When former Pittsburgh Steelers' center Mike Webster committed suicide in 2002, his death began to raise awareness of the brain damage experienced by NFL football players. A 2017 study found that 99% of deceased NFL players had a degenerative brain disease known as CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). Only one out of 111 former football players had no sign of CTE. It turns out, some of the risks of traumatic brain injury experienced by heavily padded adults playing at a professional level also exist for kids with developing brains playing at a recreational level. The dangers might not be as intense as what the adults go through, but it can have some major life-long consequences.
A new PSA put out by the Concussion Legacy Foundation raises awareness of the dangers of tackle football on developing brains, comparing it to smoking. "Tackle football is like smoking. The younger I start, the longer I am exposed to danger. You wouldn't let me smoke. When should I start tackling?" a child's voice can be heard saying in the PSA as a mother lights up a cigarette for her young son.
According to a post on the Concussion Legacy Foundation's Instagram page, the PSA "is inspired by a major study released earlier this week that shows the link between tackle football and the brain disease CTE may be stronger than the link between smoking and lung cancer." The Concussion Legacy Foundation wants parents to put off letting their kids play tackle football until the child has reached the age of 14. The organization says that children who receive brain injuries before the age of 12 recover more slowly from them, and children's bodies just aren't built to handle being tackled.
RELATED: The Utah Girls Tackle Football League Tackles Gender Norms
The study the group referenced, which was published in the Annals of Neurology, found that the severity of CTE is related to how many years spent playing football, rather than the amount of concussions an individual received. The risk of CTE doubles every 2.6 years someone spends playing tackle football. If a child starts playing tackle football at the age of five, their risk of developing CTE is 10 times higher than someone who started playing at the age of 14.
RELATED: Los Angeles Rams Launch Youth Clinics That Focus On Character Over FootballLos Angeles Rams Launch Youth Clinics That Focus On Character Over Football
CTE is a degenerative brain disease caused by repetitive brain trauma. With CTE, a buildup of a brain protein called Tau forms clumps throughout the brain. The clumps spread then kill off normal brain cells. Symptoms take years to manifest and include memory loss, confusion, aggression, and impaired judgement. CTE was discovered in 1928 after boxers were described as having "punch drunk syndrome."
This PSA is personal. The PSA was lead by Rebecca Carpenter, daughter of NFL football player Lew Carpenter, and Angela Harrison, daughter of college football player Joe Campigotto. Both former football players were diagnosed with CTE after they passed. In the PSA, former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland, who retired after receiving two diagnosed concussions his first season in the NFL, plays the referee in the PSA.
Because of the risks, states including California, New York, and Illinois are considering banning tackle football for children under the age of 12. Until then, there's always flag football.
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
Gif of Robin Williams via
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.