Teens' behavior improving
| • | Teens using cell phones to snap, share naked photos |
By Federica Narancio
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
WASHINGTON — Risky teen behaviors such as smoking tobacco or marijuana, not wearing seat belts and having sex neared or reached record lows last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported yesterday.
"We are pleased that more high school students today are doing things that will help them stay healthy and avoiding things that put their health in danger," said Howell Wechsler, the director of the CDC's adolescent and school health division.
The survey of 14,000 ninth- to 12th-graders, which the CDC has conducted every other year since 1991, showed sharp differences among blacks, whites and Hispanics, however.
This was especially true about sex.
For blacks, the percentage who'd ever had sex dropped from 72 percent in 1991 to 66 percent in 2007. For whites, it dropped from 50 percent to 44. But for Hispanics, it dropped just 1 percentage point, from 53 percent to 52.
The same held for sex with four or more partners. Black high schoolers dropped from 43 percent to 28. Whites fell from 15 percent to 12. But Hispanics remained at 17 percent.
Hispanics were also more likely than black or white students to attempt suicide, use cocaine, heroin or Ecstasy, and to go 24 hours or more without eating to lose weight.
Sonia Perez, senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a nonprofit agency that advocates for Latino issues, blamed their relative poverty.
"When Latino teenagers live in poor households, have less-educated parents and go to overcrowded schools that offer less-quality education, it is more likely that they will engage in these kinds of behaviors," she said.
However, black teens also have a higher rate of poverty than whites.
Wechsler, who urged educators to focus more attention on Hispanic students' risk-taking, noted that Hispanic teens did see improvement in two areas: less drinking and more condom use.
Not enough American Indians or Asian-Americans took part to allow separate comparisons for those groups.
For ninth- to 12th-graders overall, there were lots of lifestyle improvements. Among them:
