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This week's Health Tips column brings you ideas for finding happiness, tips for living to a ripe old age, parenting advice, and new ways to help you lose weight, lower blood pressure, and prevent chronic diseases.

Social media present risks and benefits to children but parents who try to secretly monitor their kids' activities online are wasting their time, says Larry D. Rosen, Ph.D., professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Rosen identifies potential adverse effects of social media, including: Teens who use Facebook more often show more narcissistic tendencies, while young adults who have a strong Facebook presence show more signs of other psychological disorders, including antisocial behaviors, mania, and aggressive tendencies. Daily overuse of media and technology has a negative effect on the health of all children, especially preteens and teenagers, by making them more prone to anxiety, depression, and other psychological disorders, and making them more susceptible to future health problems. Facebook can be distracting and can negatively impact learning. Studies found that middle school, high school and college students who checked Facebook at least once during a 15-minute study period achieved lower grades. Rosen says new research has also found positive influences linked to social networking, including: Young adults who spend more time on Facebook are better at showing "virtual empathy" to their online friends. Online social networking can help introverted adolescents learn how to socialize. Social networking can provide tools for teaching in compelling ways that engage young students. "If you feel that you have to use some sort of computer program to surreptitiously monitor your child's social networking, you are wasting your time. Your child will find a workaround in a matter of minutes," he says. "You have to start talking about appropriate technology use early and often and build trust, so that when there is a problem, whether it is being bullied or seeing a disturbing image, your child will talk to you about it." Ref.: Larry D. Rosen, Poke Me: How Social Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids, 2011; 119th Annua

Meditation may have potential to change the brain's physical structure, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have found. People who meditate have stronger connections between brain regions and show less age-related brain atrophy, according to the researchers. Stronger connections influence the ability to rapidly relay electrical signals in the brain. And significantly, these effects are evident throughout the entire brain, not just in specific areas. The study consisted of 27 active meditation practitioners (average age 52) and 27 control subjects, who were matched by age and sex. The meditation and the control group each consisted of 11 men and 16 women. The number of years of meditation practice ranged from 5 to 46; self-reported meditation styles included Shamatha, Vipassana and Zazen, practiced by about 55 percent of the meditators, either exclusively or in combination with other styles. Pronounced structural connectivity The researchers used a type of brain imaging known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a relatively new imaging mode that provides insights into the structural connectivity of the brain. They found that the differences between meditators and controls are not confined to a particular core region of the brain but involve large-scale networks that include the frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital lobes and the anterior corpus callosum, as well as limbic structures and the brain stem. They found pronounced structural connectivity in meditators throughout the entire brain's pathways. The greatest differences between the two groups were seen within the corticospinal tract (a collection of axons that travel between the cerebral cortex of the brain and the spinal cord), the superior longitudinal fasciculus (long bi-directional bundles of neurons connecting the front and the back of the cerebrum), and the uncinate fasciculus (white matter that connects parts of the limbic system, such as the hippocampus and amygdala, wi

Exercise can ameliorate anxiety and depression-like behaviors induced by an adverse early-life environment by altering the chemistry of the hippocampus, the part of the brain that regulates stress responses, researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have found.

A new study by psychologists at University of California, Davis has found that Buddhist meditation can improve a person's ability to be attentive and helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see.

Even light or moderate intensity physical activity, such as walking or cycling, can substantially reduce the risk of early death, a new study by researchers