Teens Spend Over an Hour on Their Smartphones at School

 

• U.S. adolescents spent more than an hour per school day using smartphones.
• Social media topped the list of most-used app categories, with a mean of nearly 30 minutes.
• New data come amid rapid changes in school phone policies.

U.S. adolescents may spend more time on their smartphones during school hours than their parents would like, according to data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.

Among 640 teens with passive measurement software on their phones, a mean of 1.16 hours was spent using smartphones per school day, reported Jason Nagata, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues.

Social media (i.e. Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat) topped the list of most-used app categories at a mean of 29.98 minutes, followed by video apps (i.e. YouTube) at 14.84 minutes, and game apps (i.e. Roblox, Clash Royale, and Pokemon GO) at 14.72 minutes, Nagata and colleagues noted in a research letter in JAMA.

"School phone policies are changing rapidly, but until now we have had very little objective data on what students actually do with their phones during the school day," Nagata told MedPage Today in an email. "Teens are not always accurate reporters of their own screen time. Objective smartphone data gives us a clearer picture of actual use. This moves the conversation beyond anecdotes and self-reports to real-world behavior."

"Even during school hours, smartphones remain a major part of adolescents' daily lives," Nagata added. "Smartphones can support learning and connection, but without clear boundaries they can also be a constant distraction. Many parents assume phones stay in backpacks during the school day, but our data suggest that's not always the case."

Indeed, data from the ABCD study has previously pointed to a significant association between increases in social media use during early adolescence and lower performance in key areas of cognitive function.

"Although 99.7% of U.S. public school principals report their school has a smartphone policy, few studies have objectively examined smartphone app usage during school," Nagata and colleagues wrote. "This study addresses this by measuring smartphone usage in schools with passive sensing technology in a diverse sample of adolescents."

Higher school smartphone and social app time were associated with later adolescence (16-18 years of age vs 13-15), Black and other/unknown race (compared with white race), and lower household income, Nagata and colleagues reported.

Problematic social media use was positively associated with greater school smartphone time on social media apps, and problematic mobile phone use was positively associated with greater time during school on a smartphone and using social media apps.

In a separate research letter in JAMA Pediatrics that surveyed a global sample of more than 35,000 adults, 76.2% of respondents (mean age 38.9 years) agreed that smartphone access should be banned during school hours. This included 71.3% of U.S. parents, though affirmative responses ranged widely by country, reported Dimitri Christakis, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington in Seattle, who was also a co-author on the JAMA study, and colleagues.

The following variables were significantly associated with agreement that smartphones should be banned during school hours:

• Female sex (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.09-1.21)
• Being a parent (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.06-1.20)
• Older age (OR 1.03, 95% CI 1.03-1.03)
• Higher life satisfaction (OR 1.02, 95% CI 1.00-1.03)
• Spending more time online than one wanted (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.02-1.26)

"Notably, use of social media was associated with decreased likelihood of supporting bans [OR 0.83, 95% CI 0.76-0.92], but it was counterbalanced by perception of spending too much time online," Christakis and colleagues wrote. "This suggests that it is not awareness of what social media is but overuse of it that might make adults wary of school smartphone availability."

For the study by Nagata and colleagues, total smartphone time was assessed in part of the ABCD sample via a phone app. This data provided apps used during short collection windows for Android devices. Participants were included if they had 2 or more weekdays of data during school hours from select weeks between September 2022 and May 2024, excluding federal and school holidays.

Mean age of the study population was 15 years, almost 60% were male, and about 70% were white, while about 12% each were Black or more than one race.

Limitations included that data only assessed Android users, and that the study did not account for school policy changes from 2022 to 2024, Nagata and colleagues noted.

"Because school smartphone regulations are rapidly changing, future periodic analyses are necessary to understand the evolving relationships between these policies, adolescent smartphone use, and long-term academic outcomes," they wrote.

The study by Nagata and colleagues was supported by the NIH.

Nagata reported receiving grants from the NIH during the conduct of the study. Co-authors reported receiving personal fees from the National Sleep Foundation and the Children and Screens Institute; receiving grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Della Pietra Family Foundation; serving as an expert witness or consultant in social media litigation outside the submitted work; and receiving grants from the NIH during the conduct of the study.

Christakis, who also was an author on the study by Nagata and colleagues, reported receiving personal fees for serving as an expert witness in ongoing social media litigation. A co-author who also was an author on the study by Nagata and colleagues reported receiving personal fees from the National Sleep Foundation, Children and Screens Institute, Idorsia Alliance for Sleep, and HireZon; being an expert witness in social media litigation; and receiving grants from the NICHD and the Della Pietra Family Foundation outside the submitted work.

Primary Source

JAMA

Source Reference: Nagata JM, et al "Smartphone use during school hours by US youth in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study" JAMA 2026; DOI: 10.1001/jama.2025.23235.

Secondary Source

JAMA Pediatrics

Source Reference: Christakis D, et al "Adult attitudes about school smartphone bans" JAMA Pediatr 2026; DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.5736.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/generalpediatrics/119288

Novo Nordisk launches Wegovy pill at $149 a month

 Novo Nordisk has wasted no time in launching its oral version of the weight loss drug Wegovy in the US after its approval by the FDA, as 2025 drew to a close.

The Danish drugmaker said the drug will be available from today at prices starting from $149 per month for cash purchasers. That rate covers the 1.5 mg and 4 mg versions of the pill, with two higher doses – 9 mg and 25 mg – priced at $299 per month.

The lower price for the 4 mg dose will be temporary, however, with the cost due to rise to $199 after 15th April. The Wegovy pill is taken at a dose of 1.5 mg for the first month, 4 mg for the second, and 9 mg for a third month, followed by the recommended maintenance of 25 mg per day.

In the OASIS 4 trial that underpinned the FDA approval, a 25 mg daily dose of oral Wegovy achieved an average weight loss of 16.6%, versus 2.7% with placebo. According to Novo Nordisk, that rivals the efficacy of the once-weekly injectable version of the drug.

The oral pricing could undercut Novo Nordisk's main rival in the oral GLP-1 agonist-based weight loss category, Eli Lilly, which could hear from the FDA on its orforglipron drug within the next few weeks, after getting a double-quick review thanks to the award of a national priority voucher.

Lilly has said it plans to sell orforglipron for up to $399 per month, although, the lower doses will likely match oral Wegovy at around $150 per month. Last November, Lilly and Novo Nordisk both struck deals with the Trump administration on direct-to-consumer (DTC) prices for weight-loss medicines, saying they would be available at prices similar to those in Europe.

There are differences between oral Wegovy and orforglipron that could have a role to play in determining which of the drugs will lead the oral category. For example, Wegovy needs to be taken first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, half an hour before eating or drinking, while orforglipron does not need those restrictions.

In the meantime, being first to market with an oral GLP-1 for weight loss is a boost to Novo Nordisk, whose injectable Wegovy has come under pressure from Lilly's dual-acting GIP/GLP-1 agonist Zepbound (tirzepatide).

Novo Nordisk has said adequate supplies of the newly approved Wegovy pill will be made available, so there should be no repeat of the supply issues that previously dogged the rollout of injectable Wegovy and allowed compounding pharmacies to make their own versions of the drug available.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/novo-nordisk-launches-wegovy-pill-149-month

China clears GSK's Nucala for COPD

 GSK has claimed an important new approval for Nucala in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), in China, which is estimated to account for around a quarter of the global patient population.

The National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has approved IL-5 inhibitor Nucala (mepolizumab) as an add-on maintenance treatment for adults with inadequately controlled COPD, characterised by raised blood eosinophils.

The drug – which is also approved for severe asthma and other indications characterised by eosinophilic inflammation – has previously been cleared for COPD in the US and was also recently recommended for approval in the EU.

According to a 2023 report from the World Health Organization (WHO), China has almost 100 million people living with COPD, and the disease is the third leading cause of death.

Those numbers alone make China an important market for GSK, but in recent years, the Chinese government has ramped up screening programmes and treatment capacity in primary healthcare. COPD is a priority within the government's Healthy China 2030 public health plan.

Between 2020 and 2023, for example, more than 140.000 primary healthcare workers received training in performing lung function tests, ramping up their skills in the early diagnosis of COPD.

In a statement, GSK said that Nucala is the first and only monthly biologic approved in China studied in a wide COPD population with a blood eosinophil count (BEC) starting as low as 150 cells/µL.

It will enter the market there a few months after its main rival – Sanofi and Regeneron's IL-4 and IL-13 inhibitor Dupixent (dupilumab) – which was cleared by the NMPA last September for similar use in people with BEC of 300 or more.

GSK has high hopes for Nucala thanks to its less frequent dosing – once a month, versus every other week for Dupixent – and the broader label. The company has estimated that among people with COPD who need additional treatment on top of inhaled triple therapy, around two-thirds have BECs of 150 or more.

Nucala is already one of GSK's top sellers, with sales of £1.44 billion ($1.94 billion) in the first nine months of 2025, up 13% on the like year-earlier period, and the company has estimated that COPD could add another £500 million to its peak sales potential.

"Given the high incidence of COPD in China and a mortality rate that is above the global average, there is a clear need for novel options to address COPD," said GSK's global head of immunology and inflammation R&D, Kaivan Khavandi.

"The approval of Nucala offers patients in China a monthly add-on maintenance treatment to reduce exacerbations, including those leading to emergency department visits and/or hospitalisations, which account for a large proportion of annual direct medical costs," he added.

Regulatory submissions for Nucala in COPD are also currently under review in Europe and other areas of the world.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/china-clears-gsks-nucala-copd

Aktis Oncology files much-expanded IPO

 US biotech Aktis Oncology has filed IPO documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in what could be the first biotech listing on the Nasdaq in 2026.

The Boston-based radiopharmaceutical specialist first revealed plans for an IPO last month, pinning a $100 million placeholder on the bid, but emboldened by signs of increased investor appetite for IPOs – at least outside the biotech space – after a lacklustre 2024 and 2025.

Today, it revealed plans to raise that target significantly, to a gross of around $210 million, with the sale of 11.8 million shares priced at between $16 and $18 apiece. If it hits the top of that range, it could end up with a valuation of roughly $840 million.

Aktis' technology platform relies on the use of alpha radiation – which has limited penetrating power – to deliver highly localised radiotherapy to tumours that is designed to prevent off-target effects in neighbouring, healthy tissues.

The company has said that alpha particle radiopharmaceuticals are also less prone to the development of treatment resistance because they introduce breaks across both strands of DNA in malignant cells.

Its lead candidates are AKY-1189 targeting Nectin-4-expressing cancers, which is currently in a 150-patient phase 1b trial in the US with preliminary results expected in the first quarter of 2027, and AKY-2519 targeting B7-H3-expressing tumours that should start human testing in the first half of this year.

Both are based on the alpha-emitting isotope Actinium-225 and consist of 'miniprotein' radioconjugate molecules designed to be taken up and retained by cancer cells.

Aktis was founded in 2020 and raised $156 million in a Series A that closed in 2022, followed by a $175 million Series B in 2024. In between those, the company also locked down a $1.1 billion strategic partnership with Eli Lilly that included an upfront payment of $60 million and an undisclosed equity investment.

The prospectus for the IPO says Aktis had $246 million in cash reserves at the end of the third quarter of 2025. The biotech intends to list on the Nasdaq under the AKTS symbol.

Analysts have been talking up signs of a pickup in biotech IPOs this year, thanks to an improved funding environment and rising rates of M&A deals that can give investors a route to a payoff.

It's worth saying those predictions came ahead of geopolitical instability and market volatility that may follow events like the US administration's regime-changing operation in Venezuela and fears it may be planning a similar action in Greenland, after President Trump repeated a threat to annex the autonomous territory of Denmark.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/aktis-oncology-files-much-expanded-ipo

Nvidia Launches Open-Source AI Models for Autonomous Vehicles, Robot Learning

 

• NVIDIA is the first to release an open reasoning VLA model designed to tackle long-tail autonomous driving challenges; NVIDIA Alpamayo family also includes simulation tools and datasets for AV development.
• Alpamayo 1, AlpaSim and Physical AI Open Datasets enable the development of vehicles that perceive, reason and act with humanlike judgment — enabling developers to fine-tune, distill and test models that unlock greater safety, robustness and scalability.
• With Alpamayo, mobility leaders such as JLR, Lucid and Uber, along with the AV research community including Berkeley DeepDrive, can fast-track safe, reasoning‑based level 4 deployment roadmaps.
   

NVIDIA today unveiled the NVIDIA Alpamayo family of open AI models, simulation tools and datasets designed to accelerate the next era of safe, reasoning‑based autonomous vehicle (AV) development.

AVs must safely operate across an enormous range of driving conditions. Rare, complex scenarios, often called the “long tail,” remain some of the toughest challenges for autonomous systems to safely master. Traditional AV architectures separate perception and planning, which can limit scalability when new or unusual situations arise. Recent advances in end-to-end learning have made significant progress, but overcoming these long-tail edge cases requires models that can safely reason about cause and effect, especially when situations fall outside a model’s training experience.

The Alpamayo family introduces chain-of-thought, reasoning-based vision language action (VLA) models that bring humanlike thinking to AV decision-making. These systems can think through novel or rare scenarios step by step, improving driving capability and explainability — which is critical to scaling trust and safety in intelligent vehicles — and are underpinned by the NVIDIA Halos safety system.

“The ChatGPT moment for physical AI is here — when machines begin to understand, reason and act in the real world,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Robotaxis are among the first to benefit. Alpamayo brings reasoning to autonomous vehicles, allowing them to think through rare scenarios, drive safely in complex environments and explain their driving decisions — it’s the foundation for safe, scalable autonomy.”

A Complete, Open Ecosystem for Reasoning‑Based Autonomy
Alpamayo integrates three foundational pillars — open models, simulation frameworks and datasets — into a cohesive, open ecosystem that any automotive developer or research team can build upon.

Rather than running directly in-vehicle, Alpamayo models serve as large-scale teacher models that developers can fine-tune and distill into the backbones of their complete AV stacks.

At CES, NVIDIA is releasing:

• Alpamayo 1: The industry’s first chain-of-thought reasoning VLA model designed for the AV research community, now on Hugging Face. With a 10-billion-parameter architecture, Alpamayo 1 uses video input to generate trajectories alongside reasoning traces, showing the logic behind each decision. Developers can adapt Alpamayo 1 into smaller runtime models for vehicle development, or use it as a foundation for AV development tools such as reasoning-based evaluators and auto-labeling systems. Alpamayo 1 provides open model weights and open-source inferencing scripts. Future models in the family will feature larger parameter counts, more detailed reasoning capabilities, more input and output flexibility, and options for commercial usage.
• AlpaSim: A fully open‑source, end-to-end simulation framework for high‑fidelity AV development, available on GitHub. It provides realistic sensor modeling, configurable traffic dynamics and scalable closed‑loop testing environments, enabling rapid validation and policy refinement.
• Physical AI Open Datasets: NVIDIA offers the most diverse large-scale, open dataset for AV that contains 1,700+ hours of driving data collected across the widest range of geographies and conditions, covering rare and complex real-world edge cases essential for advancing reasoning architectures. These datasets are available on Hugging Face.
   

Together, these tools enable a self-reinforcing development loop for reasoning-based AV stacks.

Broad AV Industry Supports Alpamayo
Mobility leaders and industry experts, including Lucid, JLR, Uber and Berkeley DeepDrive, are showing interest in Alpamayo to develop reasoning-based AV stacks that will enable level 4 autonomy.

“The shift toward physical AI highlights the growing need for AI systems that can reason about real-world behavior, not just process data,” said Kai Stepper, vice president of ADAS and autonomous driving at Lucid Motors. “Advanced simulation environments, rich datasets and reasoning models are important elements of the evolution.”

“Open, transparent AI development is essential to advancing autonomous mobility responsibly,” said Thomas Müller, executive director of product engineering at JLR. “By open-sourcing models like Alpamayo, NVIDIA is helping to accelerate innovation across the autonomous driving ecosystem, giving developers and researchers new tools to tackle complex real-world scenarios safely.”

“Handling long-tail and unpredictable driving scenarios is one of the defining challenges of autonomy,” said Sarfraz Maredia, global head of autonomous mobility and delivery at Uber. “Alpamayo creates exciting new opportunities for the industry to accelerate physical AI, improve transparency and increase safe level 4 deployments.”

“Alpamayo 1 enables vehicles to interpret complex environments, anticipate novel situations and make safe decisions, even in scenarios not previously encountered,” said Owen Chen, senior principal analyst of S&P Global. “The model’s open-source nature accelerates industry-wide innovation, allowing partners to adapt and refine the technology for their unique needs.”

“The launch of the Alpamayo portfolio represents a major leap forward for the research community,” said Wei Zhan, codirector of Berkeley DeepDrive. “NVIDIA’s decision to make this openly available is transformative as its access and capabilities will enable us to train at unprecedented scale — giving us the flexibility and resources needed to push autonomous driving into the mainstream.”

Beyond Alpamayo, developers can tap into NVIDIA’s rich library of tools and models, including from the NVIDIA Cosmos™ and NVIDIA Omniverse™ platforms. Developers can fine-tune model releases on proprietary fleet data, integrate them into the NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion™ architecture built with NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor™ accelerated compute, and validate performance in simulation before commercial deployment.

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/alpamayo-autonomous-vehicle-development

CDC Acts on Presidential Memorandum to Update Childhood Immunization Schedule

 Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill, in his role as Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), today signed a decision memorandum* [PDF, 894 KB] accepting recommendations from a comprehensive scientific assessment [PDF, 1.05 MB] of U.S. childhood immunization practices, following a directive from President Trump to review international best practices from peer, developed countries.

On December 5, 2025, via a Presidential Memorandum, President Trump directed the Secretary of HHS and the Acting Director of CDC to examine how peer, developed nations structure their childhood vaccination schedules and to evaluate the scientific evidence underlying those practices. He instructed them to update the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule if superior approaches exist abroad while preserving access to vaccine currently available to Americans.

After consulting with health ministries of peer nations, considering the assessment’s findings, and reviewing the decision memo presented by National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, and CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, Acting Director O’Neill formally accepted the recommendations and directed the CDC to move forward with implementation.

“President Trump directed us to examine how other developed nations protect their children and to take action if they are doing better,” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “After an exhaustive review of the evidence, we are aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus while strengthening transparency and informed consent. This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health.”

The scientific assessment compared U.S. childhood immunization recommendations with those of peer nations, analyzed vaccine uptake and public trust, evaluated clinical and epidemiological evidence and knowledge gaps, examined vaccine mandates, and identified next steps.

The assessment reviewed 20 peer, developed nations and found that the U.S. is a global outlier among developed nations in both the number of diseases addressed in its routine childhood vaccination schedule and the total number of recommended doses but does not have higher vaccination rates than such countries. In fact, many peer nations that recommend fewer routine vaccines achieve strong child health outcomes and maintain high vaccination rates through public trust and education rather than mandates. For example, in 2024, the U.S. recommended more childhood vaccines than any peer nation, and more than twice as many doses as some European nations. At the lower end is Denmark, which immunizes children against 10 diseases compared to a total number of 18 diseases for which protection was provided in 2024 in the U.S.

“After reviewing the evidence, I signed a decision memorandum accepting the assessment’s recommendations,” Acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill said. “The data support a more focused schedule that protects children from the most serious infectious diseases while improving clarity, adherence, and public confidence.”

Under the accepted recommendations, CDC will continue to organize the childhood immunization schedule in three distinct categories, all of which require insurance companies to cover them without cost-sharing:

1. Immunizations Recommended for All Children
2. Immunizations Recommended for Certain High-Risk Groups or Populations
3. Immunizations Based on Shared Clinical Decision-Making

The first category will include vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), pneumococcal disease, human papillomavirus (HPV), and varicella (chickenpox).

“All vaccines currently recommended by CDC will remain covered by insurance without cost sharing,” Dr. Oz said. “No family will lose access. This framework empowers parents and physicians to make individualized decisions based on risk, while maintaining strong protection against serious disease.”

The assessment also documents a significant decline in public trust in health care institutions between 2020 and 2024, alongside falling childhood vaccination rates and increased risk of vaccine-preventable diseases.

“Public health works only when people trust it,” Dr. Makary said. “That trust depends on transparency, rigorous science, and respect for families. This decision recommits HHS to all three.”

The accepted recommendations recognize there is a need for more and better gold standard science, including placebo-controlled randomized trials and long-term observational studies to better characterize vaccine benefits, risks, and outcomes. HHS agencies are called on to fund this gold standard science for all vaccines on the schedule.

“Science demands continuous evaluation,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said. “This decision commits NIH, CDC, and FDA to gold standard science, greater transparency, and ongoing reassessment as new data emerge.”

HHS and CDC will work with state health agencies, physician groups, and other partners on next steps and implementation and will educate parents and clinicians on the updated immunization schedules.

View the fact sheet here.

https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/cdc-acts-presidential-memorandum-update-childhood-immunization-schedule.html

Hyundai Unveils New Humanoid Robot for Work in Car Factories

 

Hyundai Motor Co.’s Boston Dynamics unit unveiled the latest iteration of a humanoid robot designed to work in the carmaker’s manufacturing plants starting in 2028, including at a factory in Savannah, Georgia.

The Seoul-based manufacturer initially plans to deploy its newest Atlas robot to handle highly repetitive tasks, such as arranging components in the order they are installed in vehicles, before it plugs them into more complex assembly work by 2030, Hyundai said in a statement from the CES technology conference in Las Vegas.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-05/hyundai-unveils-new-humanoid-robot-to-work-in-its-car-factories