n00b question - saving images

I know I fail, but I must know...

If I open a jpg in a photoshooping program, scale it down, then resave it as a jpg, will that introduce more artifacts to the image than it might already have?  Should I save it to png if that's the case?

I dont think saving it to papua new guinea will help

It will always lose some quality if (lossy) recompression is involved. The question is what kind of image we're talking about. If it's a photograph, it's still better to use high quality JPEG compression than being one of those fucking morons that use PNG for photos.