News (Media Awareness Project) - US VA: Editorial: Teens Acting Smart, Not Up |
| Title: | US VA: Editorial: Teens Acting Smart, Not Up |
| Published On: | 2005-01-03 |
| Source: | Virginian-Pilot (VA) |
| Fetched On: | 2008-08-21 02:49:27 |
TEENS ACTING SMART, NOT UP
Something startling is happening among the nation's teenagers. For decades
maligned and mistrusted, it turns out that they are increasingly making
wiser choices on how to live their lives.
Early in December, a federal study showed that drug use and smoking fell in
2004, most markedly among younger teens. Another study, according to a
story in Knight Ridder Newspapers, showed that American teenagers are
waiting longer to have sex, and most who do are using contraception.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the birth rate
among teens fell by 38 percent between 1990 and 2002. Even so, 47 percent
of high school students acknowledged having sex, though that's down from 54
percent a decade before.
In 1979, 60 percent of seniors said they used marijuana. In 1992, that
figure was 32 percent, the low ebb. In 2003, after declining for two years,
the figure stood at 46 percent. Use of "ecstasy" -- a party drug with
increasingly publicized dangers -- has fallen precipitously.
Though the numbers of teenagers engaging in risky behavior remains
alarmingly high, public health officials are increasingly cheered by the trend.
They cite a variety of reasons for it, including slick commercials that
educate teens on the consequences of drugs and cigarettes and sex.
There's also the possibility that today's hyper-busy children -- raised by
peripatetic parents -- have no time to waste.
Perhaps the most hopeful reason is one embedded in the generation gap
between today's teens and today's parents, those party-children of the
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
When they were young, today's parents engaged in precisely the same kinds
of risky behavior available to their children, to the dismay of their own
parents, and despite plenty of unheeded calls to reform.
Perhaps because of their own hard, dangerous lessons, and because of their
exposure to all the messages that didn't work, today's parents have an
easier time doing something their folks found difficult: getting their
children to listen.
Something startling is happening among the nation's teenagers. For decades
maligned and mistrusted, it turns out that they are increasingly making
wiser choices on how to live their lives.
Early in December, a federal study showed that drug use and smoking fell in
2004, most markedly among younger teens. Another study, according to a
story in Knight Ridder Newspapers, showed that American teenagers are
waiting longer to have sex, and most who do are using contraception.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the birth rate
among teens fell by 38 percent between 1990 and 2002. Even so, 47 percent
of high school students acknowledged having sex, though that's down from 54
percent a decade before.
In 1979, 60 percent of seniors said they used marijuana. In 1992, that
figure was 32 percent, the low ebb. In 2003, after declining for two years,
the figure stood at 46 percent. Use of "ecstasy" -- a party drug with
increasingly publicized dangers -- has fallen precipitously.
Though the numbers of teenagers engaging in risky behavior remains
alarmingly high, public health officials are increasingly cheered by the trend.
They cite a variety of reasons for it, including slick commercials that
educate teens on the consequences of drugs and cigarettes and sex.
There's also the possibility that today's hyper-busy children -- raised by
peripatetic parents -- have no time to waste.
Perhaps the most hopeful reason is one embedded in the generation gap
between today's teens and today's parents, those party-children of the
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
When they were young, today's parents engaged in precisely the same kinds
of risky behavior available to their children, to the dismay of their own
parents, and despite plenty of unheeded calls to reform.
Perhaps because of their own hard, dangerous lessons, and because of their
exposure to all the messages that didn't work, today's parents have an
easier time doing something their folks found difficult: getting their
children to listen.
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