Just like planet Earth, water is the main ingredient in your body. According to the USGS, “up to 60% of the human adult body is water,” while the Mayo Clinic states that water “makes up about 50% to 70% of your body weight.” Without water, you would only survive about three days. This makes water, especially clean drinking water, very important.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to get caught up in the day and forget to drink water for hours at a time. To stay healthy, you need to train yourself to drink water, whether or not you are thirsty.

Why is water important to the body?

Without clean drinking water, you wouldn’t survive. This is because nearly everything your body does requires water. Water:

• Lubricates your joints.
• Helps keep your muscles functioning properly.
• Delivers oxygen to your vital organs.
• Helps you maintain a consistent body temperature.
• Protects the brain and other sensitive tissue.
• Helps keep you alert.
• Allows you to think and focus.
• Helps you maintain a safe blood pressure.
• Lets you digest food.
• Transports nutrients to where they are needed.
• Contributes to healthy-looking skin.
• Lets you get rid of harmful toxins and waste.
• Can prevent fatigue and help you get a better night’s sleep.

What happens if I don’t drink enough water?

If you do not drink enough water, any of your body systems that depend on water can begin to fail. Symptoms of dehydration may include dry mouth, inability to shed tears, sunken cheeks, dark urine, extreme thirst, fatigue, dizziness, confusion, irritability, inability to sleep and constipation.

Dehydration can be life-threatening. You may require prompt medical attention. Call your doctor if you are suffering from symptoms of dehydration.

How much water do I need?

Everyone wants a simple answer to this question. Unfortunately, there isn’t one. There are helpful reminders that encourage you to drink water, but they might not apply to your situation. Drinking eight glasses of water per day, for instance, is a good start, but for most of us, that’s not enough — the more body mass you have, the more water you require. The Mayo Clinic recommends 15.5 cups of fluids a day for men and 11.5 cups of fluids a day for women.

Other sources say half an ounce to an ounce of water per pound is the ideal amount. While this is a better approach, it doesn’t work if you are an athlete, you are breastfeeding, you have a virus or you have a condition that requires you to replenish more fluids than the average person.

Your water needs will change based on your activity level, the foods you eat, the temperature and other critical factors. To stay properly hydrated, you need to monitor yourself. There are three ways you can quickly learn if you are drinking enough water:

1. You should rarely (never) feel thirsty. If you are thirsty, it means you are already dehydrated.
2. Your urine should be golden. If it’s brown, you’re not drinking enough water; if it’s clear, you’re drinking too much water.
3. Consult with your doctor. Talk to your doctor to determine what your typical daily water intake should be.

Why do I get thirsty?

The hypothalamus is the part of the brain responsible for homeostasis. In simpler terms, it is the control center for your body. The hypothalamus constantly monitors what is going on inside you to keep things balanced. It regulates body temperature and emotional responses and controls your appetite. When something is amiss, the hypothalamus triggers a reaction that solves the problem or encourages you to solve the problem.

Regarding thirst, the hypothalamus monitors sodium, blood pressure and other substances in your body. When blood volume or blood pressure drops or sodium concentration is too high, the hypothalamus sends out a message and you get thirsty.

The hypothalamus only sends this message out when the body is already in a state of imbalance. It’s like the oil light in your car: It only turns on after the damage has begun. This is why you need to drink water before you get thirsty.

FAQ

Q. Are there any easy strategies to drink more water?

A. Try building the act of frequently drinking water into your daily routine. Helpful habits can include carrying a water bottle with you, drinking a pitcher of water every day or getting something that makes drinking convenient, such as a home water cooler.

Q. Can you drink too much water?

A. While it is rare for a healthy individual to drink too much water, it is possible. When this happens, the sodium content in your blood becomes diluted and your cells swell. The condition is called hyponatremia, and it can be life-threatening.

Q. Can I just drink water when I get thirsty?

A. You get thirsty when you are dehydrated. If you wait until you are thirsty to drink water, the damage to your body has already been done. To stay healthy, you need to condition yourself to drink water before you get thirsty.

Q. Is eight glasses of water a day enough?

A. Eight glasses a day may be enough for a small person with limited activity. It may also be a great goal if you are constantly struggling to drink enough water. However, for most people, it is the bare minimum you should drink. The color of your urine will tell you if it is enough — strive for a golden yellow.

Q. What are the benefits of staying hydrated?

A. The benefits of staying hydrated are many. You can think better, perform better, stay healthier, be happier and have fewer aches and pains. Staying properly hydrated can also help you maintain a healthy weight, get a better night’s sleep and more. There is no reason a healthy individual should not stay hydrated.

What you need to buy to stay hydrated

APEC Water Systems 5-Stage Under-Sink Reverse Osmosis Drinking Water Filter System

The easiest way to stay hydrated is to start drinking from the tap again. This under-sink water filtration system makes drinking pure water as simple as turning on the faucet.

Sold by Amazon

Glacier Bay Bottom-Load Water Dispenser

Whether you like your water icy cold or piping hot, Glacier Bay has you covered with its convenient bottom-load water dispenser. The press of a button lets you fill up your glass with pure, sterilized water.

Sold by Amazon

Brita Faucet-Mount Water Filtration System

This convenient, low-cost solution to getting pure drinking water for proper hydration is easy to install. Just click it onto your faucet, and get up to 100 gallons of filtered drinking water on demand.

Sold by Amazon

Hydro Flask Wide Mouth Straw Lid

If you have your water on hand at all times, you’ll be more inclined to drink what you need. This 24-ounce Hydro Flask has a convenient built-in straw, and it will keep your water cold for up to 24 hours.

Sold by Amazon and

Lifestraw Personal Water Filter

If you lead an active lifestyle, it can be cumbersome to carry enough water to stay properly hydrated. Lifestraw solves this problem by letting you drink straight from nature’s freshwater sources, such as streams and ponds, so you never run out of fresh water again.

Sold by Amazon

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By ARTHUR BRICE and FREIDA FRISARO (Associated Press)

TERRA CEIA ISLAND, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Department of Health has issued a statewide mosquito-borne illness advisory after four locally contracted cases of malaria were reported along the Gulf Coast south of Tampa.

On Monday, a health alert issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also noted that another case has been detected in Texas, marking the first time there has been a local spread of malaria in the United States in 20 years.

The four residents in Sarasota County received treatment and have recovered, according to the state’s Department of Health advisory. Malaria, caused by a parasite that spreads through bites from Anopheles mosquitoes, causes fever, chills, sweats, nausea and vomiting, and headaches. It is not spread person to person.

It’s the threat of the mosquito-borne illness that concerns Kathleen Gibson-Dee, who lives on Terra Ceia Island, which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Sarasota County.

Even though no malaria cases have been reported in Manatee County, where Terra Ceia is located, Gibson-Dee said that she’s now routinely using bug repellent while working in her garden.

“I don’t go out without it,” she told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “And we don’t go out in the evening because you can see clouds and clouds of bugs now. They may not all be mosquitoes, but there’s certainly mosquitos out there.”

Another resident, Tom Lyons, says news of the malaria cases “makes me take mosquito protection a little more seriously.”

The mosquito population thrives in Terra Ceia because “it’s an island surrounded by a lot of shallow water and mangroves, and ideal places for mosquitoes,” Lyons said.

Officials in Manatee County have ramped up efforts to control the mosquito population.

Chris Lesser, director of the Manatee County mosquito control district, said they’re primarily using helicopters to combat the mosquito population because they cover between 15,000 and 20,000 acres (6070 to 8082 hectares) in one night. A truck can only cover around 1,000 acres (404 hectares) a night, he said.

“We really want to focus on killing the adult mosquito before they have the opportunity to feed on one person that may be infected with malaria and then transmit that disease to a second person,” Lesser said.

He said the time frame for when a mosquito can become infected to when it can transmit the disease to a person is about 14 days.

“So we’re trying to get in there about once every seven to 10 days and really knock down the mosquito population. And that process will continue until the public health alert that we’re currently under is lifted,” Lesser said.

“It’s a curtain,” he continued. “We’re trying to keep the malaria mosquitos from coming into our county through our southern border by using aggressive mosquito control activities.”

Officials in Sarasota County area also using similar tactics to control mosquitos, the county’s health department said in an advisory.

The initial malaria advisory was issued in Sarasota County after the first case was reported in late May. That was followed by a second case, and then two more, said Jae Williams, the press secretary for the Florida Department of Health.

“As soon as it crossed over from one to two confirmed cases, it progressed to an alert,” Williams said, comparing it to the system of issuing a hurricane watch versus a hurricane warning — when a storm is imminent.

“Listen, the conditions are favorable,” Williams continued. “It’s not just some rogue one mosquito. People need to be paying attention.”

Williams said health officials are being proactive.

“We know we are going into the Fourth of July holiday. We know the summer’s only getting hotter and wetter over the next couple of months,” Williams said. “So we just wanted to give Floridians a big kind of heads up, put the whole state on notice.”

About 2,000 U.S. cases of malaria are diagnosed each year — the vast majority in travelers coming from countries where malaria commonly spreads.

Since 1992, there have been 11 outbreaks involving malaria from mosquitoes in the U.S. The last one occurred in 2003 in Palm Beach County, Florida, where eight cases were reported.

________

Frisaro reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

By ARTHUR BRICE and FREIDA FRISARO (Associated Press)

TERRA CEIA ISLAND, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Department of Health has issued a statewide mosquito-borne illness advisory after four locally contracted cases of malaria were reported along the Gulf Coast south of Tampa.

On Monday, a health alert issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also noted that another case has been detected in Texas, marking the first time there has been a local spread of malaria in the United States in 20 years.

The four residents in Sarasota County received treatment and have recovered, according to the state’s Department of Health advisory. Malaria, caused by a parasite that spreads through bites from Anopheles mosquitoes, causes fever, chills, sweats, nausea and vomiting, and headaches. It is not spread person to person.

It’s the threat of the mosquito-borne illness that concerns Kathleen Gibson-Dee, who lives on Terra Ceia Island, which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Sarasota County.

Even though no malaria cases have been reported in Manatee County, where Terra Ceia is located, Gibson-Dee said that she’s now routinely using bug repellent while working in her garden.

“I don’t go out without it,” she told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “And we don’t go out in the evening because you can see clouds and clouds of bugs now. They may not all be mosquitoes, but there’s certainly mosquitos out there.”

Another resident, Tom Lyons, says news of the malaria cases “makes me take mosquito protection a little more seriously.”

The mosquito population thrives in Terra Ceia because “it’s an island surrounded by a lot of shallow water and mangroves, and ideal places for mosquitoes,” Lyons said.

Officials in Manatee County have ramped up efforts to control the mosquito population.

Chris Lesser, director of the Manatee County mosquito control district, said they’re primarily using helicopters to combat the mosquito population because they cover between 15,000 and 20,000 acres (6070 to 8082 hectares) in one night. A truck can only cover around 1,000 acres (404 hectares) a night, he said.

“We really want to focus on killing the adult mosquito before they have the opportunity to feed on one person that may be infected with malaria and then transmit that disease to a second person,” Lesser said.

He said the time frame for when a mosquito can become infected to when it can transmit the disease to a person is about 14 days.

“So we’re trying to get in there about once every seven to 10 days and really knock down the mosquito population. And that process will continue until the public health alert that we’re currently under is lifted,” Lesser said.

“It’s a curtain,” he continued. “We’re trying to keep the malaria mosquitos from coming into our county through our southern border by using aggressive mosquito control activities.”

Officials in Sarasota County area also using similar tactics to control mosquitos, the county’s health department said in an advisory.

The initial malaria advisory was issued in Sarasota County after the first case was reported in late May. That was followed by a second case, and then two more, said Jae Williams, the press secretary for the Florida Department of Health.

“As soon as it crossed over from one to two confirmed cases, it progressed to an alert,” Williams said, comparing it to the system of issuing a hurricane watch versus a hurricane warning — when a storm is imminent.

“Listen, the conditions are favorable,” Williams continued. “It’s not just some rogue one mosquito. People need to be paying attention.”

Williams said health officials are being proactive.

“We know we are going into the Fourth of July holiday. We know the summer’s only getting hotter and wetter over the next couple of months,” Williams said. “So we just wanted to give Floridians a big kind of heads up, put the whole state on notice.”

About 2,000 U.S. cases of malaria are diagnosed each year — the vast majority in travelers coming from countries where malaria commonly spreads.

Since 1992, there have been 11 outbreaks involving malaria from mosquitoes in the U.S. The last one occurred in 2003 in Palm Beach County, Florida, where eight cases were reported.

________

Frisaro reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Longwood’s Michael Dolberry hit a three-run homer to lead the Tri-City Peppers to a 6-3 victory over the Peninsula Pilots in a Coastal Plain League baseball game Tuesday night in Hampton.

Randolph-Macon’s Hunter Cole had two hits and three RBIs for the Pilots (6-13), while James Madison’s Ryan Dooley had three hits.

Tri-City starting pitcher Hayden Snelsire allowed one run in four innings, striking out six batters. Pilots starter Brian Ereu allowed two runs in four innings with three strikeouts.

The teams will head to Shepherd Stadium and play again at 7 p.m. Thursday.

By DAVID KOENIG (AP Airlines Writer)

Travelers waited out widespread delays at U.S. airports on Tuesday, an ominous sign heading into the long July 4 holiday weekend, which is shaping up as the biggest test yet for airlines that are struggling to keep up with surging numbers of passengers.

In some cases, delays ran several hours at airports in the Northeast, as thunderstorms pounded the region.

At various times, the Federal Aviation Administration held up flights bound for LaGuardia Airport in New York and Reagan Washington National and Baltimore-Washington airports near the nation’s capital.

By evening on the East Coast, about 6,500 flights had been delayed and about 1,900 canceled. United Airlines, with a major hub in Newark, New Jersey, canceled about 500 flights or 18% of its schedule, and JetBlue canceled 16% of its flights, according to FlightAware.

Call it the storm before the storm.

The FAA was expecting about 48,000 flights on Tuesday, rising on Wednesday and peaking at more than 52,500 on Thursday, which figures to be the biggest travel day of the holiday period.

People whose travel plans were disrupted took to social media to vent against the airlines. Some swore they would never fly again on whichever airline had done them wrong.

When their United flight in Newark was canceled Sunday night, Margo and Jason Osborne searched for other flights but couldn’t find one. Margo said a United agent wouldn’t let them retrieve their bags either – they would have to pick those up at their final destination, New Orleans — then “made me feel like an idiot” for leaving needed medical supplies in a checked bag.

They saw other people looking for unaccompanied minors and heard about stranded travelers who spent hours in line or slept at the airport.

“All these poor people are literally just sitting there at the mercy of a company who is not doing anything to help them,” Margo said in an interview. “There is zero customer service right now.”

The Osbornes rented a car — they felt lucky to snag one — and drove 10 hours through the night to Charlotte, North Carolina, to catch an American Airlines flight to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, close to home. Their luggage finally got to New Orleans on Tuesday.

If large numbers of passengers are stranded or delayed this weekend, expect federal officials and the airlines to blame each other for the mess.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose department includes the FAA, has been beating up on the airlines for more than a year. He has accused them of failing to live up to reasonable standards of customer service and suggested that they are scheduling more flights than they can handle.

The airlines are punching back.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby blamed a shortage of federal air traffic controllers for massive disruptions last weekend at its Newark hub.

“We estimate that over 150,000 customers on United alone were impacted this weekend because of FAA staffing issues and their ability to manage traffic,” Kirby wrote in a memo to employees Tuesday night.

United could be contributing to its struggles. The Association of Flight Attendants, which represents the airline’s cabin crews, said it complained about wait times of more than three hours for workers who called a crew scheduling center that had “limited telephone lines and personnel.” The union told flight attendants near the end of their shifts to tell supervisors and find a hotel room.

The FAA has admitted that it is understaffed at key facilities including one in the New York City region. It is training about 3,000 new air traffic controllers, but most of them won’t be ready anytime soon. Last week, the Transportation Department’s inspector general said in a report that the FAA has made only “limited efforts” to adequately staff critical air traffic control centers and lacks a plan to tackle the problem.

The good news: Airlines are canceling only 1.5% of U.S. flights this month, a lower percentage than a year ago or in June 2019, the last summer before the pandemic.

On the other hand, delays are running above even their elevated rate in June of last year, when airlines were still rebuilding their work forces.

More than one in every four flights this month has been late — 180,000 in all — and that’s with the government-allowed grace period for tardy arrivals and the extra time that airlines build into their schedules to make the numbers look better. At 26%, the rate of late flights is up nearly one-third from 2019.

Meanwhile, traffic has rebounded to roughly pre-pandemic levels. The Transportation Security Administration has screened 2.55 million travelers a day on average this month, down about 1% from the same period in 2019.

___

Wyatte Grantham-Philips in Washington, D.C., contributed. Koenig reported from Dallas.

Two men have been charged in connection to the February 2022 killing of a 17-year-old boy in Portsmouth.

Officers responded about 7:13 p.m. on Feb. 1, 2022 to the 1800 block of Portsmouth Boulevard, near the Portsmouth Sportsplex, following a report of two boys who had been shot. One of the boys was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries but was treated, while the other — who has not been identified because he was a minor — died from his injuries, according to a news release from police.

A third man was also found with life-threatening injuries near Lansing Park. He was treated for his injuries at a hospital.

Cedric Rashad Davis Jr., 19, and D’Juan Raphael Jones Jr., 20, both have been charged with first-degree murder and eight other felonies each in connection to the teen’s death. Davis was also charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Davis and Jones were already in the Portsmouth City Jail on unrelated charges when police charged them with the killing.

The investigation is ongoing.

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, [email protected]

By The Associated Press

Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the private army of prison recruits and other mercenaries who have fought some of the deadliest battles in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, escaped prosecution for his abortive armed rebellion against the Kremlin and arrived Tuesday in Belarus.

The exile of the 62-year-old owner of the Wagner Group was part of a deal that ended the short-lived mutiny in Russia. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed Prigozhin was in Belarus, and said he and some of his troops were welcome to stay “for some time” at their own expense.

Prigozhin has not been seen since Saturday, when he waved to well-wishers from a vehicle in the southern city of Rostov. He issued a defiant audio statement on Monday. And on Tuesday morning, a private jet believed to belong to him flew from Rostov to an airbase southwest of the Belarusian capital of Minsk, according to data from FlightRadar24.

Meanwhile, Moscow said preparations were underway for Wagner’s troops fighting in Ukraine, who numbered 25,000 according to Prigozhin, to hand over their heavy weapons to Russia’s military. Prigozhin had said such moves were planned ahead of a July 1 deadline for his fighters to sign contracts — which he opposed — to serve under Russia’s military command.

Russian authorities also said Tuesday they have closed a criminal investigation into the uprising and are pressing no armed rebellion charge against Prigozhin or his followers.

Still, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to set the stage for financial wrongdoing charges against an affiliated organization Prigozhin owns. Putin told a military gathering that Prigozhin’s Concord Group earned 80 billion rubles ($941 million) from a contract to provide the military with food, and that Wagner had received over 86 billion rubles (over $1 billion) in the past year for wages and additional items.

“I hope that while doing so they didn’t steal anything, or stole not so much,” Putin said, adding that authorities would look closely at Concord’s contract.

For years, Prigozhin has enjoyed lucrative catering contracts with the Russian government. Police who searched his St. Petersburg office on Saturday said they found 4 billion rubles ($48 million) in trucks outside, according to media reports the Wagner boss confirmed. He said the money was intended to pay soldiers’ families.

Prigozhin and his fighters stopped the revolt on Saturday, less than 24 hours after it began and shortly after Putin spoke on national TV, branding the rebellion leaders, whom he did not name, as traitors.

The charge of mounting an armed mutiny could have been punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Prigozhin’s escape from prosecution, at least on a armed rebellion charge, is in stark contrast to Moscow’s treatment of its critics, including those staging anti-government protests in Russia, where many opposition figures have been punished with long sentences in notoriously harsh penal colonies.

Lukashenko said some of the Wagner fighters are now in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed last September.

The series of stunning events in recent days constitutes the gravest threat so far to Putin’s grip on power, occurring during the 16-month-old war in Ukraine, and he again acknowledged the threat Tuesday in saying the result could have been a civil war.

In addresses this week, Putin has sought to project stability and demonstrate authority.

In a Kremlin ceremony Tuesday, the president walked down the red-carpeted stairs of the 15th century white-stone Palace of Facets to address soldiers and law enforcement officers, thanking them for their actions to avert the rebellion.

In a further show of business-as-usual, Russian media showed Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, in his military uniform, greeting Cuba’s visiting defense minister in a pomp-heavy ceremony. Prigozhin has said his goal had been to oust Shoigu and other military brass, not stage a coup against Putin.

Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand for 29 years while relying on Russian subsidies and support, portrayed the uprising as the latest development in the clash between Prigozhin and Shoigu. While the mutiny unfolded, he said, he put Belarus’ armed forces on a combat footing and urged Putin not to be hasty in his response, lest the conflict spiral out of control.

He said he told Prigozhin he would be “squashed like a bug” if he tried to attack Moscow, and warned that the Kremlin would never agree to his demands.

Like Putin, the Belarusian leader portrayed the war in Ukraine as an existential threat, saying, “If Russia collapses, we all will perish under the debris.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov would not disclose details about the Kremlin’s deal with Prigozhin, saying only that Putin had provided “certain guarantees” aimed at avoiding a “worst-case scenario.”

Asked why the rebels were allowed to get as close as about 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) from Moscow without facing serious resistance, National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov told reporters: “We concentrated our forces in one fist closer to Moscow. If we spread them thin, they would have come like a knife through butter.”

Zolotov, a former Putin bodyguard, also said the National Guard lacks battle tanks and other heavy weapons and now would get them.

The mercenaries shot down at least six Russian helicopters and a military communications plane as they advanced on Moscow, killing at least a dozen airmen, according to Russian news reports. The Defense Ministry didn’t release information about casualties, but Putin honored them Tuesday with a moment of silence.

“Pilots, our combat comrades, died while confronting the mutiny,” he said. “They didn’t waver and fulfilled the orders and their military duty with dignity.”

Some Russian war bloggers and patriotic activists have vented outrage that Prigozhin and his troops won’t be punished for killing the airmen.

Prigozhin voiced regret for the deaths in his statement Monday, but said Wagner troops fired because the aircraft were bombing them.

In his televised address Monday night, Putin said rebellion organizers had played into the hands of Ukraine’s government and its allies. He praised the rank-and-file mutineers, however, who “didn’t engage in fratricidal bloodshed and stopped on the brink.”

A Washington-based think tank said that was “likely in an effort to retain” the Wagner fighters in Ukraine, where Moscow needs “trained and effective manpower” as it faces a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Institute for the Study of War also said the break between Putin and Prigozhin is likely beyond repair, and that providing the Wagner chief and his loyalists with Belarus as an apparent safe haven could be a trap.

Putin has offered Prigozhin’s fighters the choice of either coming under Russian military command, leaving service or going to Belarus.

Lukashenko said there is no reason to fear Wagner’s presence in his country, though in Russia, Wagner-recruited convicts have been suspected of violent crimes. The Wagner troops gained “priceless” military knowledge and experience to share with Belarus, he said.

But exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who challenged Lukashenko in a 2020 election that was widely seen as fraudulent and triggered mass protests, said Wagner troops will threaten the country and its neighbors.

“Belarusians don’t welcome war criminal Prigozhin,” she told The Associated Press. “If Wagner sets up military bases on our territory, it will pose a new threat to our sovereignty and our neighbors.”

While attention focused on the aftermath of the Russian rebellion, the war in Ukraine continued to take a human toll in what U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink called “terrible scenes from another brutal attack.”

Russian missiles struck Kramatorsk and a village nearby in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region with missiles, killing at least four people, including a child, and wounding some 40 others, with still others under building rubble, including in a café, authorities reported.

___

Associated Press writer Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

By BARBARA ORTUTAY (AP Technology Writer)

Instagram and Facebook’s parent company Meta is adding some new parental supervision tools and privacy features to its platforms as social media companies face increasing scrutiny over their effects on teen mental health.

But many of the features require minors — and their parents — to opt in, raising questions about how effective the measures are.

Instagram will now send a notice to teens after they block someone, encouraging them to let their parents “supervise” their account. The idea is to grab kids’ attention when they might be more open to parental guidance.

If a teen opts in, the system will let parents set time limits, see who their kid follows or is followed by, and allows them to track how much time the minor spends on Instagram. It does not let parents see message content.

Instagram launched parental supervision tools last year to help families navigate the platform and find resources and guidance. A sticking point in the process is that kids need to sign up if they want parents to supervise their accounts. It’s not clear how many teen users have opted in and Meta has not disclosed any numbers.

By making the feature optional, Meta says it is trying to “balance teen safety and autonomy” as well as prompt conversations between parents and their children.

When families do opt in, supervision allows parents to see how many friends their child has in common with accounts the child follows or is followed by. If the child is followed by someone none of their friends follow, it could raise a red flag that the teen does not know the person in real life.

This, Meta says, “will help parents understand how well their teen knows these accounts, and help prompt offline conversations about those connections.”

Jim Steyer, the CEO and founder of Common Sense Media, called the news a “smoke screen.”

“None of these new features address the negative impact their business model is having on the well-being of kids, including their mental health. We need national privacy laws to protect kids,” Steyer said in a statement.

Meta is also adding parental supervision tools already available on Instagram and on virtual reality product to Messenger. The opt-in feature lets parents see how much time their child spends on the messaging service and information such as their contact lists and privacy settings — but not who they are chatting with.

Such features can be useful for families in which parents are already involved in their child’s online life and activities. Experts say that’s not the reality for many people.

Last month, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned that there is not enough evidence to show that social media is safe for children and teens and called on tech companies to take “immediate action to protect kids now.”

Murthy told The Associated Press that while he recognizes social media companies have taken some steps to make their platforms safer, those actions are not enough. For instance, while kids under 13 are technically banned from social media, many younger children access Instagram, TikTok and other apps by lying about their age, either with or without their parents’ permission.

Murthy also said it’s unfair to expect parents to manage what their children do with rapidly evolving technology that “fundamentally changes how their kids think about themselves, how they build friendships, how they experience the world — and technology, by the way, that prior generations never had to manage,”

“We’re putting all of that on the shoulders of parents, which is just simply not fair,” Murthy said. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment on Meta’s latest actions.

Also beginning Tuesday, Meta will encourage — but not force — children to take a break from Facebook, just as it already does on Instagram. After 20 minutes, teenage users will get a notice to take time away from the app. If they want to keep scrolling, they can just close the notification. TikTok also recently introduced a 60-minute time limit for users under 18, but they can bypass it by entering a passcode, set either by the teens themselves, or if the child is under 13, by their parent.

“What we are focused on is kind of a suite of tools to support parents and teens on how they how can they can best engage in safe and appropriate experiences online,” said Diana Williams, who oversees product changes for youth and families at Meta. “We’re also trying to build tools that teens can use themselves to learn how to manage and recognize how they’re spending their time. So things like ‘take a break’ and ‘quiet mode’ in the evenings.”

So why not just force children to take a break, rather than making it optional? Williams said the company believes in nudging teens rather than forcing them to disengage because they might be using the apps for things like researching a school paper.

“What we want to do is make sure that they’re recognizing how their time is being spent and whether or not it’s meaningful,” she said.