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Parents have described clusters of gender dysphoria outbreaks occurring in pre-existing friend groups with multiple or even all members of a friend group becoming gender dysphoric and transgender-identified in a pattern that seems statistically unlikely based on previous research. Parents describe a process of immersion in social media, such as 'binge-watching' Youtube transition videos and excessive use of Tumblr, immediately preceding their child becoming gender dysphoric. These descriptions are atypical for the presentation of gender dysphoria described in the research literature and raise the question of whether social influences may be contributing to or even driving these occurrences of gender dysphoria in some populations of adolescents and young adults.Let's be clear on what the statistical background is. "The expected prevalence of transgender young adult individuals is 0.7%. Yet more than a third of the friendship groups described in this study had 50% or more of the AYAs in the group becoming transgender-identified in a similar time frame, a localized increase to more than 70 times the expected prevalence rate." AYA is an acronym for "adolescents and young adults." Remember it, because it's going to come up a lot.
Consider that practically every declining health outcome in children can be traced to the sedentary, indoor, micromanaged lives that now define American childhood. In a 2005 Pediatrics study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that children with mothers fearful of neighborhood safety are more likely to watch over two hours of TV per day, instead of playing outside. When American students are moving for only 18 minutes per day at school, it's hardly a surprise that we've seen since the 1970s a more than threefold increase in the number of overweight 6 to 11 year olds.See also:
Experts meanwhile are linking increasing rates of anger, aggression, and severe behavior problems to a lack of free play. These outcomes are consistent with evolutionary psychology theories that consider play to be a critical part of child development, teaching children to cope with, and ultimately master, fears and phobias.
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