Search Results (19)

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been reshaping maternal, fetal, neonatal, and reproductive healthcare by enhancing risk prediction, diagnostic accuracy, and operational efficiency across the perinatal continuum. However, no comprehensive synthesis has yet been published. Objective: To conduct a scoping review of reviews of AI/ML applications spanning reproductive, prenatal, postpartum, neonatal, and early child-development care. Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and Scopus through April 2025. Two reviewers independently screened records, extracted data, and assessed methodological quality using AMSTAR 2 for systematic reviews, ROBIS for bias assessment, SANRA for narrative reviews, and JBI guidance for scoping reviews. Results: Thirty-nine reviews met our inclusion criteria. In preconception and fertility treatment, convolutional neural network-based platforms can identify viable embryos and key sperm parameters with over 90 percent accuracy, and machine-learning models can personalize follicle-stimulating hormone regimens to boost mature oocyte yield while reducing overall medication use. Digital sexual-health chatbots have enhanced patient education, pre-exposure prophylaxis adherence, and safer sexual behaviors, although data-privacy safeguards and bias mitigation remain priorities. During pregnancy, advanced deep-learning models can segment fetal anatomy on ultrasound images with more than 90 percent overlap compared to expert annotations and can detect anomalies with sensitivity exceeding 93 percent. Predictive biometric tools can estimate gestational age within one week with accuracy and fetal weight within approximately 190 g. In the postpartum period, AI-driven decision-support systems and conversational agents can facilitate early screening for depression and can guide follow-up care. Wearable sensors enable remote monitoring of maternal blood pressure and heart rate to support timely clinical intervention. Within neonatal care, the Heart Rate Observation (HeRO) system has reduced mortality among very low-birth-weight infants by roughly 20 percent, and additional AI models can predict neonatal sepsis, retinopathy of prematurity, and necrotizing enterocolitis with area-under-the-curve values above 0.80. From an operational standpoint, automated ultrasound workflows deliver biometric measurements at about 14 milliseconds per frame, and dynamic scheduling in IVF laboratories lowers staff workload and per-cycle costs. Home-monitoring platforms for pregnant women are associated with 7–11 percent reductions in maternal mortality and preeclampsia incidence. Despite these advances, most evidence derives from retrospective, single-center studies with limited external validation. Low-resource settings, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, remain under-represented, and few AI solutions are fully embedded in electronic health records. Conclusions: AI holds transformative promise for perinatal care but will require prospective multicenter validation, equity-centered design, robust governance, transparent fairness audits, and seamless electronic health record integration to translate these innovations into routine practice and improve maternal and neonatal outcomes. Full article

The complexity for law enforcement and child protection agencies has been exacerbated by the proliferation of child sexual exploitation channels, facilitated by digital platforms and social media. Generative AI’s ability to analyze large datasets, recognize patterns, and generate new content makes it one of the potential solutions for detecting suspicious behavior and indicators of child sexual exploitation. This paper discusses the potential of generative AI to aid in the fight against pedophilic crimes by reviewing current research, methodologies, and challenges, as well as future directions and ethical concerns. Although the potential benefits are significant, applying AI to such a sensitive area presents numerous challenges, including privacy concerns, algorithmic bias, and potential misuse, which must be addressed carefully. Full article

In the digital era, technology is being utilized for educational purposes and to develop interventions. There are several known applications of technology in multiple disciplines. However, the social sciences, in particular, have been slow to adopt technologies for intervention, prevention, and educational tools. In addition, for those who want to integrate technology into current programming or develop technology to address a problem, there are no resources on how to engage in the integration or development process. This paper sought to address this gap by documenting the development process of a video game that was created to address the issue of gender-based violence among college students. Specifically, it focuses on the design and piloting of a narrative-based game centered on beliefs and behaviors related to gender-based violence. The aim of the game is to offer an alternative approach to existing prevention programs, particularly targeting emerging adults in college settings due to their prolific and preference for the use of technology, the high rates of sexual and dating violence on college campuses, and their need for more engaging gender-based violence prevention education strategies. This paper intended to contribute to ongoing dialogue and efforts related to the creation and integration of technology in the helping professions. Full article

Mental health among higher education students is a growing public health concern in Chile, where 58 universities host a diverse student population facing significant academic and emotional challenges. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of suicidal risk, ideation, and attempts, as well as associated risk factors in Chilean university students. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 1511 participants (72.3% women, 27.7% men; mean age = 25.7 ± 7.82 years), using a digital self-administered questionnaire that included the Okasha’s Suicidality Scale (OSS), Depression, the Anxiety, and Stress Scale—21 items (DASS-21), the Emotional Exhaustion Scale (ECE), and sociodemographic variables. Logistic regression identified key factors associated with suicide attempts, such as being female (OR = 1.418, 95% CI [1.037, 1.939]), belonging to sexual minorities (OR = 2.539, 95% CI [1.899, 3.396]), being aged 26–30 (OR = 1.952, 95% CI [1.344, 2.836]), and being in the third year of university (OR = 1.483, 95% CI [1.097, 2.005]). Depression (OR = 7.065, 95% CI [5.307, 9.407]) and anxiety (OR = 1.895, 95% CI [1.400, 2.565]) were the strongest predictors, while substance use, including marijuana (OR = 2.107, 95% CI [1.620, 2.740]), cocaine (OR = 1.575, 95% CI [1.193, 2.078]), and non-prescribed antidepressants (OR = 6.383, 95% CI [1.524, 26.733]), significantly increased risk. These findings highlight the urgent need for targeted mental health interventions and policy actions in Chilean higher education to address post-pandemic increases in suicide-related behaviors. Full article

The use of social media for disseminating health information to adolescents and young adults has garnered significant ttention, showing promising results. Younger audiences increasingly prefer social media and mobile aggregators for their informative needs, considering these platforms reliable sources, particularly for sexual health and general health topics. This paper discusses the findings of a two-year project conducted in Italy—in collaboration with a group of non-profit organizations—funded by The Ministry of Health, intending to explore social media-based health communication strategies aimed at prevention for individuals aged 18 to 25. The objective was to leverage Instagram to engage young people, enhancing awareness about the risks of STIs and HIV/AIDS and promoting preventive behaviors. By analyzing two contrasting perspectives on health communication methods and the results in terms of engagement metrics and user feedback in the chosen profile, the study provides insights into social approaches for health communication and social representations of sexuality in the digital age, demonstrating risks and advantages of the use of platforms to influence health knowledge among young audiences. Full article

Background. This study examines the behavioral responses of adolescents to online sexual harassment based on their roles as victims, perpetrators, both, or neutral participants. Methods. Data from a national sample of Croatian high school students (N = 2016) were used to investigate the influence of these roles on reaction patterns. This study explores coping strategies among students involved in online sexual harassment as victims, perpetrators, or both. Results. Students with dual roles rarely sought help from parents, teachers, or helplines, while perpetrators avoided confiding in friends or siblings. Conversely, uninvolved students were most likely to seek support from these sources. Victims often confided in friends and responded by blocking, confronting, deleting content, or avoiding the harasser. Dual-role students commonly mirrored the harassment they experienced, suggesting a cycle of retaliation and blurred victim–perpetrator boundaries. Interestingly, no significant role-based differences were found for passive responses like ignoring harassment or reporting on social media platforms. Conclusion. These results underline the critical need for targeted interventions to foster digital resilience and tailor support mechanisms based on adolescents’ experiences and roles in online interactions. This research contributes to the understanding of role-specific behavioral dynamics in the digital sphere, offering actionable insights for educators, policymakers, and mental health professionals to enhance online safety and support systems for youth. Full article

Every adolescent should have the right to make their own choices about their sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Achieving this goal can be challenging, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where social norms and insufficient resources may limit access to information. Technology is increasingly being leveraged in LMICs to reach adolescents. We searched the literature to understand the landscape of digital SRH interventions in LMICs. The review addressed three questions: (1) What are the interventions and how effective are they? (2) What are adolescent preferences for information? And (3) What do the interventions cost? There is a wide variety in the populations addressed (e.g., adolescents with HIV, pregnant/post-partum adolescents) and the locations of the interventions, with the majority in sub-Saharan Africa. The types of interventions were evenly distributed between “push” approaches, where adolescents are sent information; “pull” approaches, where adolescents reach information from a website or app; and “two-way” approaches, which combine push and pull aspects. The most positive features identified were convenience and privacy. The major challenge is inadequate smartphone penetration in very low-income adolescents, especially girls. The evidence on the effectiveness of these interventions is mixed. Most studies show that SRH knowledge increases, but this does not necessarily lead to behavior change. Full article

Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence (TFSV) has been a permanent concern in contemporary society. This study aims to provide a global understanding of the TFSV phenomenon in Portuguese context. Using quantitative analyses, the rate and prevalence of victimization, victim characteristics, and technology use were examined. An online questionnaire was completed by 500 people (75.8% female) aged 18–70, mostly cisgender (96.2%), and heterosexual (85.8%). The main results point to a high victimization global rate (72%) as well as in the last 12 months (70.8%). There were no significant differences between the sexes except in sexual aggression/coercion, with more females suffering the more severe type of TFSV. However, the gendering of TFSV emerges with specific behaviors. Females tend to be more sexually harassed, only females report non-consensual sexual experiences with someone they met online, and males tend to report receiving offensive content about their gender/sexuality. Younger people tend to report a higher rate of victimization. The regression model with only victim characteristics is more predictive of TFSV victimization, with younger and heterosexual victims as significant predictors. This study argues that the culture of harassment is deeply rooted and finds an easy way to be disseminated in the digital world. Full article

This study introduces Protectbot, an innovative chatbot framework designed to improve safety in children’s online gaming environments. At its core, Protectbot incorporates DialoGPT, a conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) model rooted in Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2 (GPT-2) technology, engineered to simulate human-like interactions within gaming chat rooms. The framework is distinguished by a robust text classification strategy, rigorously trained on the Publicly Available Natural 2012 (PAN12) dataset, aimed at identifying and mitigating potential sexual predatory behaviors through chat conversation analysis. By utilizing fastText for word embeddings to vectorize sentences, we have refined a support vector machine (SVM) classifier, achieving remarkable performance metrics, with recall, accuracy, and F-scores approaching 0.99. These metrics not only demonstrate the classifier’s effectiveness, but also signify a significant advancement beyond existing methodologies in this field. The efficacy of our framework is additionally validated on a custom dataset, composed of 71 predatory chat logs from the Perverted Justice website, further establishing the reliability and robustness of our classifier. Protectbot represents a crucial innovation in enhancing child safety within online gaming communities, providing a proactive, AI-enhanced solution to detect and address predatory threats promptly. Our findings highlight the immense potential of AI-driven interventions to create safer digital spaces for young users. Full article

Digital discrimination against sexual minorities is becoming prevalent. It increasingly spreads through discriminatory content that mixes text and images (e.g., memes), thus, making online discrimination more difficult to detect. The present survey study focused on digital content that is discriminatory towards sexual minorities, aiming to analyze whether a sample of heterosexual social network users (65.2% female; M_age = 27.13) perceived different forms of discriminatory content (i.e., memes, news, and posts) as equally offensive and to what extent such different forms elicited the same online behavioral reactions. Furthermore, we considered how individuals’ online network heterogeneity could influence their perception of digital discrimination. Results showed that individuals perceived memes as less offensive when compared to both news and posts. Accordingly, we also found that individuals took less time to react to posts when compared to the other forms of content. In addition, those who declared that they had a heterogenous online network perceived memes as more offensive than those who did not. Finally, regarding reacting behaviors, overall results showed that memes elicited few proactive behaviors and more acquiescent and ignoring behaviors than news and posts. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed. Full article

Defining the typologies of adolescent girls in relation to different types of victimization against women could be very useful for prevention. Almost all the typologies previously elaborated on this topic define the typologies from situations of dating victimization. This study used cluster analysis to establish for the first time a typology of adolescent girl victimization against women that included dating violence offline, dating violence online, and sexual harassment online outside a relationship by means of a comparative analysis of behavior between those who had suffered this violence and the population at large. The participants were 3.532 Spanish teenage girls aged 14–18 with experience of relationships with boys. Three discrete, identifiable types were obtained: the first group (63.8%), non-victim girls; the second group (29.4%), victims of sexual harassment online outside a relationship but with a low incidence of dating victimization; the third group (6.8%), victims in the three contexts. The logistic regression analysis showed that risky sexual behavior online was the main risk condition for inclusion in the second and third groups (compared to the non-victim group), followed by low self-esteem (for the second group) and age (for both groups). Other variables that also contributed to predicting membership victim groups were health complaints, feminine gender role stress, justification of male dominance and violence, visiting risky websites, and problematic internet use. These results show the importance of including the prevention of such problems in order to eradicate violence against women in adolescence who have grown up with digital technologies. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in economic hardship, psychological stress, anxiety, and depression in a significant proportion of the global population. However, the bidirectional effects of social isolation and pre-existing or developed psychological stress could inform sexual behaviors and affect digital dating outcomes. Additionally, it is unknown whether intimate behaviors and relationships have been equally affected across the genders during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study is to contrast the course of intimate relationships pre-and post-COVID-19, with a focus on diverse genders, digital dating, mental health, and behavior. A review of the dating landscape during COVID-19 is developed in this study, encompassing themes including diverse genders, sexual orientation, demographic characteristics, sexual behavior, the state of psychological wellbeing, and interactions with digital dating apps. The authors reviewed the trends and challenges of digital romance. Dating before and during the pandemic is explored, discussing how COVID-19 experiences may inform future romantic partnerships. Mobile dating applications saw a surge in downloads and usage across popular platforms, including Tinder (3 billion swipes in March 2020) and Ok Cupid (700% increase in dates), with the top 20 dating apps gaining 1.5 million daily users. Cross-sectionally, being younger, single, and having higher levels of stress was a predictor of higher dating-app usage during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Risky sexual behavior and having multiple sexual partners were reduced during social distancing as there was an increased worry of contracting the virus. Heightened incidents of domestic/intimate partner abuse have caught the headlines in several countries. COVID-19 during lockdown has also posed barriers to accessing support and help from sexual and mental health services. Full article

The online environment has had a profound sociocultural impact, and its implications pose new challenges to modern-day societies. The digital sexual and dating domains have dramatically affected sexual and romantic behavior and norms, and yet, no empirical studies have addressed the role of the sexual self-concept in driving sexual and romantic online behavior. The aim of this study is to identify reliable sexual self-configurations through a cluster analysis approach and determine whether these profiles are informative in relation to app use motives and sexual outcomes. For this purpose, a total of 244 subjects were recruited. Survey questions measured a set of demographic parameters, motives for app use, online sexual activities, attachment orientations, the sexual self-concept and sexual satisfaction. Five clusters were identified, including two with high levels of sexual drive (“Driven” and “Adventurous”), two with low levels of sexual drive (“Unassured” and “Naïve”) and one with an intermediate level of sexual drive (“Competent”). The clusters differed on gender, attachment styles, app use patterns and sexual characteristics. These findings provide insight into how the sexual self-concept relates to the interaction between individuals and the online sexual and dating scenes. Full article

Background: Digital transcriptomics is rapidly emerging as a powerful new technology for modelling the environmental dynamics of the adaptive landscape in diverse lineages. This is particularly valuable in taxa such as turtles and tortoises (order Testudines) which contain a large fraction of endangered species at risk due to anthropogenic impacts on the environment, including pollution, overharvest, habitat degradation, and climate change. Sea turtles (family Cheloniidae) in particular invite a genomics-enabled approach to investigating their remarkable portfolio of adaptive evolution. The sex of the endangered loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) is subject to temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), a mechanism by which exposure to temperatures during embryonic development irreversibly determines sex. Higher temperatures produce mainly female turtles and lower temperatures produce mainly male turtles. Incubation temperature can have long term effects on the immunity, migratory ability, and ultimately longevity of hatchlings. We perform RNA-seq differential expression analysis to investigate tissue- and temperature-specific gene expression within brain (n = 7) and gonadal (n = 4) tissue of male and female loggerhead hatchlings. Results: We assemble tissue- and temperature-specific transcriptomes and identify differentially expressed genes relevant to sexual development and life history traits of broad adaptive interest to turtles and other amniotic species. We summarize interactions among differentially expressed genes by producing network visualizations, and highlight shared biological pathways related to migration, immunity, and longevity reported in the avian and reptile literature. Conclusions: The measurement of tissue- and temperature-specific global gene expression of an endangered, flagship species such as the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) reveals the genomic basis for potential resiliency and is crucial to future management and conservation strategies with attention to changing climates. Brain and gonadal tissue collected from experimentally reared loggerhead male and female hatchlings comprise an exceedingly rare dataset that permits the identification of genes enriched in functions related to sexual development, immunity, longevity, and migratory behavior and will serve as a large, new genomic resource for the investigation of genotype–phenotype relationships in amniotes. Full article

Depression, anxiety, and loneliness have long been recognized as global mental health concerns. To temporarily relieve psychological distress, self-soothing behavior is common, including engagement in sexual behaviors that are linked to positive mental well-being. Considering the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated many mental health ailments alongside physical distancing regulations, we specifically examined online sexual behavior via the use of emergent digital sexual technologies, or sextech. In a 2019 study of 8004 American adults, we assessed whether people experiencing higher anxiety, depression, and/or loneliness were more likely to engage in sextech use. Furthermore, we examined whether anxiety or depression mediated the association between loneliness and sextech use, as loneliness is one contributor to anxiety and depression. People with higher anxiety and depression were more likely to engage in sextech. However, those who were more lonely were less likely to engage with sextech, suggesting the aforementioned patterns were not due to lack of social connection. Our findings suggest people with mental health struggles may be drawn to interactive, digital forms of sexual behavior as a means of alleviating symptoms through distraction or self-soothing. This insight offers an important pathway for expanding the scope of mental health interventions, particularly as technology becomes increasingly prevalent and accessible in everyday life. Full article