Subject Areas
YouthFacts seeks to debunk the barrage of modern mistruths about youth, restore a climate of fairness and integrity when discussing youth issues, advance verifiable and evidence-based information to better inform youth policy, enhance the integration of youth into democratic and multi-cultural citizenship, and build a culture that values and trusts its young people.
We have grown increasingly alarmed at the inability or refusal of aging America to respond rationally to clear, dramatic generational changes in crime, violence, drug abuse, mortality, AIDS, imprisonment, and social and political attitudes over the last 30 to 40 years.
The future of our diverse society demands more factual, alternative information and discussion than today's stifling consensus.
Select a topic of choice from the list below to view related articles.
- Crime
- Driving
- Drugs & Alcohol
- Media & Culture
- Mental Health
- Politics
- Race
- Relationships
- Sexual Health
- Technology
Crime
Banning youths from streets may make us less safe
Why curfews fail. Bloomberg News published our op-ed on why cities' response to newly manufactured panics over "flash mobs" and ongoing fears of "youth on the streets" resurrected a self-defeating curfew stampede that wastes police time removing law-abiding youth from the streets.
Not "youth violence" again...
President Obama launches his 2012 reelection campaign with a triple attack against young people, a legacy of former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s cowardly Clinton-era politics of generational fearmongering. The White House’s calculated efforts to win “values” voters’ support by cynically trashing America’s young as bullies, rapists, and violent criminals—and its conspicuous silence on genuine but impolitic issues like youth poverty and child abuse—demonstrate the growing dishonesty of an administration that promised change and hope to win young people’s enthusiasm, then delivered the same old bigoted anti-youth clichés and exploitation.
California: record-high youth numbers, record-high diversity, record-low youth crime
Today's panic and hostility toward American youth is so intense that California's stunningly hopeful developments--record lows in crime by youths as its diverse, under-18 population (68% are now nonwhite) soars to record highs--is resolutely ignored by authorities and media. Just-released 2009 state statistics shows both serious and minor youth crime rates are at their lowest levels since records were first compiled in 1954. Crime "experts" said more, and more diverse, youth bring more crime... and, as is very often the case, the experts are wrong again.
The FBI reports more than 6,000 American children and teenagers under age 18 were murdered by adults--a large majority by guns.
In the last decade, the FBI reports more than 6,000 American children and teenagers under age 18 were murdered by adults--a large majority by guns. By the gun-rights logic of the US Supreme Court, legislators, and lobbies that gun ownership for self protection is a "basic right," laws banning guns for those under age 18 represent a threat to young people's right to defend themselves from gun-wielding grownups and should be repealed or struck down. Let our kids shoot back!
Is there an "epidemic" of teens terrorizing the homeless?
The news media and homeless organizations are once again whipping up the myth from a small number of isolated cases that rising hordes of "vile" and "vicious" teenagers are wantonly beating and killing homeless people. In fact, there's no "epidemic" (any more than news stories of homeless people attacking teens prove some vicious, new homeless fad). The efforts by advocates of one group subjected to unwarranted prejudice and fear (the homeless) to vilify another one (young people) is sad and disturbing.
Youth crime, 2006--get ready for distortions
Yes, it's feeding time again! The FBI's just-released 2006 crime figures are already being pounced on by police, reporters, and their always-wrong "experts" like James Alan Fox to grab bucks and ratings. Here's a guide to the anti-youth distortions you'll be seeing and the truth about the latest changes in youth crime--good and bad. Also, the girl-crime apocalypse continues to be a myth, as girls' crime, especially murder, falls sharply.
Youth crime, 2006--get ready for distortions
Quick quiz: what age group shows the biggest rise in violence, serious crime, and drug offenses? It's not youth or young adults...the massive crime epidemic the news media, the cops, interest groups, and "experts" endlessly scapegoating youth refuse to face.
Are schools and campuses “full of angry kids” waiting to commit mass shootings?
Are schools "full of angry kids" waiting to commit mass shootings? In fact, in a nation that leads all other Western nations in gun murders by far, our high school and college campuses are safer than Denmark...
But aren’t youth committing more serious crimes today?
But aren't youth committing more serious crimes today? NO. They're committing FEWER than previous generations. In 1965, the FBI estimated youths under age 18 accounted for 30% of all serious violent and property crime in the country. In 2005, that figure was 17%, the lowest level ever recorded...
Deadly Lessons
CNN's Anderson Cooper's keeping-it-dishonest escapism on Chicago youth killings.
Driving
The unconscionable scare campaign vilifying teen drivers
The unconscionable scare campaign vilifying teen drivers rarely receives objective media treatment, but Fox News' recent (March 17, 2011) report by Garrett Tenney on the misguided Safe Teen and Novice Driver Protection Act (STANDUP) bill provides both sides. In one of YF's most important studies, we show that poverty is a much bigger factor than young age in what we call "teenage driving risk"--in fact, where middle-aged drivers suffer poverty levels similar to those of teens and young adults, middle-agers are just as "risky" drivers. Worse, graduated drivers license laws' arbitrary restrictions on 16-year-olds have been linked to sharply higher death rates among teen drivers in California.
Those reckless...men
More than 60% of teens in fatal traffic crashes were not wearing seat belts! the press and highway officials scream, followed by the usual youth-bashings about recklessness, peer pressure, and fearlessness. What, then, accounts for the same study's finding that over 60% of adults ages 21-44 killed in traffic crashes also were not wearing seat belts! The real, unmentioned story: men account for a shocking 73% of unbuckled traffic fatalities.
Drugs & Alcohol
Drinking age requires necessary and proper action
The United States drinking age has been 21 for the past two decades; however, recently there has been a movement to drop the drinking age back down to 18 and reverse the National Minimum Drinking Age Act.
"Alarming" CASA study linking teen social media use, TV watching, and drug/alcohol use may have been rigged
After using crudely fraudulent methodology to rig yet another overwrought junk study---this one claiming that Facebook, MySpace, "Skins," "Gossip Girl," and other social and popular media impel teens to use drugs, alcohol, and tobacco---it is time for funders, Columbia University, political authorities, and the news media to shun Joseph Califano, Jr., and his anti-scholarly Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) and end the influence of this tirelessly senseless crusade to malign young people and warp sensible drug policy.
How "overage drinking" menaces teens
Is the endless, angry furor against "underage drinking" really founded in genuine concern for "saving teenagers' lives"--or just scapegoating youths so adults don't have to face our own problems with alcohol? We decided to put that question to a test, with a new study by YouthFacts published in the May 2010 Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. We found "overage drinking" represents as deadly a threat to teenagers as "underage drinking." In fact, legal, over-21 adult drinking and driving represents the sixth leading cause of death to American teens nationwide--killing 4,300 and injuring 390,000 teens age 16-19 over the last decade--and the fifth leading cause of death to California teenagers.
Press, officials ignore exploding drug abuse
In the last two weeks, YouthFacts sent press statements referring all the major media the Center for Disease Control's shocking new report showing a record 33,500 Americans died directly from drug abuse in 2005--twice the rate at the peak of the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic!--a massive epidemic endangering our entire social fabric. Yet, because the illicit-drug scourge is centered in middle-aged white Americans--not youth or minorities--the same news media than erupts in panic over ballplayer steroids and teens and cough syrup remains silent on a REAL drug crisis among adults that threatens youth far more than pot or steroids.
Dope Squabble
Which side exploits teens most shamelessly? The Drug War, or drug reform groups? The latest demagoguery over Monitoring the Future drug-use figures show White House drug czar John Walters and Marijuana Policy Project director Rob Kampia will spout any emotional crap about teens that promotes their political schemes--which proves how little they care about young people.
"The children! The children!"
Baseball's steroid revelations have brought a new barrage of hypocritical sanctimony about kids, led by former senator and tobacco lobbyist (now steroid investigator) George Mitchell ("our children!"), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ("our young people!"), President Bush ("America's young!"), CBS, NBC, and everyone else flooding the airwaves with cloned terror tales about high school athletes and drugs. Disgusting. Skyrocketing drug abuse by parents and adults in communities--topping 30,000 deaths, 400,000 hospital emergency cases, and 1.8 million arrests--represent dangers to our youth from violent abuse, family breakup, and drug-dealer violence. Yet, when have you EVER heard Congress, the White House, or major media point out that American middle-aged parents' soaring drug abuse represents a danger to young people hundreds of times worse than some cleanup-hitting juicer?
Oxycontin
Even worse, CBS News has announced yet ANOTHER rehash of "Generation Rx" hysteria, adding to the myth that Oxycontin and other prescription drug abuse is a "teenage epidemic." Yet, in fact, as a top Centers for Disease Control epidemiologist told Congress in November, middle-aged white men are dying the most from abuse of illicit drugs--especially pharmaceutical narcotics, with annual death tolls now exceeding 30,000. CBS is not just a youth-hating network--it and other media outlets are dangerously failing to inform us of critical drug issues.
Blaming Youth
Officials from acting US Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu and the drug czar to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America are rushing to blame young people for America's drug and alcohol crises. Addicted parents? Abusive families? Troubled adults? Officially, these problems don't exist. See also the open letter to the Partnership challenging this cowardly crusade.
The single dumbest rant on drugs
Drug czar John Walters tirade against teenagers at a September 6 press conference sets a new low, even for his cruel, lunatic drug war policy that has brought danger and heartache to America's young people--and the older generations, whose rampant drug abuse he STILL (even after a record 31,000 deaths, 800,000 hospital cases, and 600,000 imprisonments) refuses to admit even exists. Unfortunately, the Marijuana Policy Project's Bruce Mirken shows the same unreasoned panic about teens and and denial of real drug crises that make today's drug-reform lobbies as irrelevant as Walters.
Teen drinking: Younger girls binge drinking more than ever?
Younger girls binge drinking? No, more girl-fearing junk from CBS et al. Yes, heavy drinking IS a problem...all across American society. We hear incessantly about the 5.5 million teenage and the 8.9 million young-adult binge drinkers ages 20-24. But why does no one mention that the same National Household Survey finds 11.5 million binge drinkers ages 30-39, 11.3 million ages 40-49, 6.2 million ages 50-59, and 4.5 million ages 60 and older?...
Drugs
After spending hundreds of billions of dollars and imprisoning millions over the last 25 years, the United States now suffers the worst drug abuse crisis in history. A record 31,000 Americans died directly from abusing illegal drugs in 2004. But it's not teens--40-59 year-olds comprise BY FAR our worst drug abusing population, especially for heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and drugs mixed with alcohol. Teens are being scapegoated for the burgeoning middle-aged drug crisis...
Media & Culture
The Associated Press fabricates a juvenile sex-crime panic
A recent example of the American news media’s relentless effort to slander young people today as more dangerous at younger ages, the Associated Press issued a story based on its own “review of national statistics” that was widely carried in the broadcast and print media.
America’s news media — a cesspool of anti-youth misinformation
America's media--a cesspool of hostile fiction about today's young people. After a year at this, it's clear that it's useless to continue refuting the garbage the major and alternative media gush about teens and young adults. Believe nothing you read or see about youth in the media.
New York Times public editor will scrutinize "fake trends"
The New York Times Public Editor, responding to a detailed complaint by YouthFacts about a story on cyberbullying, agrees the story was not well documented and promises greater scrutiny of "fake trends" reports. We contend that news stories alleging supposed epidemics of teenage bullying, hooking up, sexting, dating violence, narcissism, online dangers, depression, and similar "fake trends" feature inflammatory claims, severe "problem inflation," and chronically violate fair and factual reporting standards. Dateline NBC's "My Kid Would Never Bully" is another case in point, critically reviewed here.
"Teens and Torture"--more atrocious "alternative media" misreporting on youth, featuring dubious survey
The Huffington Post and Daily Beast continue their atrocious culture-war hate campaigns against modern youth with junk reporting uncritically recycling the unfounded claim from a scam survey that teens (but not adults) "support torture." On youth issues, there is no "alternative" or "progressive" media--right to left, corporate to alternative, it's all the same old anti-youth panics.
National campaign responds to YF New York Times op-ed debunking "sexting" and other "teen legends"
National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, responding to YF's New York Times op-ed debunking myths about teens, adds another myth by weirdly denying the Campaign ever hyped "sexting"--proving again why they're right to be embarrassed about their record.
"90 pregnant teens at one Memphis high school" media splash turns out to be just grownup gossip
"90 pregnant teens at one Memphis high school"! Like the equally nonexistent Gloucester "teen pregnancy pact," this turns out to be just another phony media splash, a YouthFacts investigation finds. But not before Girls Inc., Kim Kardashian, and a host of other grandstanders grabbed some national limelight spreading moralistic foolishness and rotten statistics.
How stardom corrupted Dr. Drew
More senselessness from CommonSense.org
Commonsense.org running all those scary PSAs showing young girls dancing to salacious music videos and young boys playing violent video games is just recycled Tipper-Gore foolishness. Damn right, as they warn, "the world has changed"--teens, and the way they consume media, have gotten better and better as their parents have gotten worse.
Is Jean Twenge a narcissist?
The San Diego State University psychologist who has emerged as a major-media “expert” relentlessly denigrates young people as “narcissists.” But her own books, webpages, and commentaries reveal that by her own criteria, Twenge herself suffers from serious narcissistic tendencies so hypocritical they approach the comical. Why does anyone take her sloppy, mean-spirited anti-research seriously?
More bad news! Suicides among teens drop again
Suicides among teens drop again, preliminary 2006 figures show, exposing panic mongers and pharmaceutical companies' self-serving crusades to terrify parents and reduce drug regulation. And that "increase in teen births" in 2007 fueling yet another sex-ed/teen-bashing squabble? The latest vital statistics report shows it occurred only among 18-19 year-olds (whose partners nearly always are men age 20 and older), not the high-schoolers (whose birth rates stayed the same) and middle-schoolers (whose birth rates declined to an all-time low in 2007 the squabblers obsess over. And marital births continue to plummet among all ages. What would the youth-fearing lobbies do if they had to tell the truth?
Al Roker, go back to the weather and game shows
Al Roker, go back to the weather and game shows. Your cheap, sensationalize-teens junk show "Al Roker Investigates" on Court TV not only ain't finding much (Chicago Tribune), you just don't have what it takes to get beyond phony, same-old same-old anti-youth drugs, sex, heroin, and media scares that have produced rotten journalism for decades. Note: Teens account for just 1% of heroin deaths and 2% of illicit drug deaths overall. The real "Generation Rx" is their parents--Baby Boomers, who account for 60% of heroin deaths. Haven't got the guts to take on the tough reality that parents, not kids, are the worst drug abusers? That kids are safer online than in church or their families? Then please: shut up.
The media" corrupts teens?
Do sexy TV shows and evangelical religious beliefs cause more "teenage pregnancy"? Do violent video games and internet sites cause more violence among youth? Does smoking in movies cause more teens to smoke? An avalanche of highly questionable "studies" are being featured in sensational news reports that present popular notions and easy answers to youths' behaviors. Here are my analyses, posted on the Pediatrics journal review site, of two recent, much-cited studies claiming sex in TV shows causes "teen pregnancy" and violent internet sites spur serious violence by youths. More to come.
Bristol Palin's pregnancy arouses America's bipartisan meanness toward youth
The commentariat that quails from talking about powerful 2008 presidential candidates' moral derelictions and sexual misjudgments now forms a howling lynch mob vilifying powerless teenagers with demeaning stereotypes and disgusting self-righteous myths.
"Teen dating violence": the invented "epidemic"
Teens, like adults, can suffer violent relationships. But wild claims of uniquely high levels of widespread, rising intimate partner violence among teenagers is a hoax refuted by every reliable information source, including the National Crime Victimization Survey. Teens are no more likely than their parents to have violent relationships, dating violence has plummeted sharply over the past decade, and media and program discussions should drop their panicky, exploitative claims and reflect the respect for young people they demand of them.
"Pregnancy pact" fiasco disgraces press...again
The Gloucester "teen pregnancy pact" has now been exposed as just another media and "official" fiction that disgraces every interest involved in spreading it. Even after having been hoaxed on every detail, however, media reporters mindlessly continue to repeat the dubious claim of a "spike" in "teen pregnancies."
Two more reasons to believe nothing about teens on news at 6
CBS Evening News' latest hysteria continues to show the news media has no clue how to report the 88% of violent crime and 95% of homicides the FBI reports are NOT caused by juveniles--and no interest in facts. Then, CBS's ludicrous "Secret Life of Teens" series, relying on self-interested net-nanny hawkers and consultants, misrepresents (yet AGAIN) teen-internet life as apocalyptically perilous. Can reporters today say anything fair or accurate about youth... or even new?
Why are "experts" so traumatized by "Kid Nation"?
The CBS reality show about 8-15-year-olds cooperating to restore a New Mexico ghost town, is igniting a mental-health, pundit, and culture-war-nanny panic so absurd you have to wonder whether its visual depictions of youthful independence, empathy, and competence are what really have the grownups so scared. Should we require V-chips to protect these "experts" from a TV show that so clearly traumatizes them?
The "Lindsay's the EveryGirl" lynch mob
Bad enough that the American news media relentlessly exploit celebrity gossip. But it's excruciating when reporters, commentators, and self-serving treatment "experts" cast troubled young stars as symbols of all "young people today." If the Associated Press's and other miserably crass reporters want a poster child for a generation packed with drug and alcohol addiction woes, try Lindsay's dad from hell.
Beating up on girls
The distorted, poisonous attack on today's girls and young women as meaner and more violent, depressed, materialistic, shallow, etc., by authors, the news media, and interest groups across the spectrum reveals the cruelty of commentators apparently threatened by the spectacular advances in health, safety, and better attitudes among Millennial females.
Mental Health
Very few teens suffer eating disorders
New study finds that contrary to the panics spread by media and interest groups bent on convincing teenagers they're all crazy, very few teenagers suffer from eating disorders.
Critics of students' critical thinking ain't either
Strange, isn't it, how all the academics, experts, news reporters, and commentators deploring the lack of "critical thinking" and "rigor" among today's students fail to display rigorous critical thinking themselves?
More horrific news! New Centers for Disease Control statistics show teen suicide fell in 2007 to its lowest level in more than three decades
And if past undercounts are figured in, perhaps its lowest level ever reliably recorded for both younger and older youth. Will America's panic industry, led by the news media, psychiatric/drug lobbies, and culture-war fear mongers who desperately need more distressed teens to push their agendas continue lying about it, or try to grab credit?
Teen suicides decline in 2005
Just released government figures show teen suicide declined in 2005, particularly for girls, casting strong doubt on the dubious media-pharmaceutical-industry panic that 2004's temporary suicide increase was caused by warning labels on antidepressants. What terrible news for the teen-fearing industries! Le's see how long it takes the pharm-captive news media to mention it! More bad news! The American Freshman, UCLA's latest survey of 400,000 first-year students entering in 2007, finds just 6.5% reported any depression in the previous year--the lowest level since the question was first asked in 1985, challenging the psychology industry myth and media herd mentality that college is a misery-pit of depression, drunken violence, and suicide.
Terrifying news: teens are happy...and getting more so
Girls and boys are happy--happier than ever before--our best surveys show. What terrible news! Look for culture warriors, popular authors, psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries, agencies, and news-media panic mongers to step up efforts to convince teenagers that, despite their optimism, they're really miserable and depressed.
The “teen brain” craze: New science, or ancient politics?
The handful of "experts" who claim "science" has "discovered teenagers act as they do" are stretching neurological studies far beyond their bounds, indulging primitive strereotypes about adolescents, and generally demonstrating their own lack of cognitive development.
The mental health crisis that isn't
The mental health crisis that isn't! Statistics don't support fears of a psychological emergency on our college campuses.
Kids not so suicidal after all
Teenagers are the least likely of any age group to take their own lives, and their rates of self-destruction (suicides and other deaths indicating suicidal intent, such as accidents by guns, poisoning, hanging, and undetermined intent) have plummeted in recent decades. A high schooler is three times more likely to suffer a parent's suicide than the other way around. Why, then, are teens stereotyped as suicidal risk takers?...
Politics
Massive generation split in 2010
Exit polls for the 2010 midterm election show generation splits so dramatic in voting that there are literally two Americas--young and old--headed in radically different directions.
Elder meltdown threatens America
Older Americans are sabotaging young people's future and menace the viability of our society as never before. Polls, surveys, and studies consistently find that even as the young display greater tolerance and community ideals suited to a diversifying America, seniors and middle-agers are indulging primitive racial and religious bigotries, selfish fiscal hypocrisies, and crackpot paranoias. Examples: in 2010, large majorities of Americans age 50 and older still oppose interracial marriage, and most Boomers want to stop all legal immigration! The old's endless quarreling over cultural phobias and support for reactionary candidates and destructive policies are wrecking America's social fabric and young people's healthy transition to a multicultural society.
The White House's selective anti-rape politics
President Obama launches his 2012 reelection campaign with a triple attack against young people, a legacy of former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s cowardly Clinton-era politics of generational fearmongering. The White House’s calculated efforts to win “values” voters’ support by cynically trashing America’s young as bullies, rapists, and violent criminals—and its conspicuous silence on genuine but impolitic issues like youth poverty and child abuse—demonstrate the growing dishonesty of an administration that promised change and hope to win young people’s enthusiasm, then delivered the same old bigoted anti-youth clichés and exploitation.
Obama-endorsed Lilly Ledbetter "fair pay" act perpetuates wage discrimination against young
The so-called "fair pay act" promoted by President Obama perpetuates and may even worsen arbitrary wage discrimination against younger workers (as well as female and Hispanic workers, who tend to be young) and worsen the massive, growing income and wealth gap between older and already poorer, deb-ridden younger generations.
Third Way's primitive, exploit-youth roadmap to progressive ruin
A far-Right plot to promote conservatives? NO--the disastrous, grossly wrong, fear-everything-new blueprint issued by "Third Way" urging progressive candidates and interests to "get ahead" of conservatives on crime by turning into conservatives.
Vidiots unbound
The news media pick ONE out of the 2,000 felony assaults that occur in the US every day--surprise! it involves teen girls and was videotaped--to publicize to millions of viewers and readers as a backdrop to reporters' and pundits' easy moralizing and outrage, then righteously complain teens videotape brutality to seek publicity!
Race
U.C. Berkeley's Malcolm Potts' ugly new eugenics blames dark-skinned teenagers for war and terrorism
University of California, Berkeley, population scientist Malcolm Potts and the pandering Miller-McCune magazine indulge an ugly, absurd throwback to racist eugenics in order to blame war and terrorism on the supposedly bad brains, hormones, and attitudes of young men--as if the aged kings, presidents, legislators, generals, ayatollahs, warlords, and assorted leaders who start wars and conscript young men to fight them didn't exist. This new low in academic youth-bashing is like blaming slaves for the Civil War.
The right kind of racism for 2010
Like many racists and/or pranksters, the 16-year old arrested for a racist announcement over a store phone ordering all black people to leave a New Jersey Wal-Mart on March 19 just used the wrong technique. Here's how to use anti-youth bigotry to accomplish racist goals and win praise, not arrest.
Relationships
White House "bullying summit" plays to the cheap seats
President Obama launches his 2012 reelection campaign with a triple attack against young people, a legacy of former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s cowardly Clinton-era politics of generational fearmongering. The White House’s calculated efforts to win “values” voters’ support by cynically trashing America’s young as bullies, rapists, and violent criminals—and its conspicuous silence on genuine but impolitic issues like youth poverty and child abuse—demonstrate the growing dishonesty of an administration that promised change and hope to win young people’s enthusiasm, then delivered the same old bigoted anti-youth clichés and exploitation. The White House summit on bullying, like the President's sudden concern over gay teens' suicides, really shows how limited and selective Americans' compassion for young people is. Poverty, family abuses, and abandonment kill far more teens, gay and straight, but we rarely hear about these distressing realities amid politician, expert, and media eagerness to exploit easy crowd-pleasers like "student bullying."
Sexual Health
The Urban Institute, which defended adult men impregnating teens, now hosts one-sided conference on "social costs" of "teen motherhood"
The Urban Institute sponsors yet another one-sided attack on the "costs" of "teen mothers" in which none of the authorities who dispute that 19th century eugenics claim are on the panel. Speaking of 19th Century, this is the same Urban Institute whose fraudulent 1997 "study" (still posted on the UI website) declares that while teen mothers should be condemned for "prematurely" having babies, the adult men who impregnate them are acting in socially acceptable ways. (Yes! UI said that!)
Wildly overhyped "tween dating abuse" survey recycled to promote fashion designer's products and program
The survey is recycled yet again to promote fashioner Liz Claiborne, Inc.'s "education" program. The survey finding only around 2% of 11-12-year olds have ever done anything beyond kissing, suffered physical or sexual violence, or experienced cellphone or cybermeanness from someone they dated demolishes the notion of rampant sexualization and cyber-meanness among "tweens." Encouraging? Horrified interest groups are trying to spin these calming findings into the image of a generation of violent sluts in order to peddle their agendas.
"1 in 4 teen girls has a sexually-transmitted disease" blare cloned media reports
Said to be an "alarming," shocking" new "CDC study" that allowed "experts" once again to lambaste teens as deluded and ignorant. But can anyone find this study? My queries to CDC have turned up nothing but a chart; no information on how the 838 girls were selected or screened or rates among 18-19 year-olds versus the high schoolers the media berated. That African-American girls had rates 2.5 times higher than whites or Latinas failed to generated concerns about poverty and disease among reporters who, once again, haven't even read the reports they claim to report on.
That “teen sex” irony no one mentions
What we call "teenage" births (a misnomer, since most are fathered by adult men age 20 and older) are up in 2006. The same interest groups that grabbed credit for the dramatic decline in births from 1990 to 2005 are now clamoring for more funding to turn around 2006's increase. Meanwhile, there's a giant irony no one wants to discuss--one that exposes how ludicrous today's "debate" over "teenage sex" has become.
Do teenage mothers save taxpayers money?
A university economics team's long-term analysis that all sides agree is the best ever done reaches an astonishing conclusion: having babies during teen years is an economically rational decision by poorer young women that leads to higher incomes and lower public costs over time. Why haven't you heard about this research? Because all sides depend on vilifying teen moms as costly fools.
Technology
Internet safer for kids than church!
Repeated studies find the Internet poses minuscule dangers to the tens of millions of teens who use it and expose the demagoguery of politicians and groups who incessantly depict cyberspace as a jungle of predators, bullying, and seduction. In fact, any adult who supervises a youth is statistically more likely to abuse his/her than anyone encountered online. We also reveal why church is a more dangerous place for teens than the Internet!
Enough MySpace!
Atlantic Magazine's latest megafeature is just the latest overwrought junk-media panic that your teen faces epochal dangers online. Leave those kids alone. Teens are in far more danger of murder and rape in church than unsupervised on the Net.