Getting in tune with teen reality

6/20/06

EVERYONE knows this hymn from the chorus of fear: Today's teenagers are cigarette-puffing, drug-sniffing, binge-drinking sex addicts who "hook up" with everyone they meet on MySpace.com.

Well, it turns out that perception is not reality, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

This time the truth doesn't hurt - but it still stings a bit. Today's teens, while hardly saints, are pretty good. They're not all straitlaced - a naive expectation from hormone-ruled minds and bodies - but the 1990s are as dead as grunge.

Generation Y, largely the children of Baby Boomers, have less sex and live more cleanly than the Generation Xers who preceded them. And it's hard to believe these are the kids of parents who fired the first rounds in the Sexual Revolution and popularized drug use. A little "do as I say not as I did" is clearly at play in today's homes.

Only 54 percent of high school students have ever smoked a single cigarette. In 1991, that number was 70percent. Seventy-four percent of teens have had at least one drink, down 8 points since 1991.

Only 47 percent had at least one sexual experience, down from 54 percent. But the good news is that 63 percent

of teenagers who have had sex used condoms compared with 46 percent in 1991 - a peak of the AIDS scare. STD education is working, despite dangerous White House-mandated propaganda that claims condoms don't work.

Not all of the news is good. Marijuana use is up; these are the Boomers' kids after all. And in what seems like a nod to their heroes on the diamond, steroid use has doubled.

There are plenty of differences among the races. Blacks did not smoke or use drugs as much as whites or Latinos, but were more likely to have sex by age 13. Whites were more likely than blacks or Latinos to binge drink. And Latinos used more hard drugs and attempted suicide more frequently than blacks or whites.

Parents and teachers need to work with youths on these outstanding issues - particularly on the alarming suicide and steroid rates - but overall the data are getting more positive as public perception gets more negative.

The kids aren't perfect, but they're showing improvement.