She says they’re calling the infestations “social media lice” because the teens seem to be spreading it, while taking pictures together on their cell phones. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I’ve never seen this many teenagers with lice”.
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Doctors even have a name for it now: ‘social media lice’. “So you’re probably having much more contact with other people’s heads”.
Selfies aren’t responsible because teens’ heads aren’t close together long enough for bugs to cross over, she insists about the problem, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates affects 6 million to 12 million children 3 to 11 years of age in the U.S. each year. Meanwhile, local pharmacist Jeff Cushman told WIVB that he has begun instructing parents whose children get lice to check their recent photos to see which friends their kids may have spread it to. “More and more schools are less proactive”, said Katie Shepherd, the head of the Shepherd Institute for Lice Solutions, according to Yahoo Parenting. But some doctors have been reporting – anecdotally – that they’re seeing more lice among teens.
Still, new technologies that teens use to express themselves and find entertainment can lead to the hair contact that concerns lice experts. “That’s a lot more contact than you get taking a selfie”, Shepherd countered Dr. Rink’s statement.
This sounds insane, but teenage lice infestations are on the uptick.
“We’ve always heard of older kids getting it, particularly when there are younger siblings bringing it home or outbreaks in college dorms”, she told Huffington Post. “It’s not new and it’s not alarming”. Summer weather in Central Europe typically brings with it cases of head lice in schoolchildren.
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The best way for anyone to avoid getting lice is to stay away from head-to-head contact with others and not share personal items like scarves or hair accessories, according to the Mayo Clinic.
