Ingunn Hagen

Yoga for Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Well-Being: Research Review and Reflections on the Mental Health Potentials of Yoga

This article discusses yoga as a potential tool for children to deal with stress and regulate themselves. Yoga provides training of mind and body to bring emotional balance. We argue that children and young people need such tools to listen inward to their bodies, feelings, and ideas. Yoga may assist them in developing in sound ways, to strengthen themselves, and be contributing social beings. First, we address how children and young people in today’s world face numerous expectations and constant stimulation through the Internet and other media and communication technologies. One reason why children experience stress and mental health challenges is that globalization exposes the youth all over the world to various new demands, standards, and options. There is also increased pressure to succeed in school, partly due to increased competition but also a diverse range of options available for young people in contemporary times than in the past. Our argument also partially rests on the fact that modern society offers plenty of distractions and unwelcome attractions, especially linked to new media technologies. The dominant presence of multimedia devices and the time spent on them by children are clear indicators of the shift in lifestyles and priorities of our new generation. While these media technologies are valuable resources in children and young people’s lives for communication, learning, and entertainment, they also result in constant competition for youngster’s attention. A main concept in our article is that yoga may help children and young people cope with stress and thus, contribute positively to balance in life, well-being, and mental health. We present research literature suggesting that yoga improves children’s physical and mental well-being. Similarly, yoga in schools helps students improve resilience, mood, and self-regulation skills pertaining to emotions and stress.

Norwegian Children's Experiences of Cyberbullying When Using Different Technological Platforms

Cyberbullying is an emerging threat to children in Europe. However, European research into this topic is scant and knowledge of it incomplete. In this study, “cyberbullying” involves the use of different technological platforms to support hostile behavior by an individual or group that harm others. The article examines whether childrens experience of cyberbullying differs according to technological platforms and socio-demographic variables. Results from two Norwegian studies show that cyberbullying most often occurs via e-mail, and that girls and frequent users of the internet are more likely to encounter cyberbullying. Most cyberbullying encountered in social networking sites was sexual and took place in communities in which the users are anonymous. This was most often encountered by teenage girls and perpetrated by adults.

Young Adults’ Perpetual Contact, Social Connectivity, and Social Control through the Internet and Mobile Phones

Each new communication medium provides different combinations and levels of way to facilitate and/or constrain social connections. These different patterns of connectivity in turn both represent and influence forms of social control. In particular, the Internet and mobile phones are fostering a sense of perpetual contact, the potential for pervasive, personal, and portable communication. This chapter considers how these aspects of perpetual contact moderate the influence of Internet and mobile phone usage on aspects of social connectivity (constructing identity, fostering and changing group and network relations, and displaying social relations—both membership and sharing) and in turn on aspects of social control (dependency, balancing self and group, managing coordination and multitasking, navigating family relations, blurring public and private space, and engaging privacy and surveillance). These issues are particularly fluid and salient to young users, so the chapter reviews relevant research from around the world on use of these new media by teenagers and young adults.

When Staff Create the Organisational Culture: A Case Study in the Spanish Emergency Health Care System

Emergency units suffer from continuous overload because all types of users demand the service. The literature shows that in general, the percentage of non-urgent users varies from 20 per cent to 80 per cent, depending on the type of centre analysed, the research approach or the methodology. While some studies have analysed this phenomenon focusing on the users, the current research adopts a different perspective. In this article, we try to explain how the break-down in the emergency services affects the work that the staff do. Drawing on evidence obtained from a six-month ethnographic study in two Spanish public hospitals, we conclude that in this overloaded context, official definitions of emergencies and formal classification protocols are completely useless. Exploring the staffs perceptions about the users and the service itself we try to re-create the process by which the diverse health care workers informally re-define symbols, concepts and behaviour patterns, creating a specific internal culture that helps them cope with the complexity of the service and the excessive demand.

Media Mastery: Paradoxes in College Students’ Use of Computers and Mobile Phones:

The range and capabilities of multiple new media require us to master paradoxical aspects of their uses and implications. Furthermore, those same media may also come to master us, through those paradoxes. Based on prior literature, we develop a four-component taxonomy of sites of media mastery (technology, technology-use, social contexts, and individual aspects). We apply and extend this framework to analyze summaries of focus group comments from students in a Norwegian and a U.S. university about their experiences attempting to master computers and mobile phones. From these results, we apply thematic analysis to identify five paradoxes associated with the use of these devices throughout the media mastery taxonomy as well as a tension between using media convergence or media comparison to master multiple new media.