Dr. Neal Ranen, M.D.

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Holidays Cause Social Anxiety to Surface

Dealing With Anxiety During the Holidays The holiday season is accompanied by many emotions and expectations. Gifting, family gatherings, office parties, school programs, social events and more are at an all-time high during this time of year. It is quite common for social butterflies to surface and make a grand attempt to attend almost every […]

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Monday, December 4, 2017

Using Genetic Testing for Psychiatric Medication Selection

Genetic Testing for Psychiatric Medication in Baltimore I am a big fan of genetic testing and frequently utilize it in my practice. It allows for your unique genetic profile to be considered in medication decision-making. The DNA testing of relevant genes reveals how your body processes medication, and how well various medications may work for […]

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Monday, November 20, 2017

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. “We go to the mall,” she said. “Do your parents drop you off?,” I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. “No—I go with my family,” she replied. “We’ll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we’re going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes.”

Those mall trips are infrequent—about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of friends. “It’s good blackmail,” Athena said. (Because she’s a minor, I’m not using her real name.) She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said. “We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people.”