In recent years, social media has become part of our lives, even among children. From the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic period, media device and Internet access rapidly increased. Adolescents connected Internet alone, consulting social media, mostly Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. During “lockdown”, the Internet usage allowed communication with peers and the continuity activities such as school teaching. However, we have to keep in mind that media usage may be related to some adverse consequences especially in the most vulnerable people, such as the young. Aim of the review is to focus on risks correlated to social media use by children and adolescents, identifying spies of rising problems and engaging in preventive recommendations. The scoping review was performed according to PRISMA guidelines, searching on PubMed the terms “social media” or “social network”, “health”, and “pediatrics”. Excluding articles not pertinent, we found 68 reports. Out of them, 19 were dealing with depression, 15 with diet, and 15 with psychological problems, which appeared to be the most reported risk of social media use. Other identified associated problems were sleep, addiction, anxiety, sex related issues, behavioral problems, body image, physical activity, online grooming, sight, headache, and dental caries. Public and medical awareness must rise over this topic and new prevention measures must be found, starting with health practitioners, caregivers, and websites/application developers. Pediatricians should be aware of the risks associated to a problematic social media use for the young’s health and identify sentinel signs in children as well as prevent negative outcomes in accordance with the family.

Physical inactivity and sedentary habits are among the major risk factors for decreased physical and mental well-being. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, normal daily routines changed, including physical activity (PA) habits. The aim of this manuscript is to review the literature according to the PRISMA guidelines in order to analyze the changes in PA and exercise practice after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the well-being of adolescents. A PubMed search was performed using the keywords “Exercise” [Mesh]) AND “COVID-19” [Mesh], and filters to limit the research to pertain to adolescents (13–18 years) and English reports. Out of the search, 15 reports met the criteria for inclusion in the study. The main findings outlined a global decrease in PA levels associated with decreased well-being levels, modified eating habits and leisure time activity, and increased obesity, anxiety, and depression among adolescents. PA is a significant health determinant and should be improved through the awareness of the benefits of regular PA and of the risks of sedentary behavior, as well as through support from family, friends, and teachers. Providing PA at school, as a part of the academic program, increasing the availability of equipment and facilities, and promoting at-home PA options are suggested as support for increasing PA in all countries and settings.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) globally affects the population, mainly young children, potentially causing hospitalization. During the COVID-19 pandemic, non-pharmacological measures interfered with the circulation of most respiratory viruses. Then, with the discontinuation of restrictive measures, a new scenario appeared. With this scoping review, we want to globally explore whether the RSV paediatric hospitalization rate was influenced by COVID-19. This scoping review was performed according to PRISMA guidelines on PubMed using the Mesh terms “Respiratory Syncytial Viruses”[Mesh] AND “COVID-19”[Mesh] OR “SARS-CoV-2”[Mesh]. Among them, we identified studies pertaining to children and adolescents up to 18 years old hospitalized for RSV, including 18 records in the revision. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a drastic reduction in RSV hospitalization among the pediatric population in 2020–2021 season has been observed in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. After the relaxing of restrictive measures, unexpected outbreaks happened, leading to increased hospitalization and occupation of pediatric intensive care units.

In the field of developmental neuropsychology, interesting patterns of association between functional brain development at birth and neurodevelopmental outcomes during early childhood have been recently highlighted. In this work, we investigated a population of preterm neonates ( n = 32) and (1) derived perinatal functional connectivity (p-FC) markers of prematurity, through direct comparison with a group of at-term borns and (2) tested the role of these markers as predictors of cognitive (COG), language (LANG), and socioemotional (SE) outcomes measured at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months. We did this by means of regression models in which functional markers were tested as predictors, after accounting for variability captured by metrics derived from current clinical practice and which were previously reported to be associated with a higher risk for adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes (i.e., pregnancy, perinatal weight and physiological conditions, and structural brain development variability). Our results revealed that (1) p-FC between the bilateral cerebellar hemispheres predicted SE outcomes at 6 months; (2) p-FC between the bilateral visual cortices predicted COG outcomes at 12 months; (3) p-FC between cortices related to language and emotional control predicted SE outcomes at 12 months; (4 and 5) p-FC between somatosensory motor and higher-order control cortices predicted LANG outcomes at 24 months and COG outcomes at 36 months; and (6 and 7) p-FC between language-related cortices predicted SE and COG outcomes at 36 months. Linear mixed model analyses with pattern mixture modeling, performed to comprehensively explore the longitudinal impact of significant perinatal functional predictors, demonstrated the importance of specific perinatal functional predictors of global neurodevelopment over time. We discuss our results by suggesting that perinatal functional imaging of the brain at rest could represent a very valuable and unique addition to current preterm clinical care routines, to improve pediatric clinical practices of the near future.