability was also limited by the data being collected only among adolescents in Switzerland. The study had support from the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, Université Laval, the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec and its foundation, and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. The authors said they had no relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Primary source: Pediatrics

Wikileaks returns to web on Swiss domain

Wikileaks returns to web on Swiss domain - ZDNet UK

Wikileaks re-emerged on Friday on a Swiss internet domain, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the whistleblowing site off the internet.

On Friday, the Wikileaks group said in a post on Twitter: "Wikileaks moves to Switzerland http://wikileaks.ch/".

The group, which has come under criticism for publishing US diplomats' classified cables, has been working hard to keep operating amid distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over the internet and Amazon's decision to stop hosting Wikileaks's website.

A new problem arose early on Friday, when EveryDNS.net stopped providing Wikileaks with DNS services. The DNS translates the web addresses that people type, such as 'ZDNet.co.uk', into the numeric Internet Protocol addresses that underpin the delivery of data from one computer to another. Now that EveryDNS.net has stopped the service, typing 'wikileaks.org' into a browser results in a blank page.

WikiLeaks' tweet about losing its Internet address service yesterday

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

WikiLeaks re-emerged today on a Swiss Internet domain, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the controversial site off the Internet.

The group, under heavy criticism in some quarters for publishing U.S. diplomats' classified cables, has been working hard to keep operating amid distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks over the Internet andAmazon's decision to stop hosting WikiLeaks' Web site.

A new problem arose at 7 p.m. PT Thursday, when EveryDNS.net stopped providing WikiLeaks with Domain Name System (DNS) services. The DNS translates the Web addresses that people type, such as CNET.com, into the numeric Internet Protocol addresses that actually get the job done delivering data from one computer to another. When EveryDNS.net stopped the service, typing "WikiLeaks.org" into a browser led nowhere.

In a statement on its Web site, EveryDNS.net said it terminated WikiLeaks' service to protect others using the service while WikiLeaks was under the DDOS attack.

The services were terminated for violation of the provision which states that "Member shall not interfere with another Member's use and enjoyment of the Service or another entity's use and enjoyment of similar services." The interference at issues arises from the fact that wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites.

Thus, last night, at approximately 10PM EST, December 1, 2010 a 24 hour termination notification email was sent to the email address associated with the wikileaks.org account. In addition to this email, notices were sent to Wikileaks via Twitter and the chat function available through the wikileaks.org website. Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider.

As it did when tweeting about the Amazon termination, WikiLeaks mentioned the EveryDNS.net's United States connection.

"WikiLeaks,org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks," WikiLeaks said in its tweet.

Anyone with WikiLeaks's numeric Internet address can get to the site without using DNS, and WikiLeaks offered instructions in a follow-up tweet today: "WIKILEAKS: Free speech has a number: http://88.80.13.160"

And later, it re-emerged with a more human-friendly Internet address, also broadcast over Twitter: "WikiLeaks moves to Switzerland http://wikileaks.ch/"

WikiLeaks also took issue with Amazon's explanation that it terminated WikiLeaks' service for violating Amazon's terms of service. "It's clear that WikiLeaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy," Amazon said of its decision.

WikiLeaks doesn't buy it. "Amazon's press release does not accord with the facts on public record. It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it," WikiLeaks tweeted.

The DNS, centrally administered by a non-profit group called ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a critical service when it comes to publishing and finding information on the Internet. Rerouting addresses through the DNS is how the U.S. government seized 82 domains associated with copyright infringement.

One response to this situation involves a new effort to create a decentralized DNS, also using peer-to-peer technology. Peter Sunde--one founder of a site called The Pirate Bay that indexes content shared with the peer-to-peer BitTorrent technology--is involved in the project, called P2P-DNS.

"Alternative DNS system based on P2P," Sunde said about the effort in a tweet, though he later took pains to say he was only interested, not the person behind the effort. He added that the "core of the DNS problem is not ICANN. It's that governments and companies can control ICANN (i.e. it's centralised)."