TIME FOR A CHILDREN'S MOVEMENT
Wingspread Journal, Winter 1997

DEBUNKING THE 10 WORST MYTHS ABOUT AMERICA'S TEENS

by Mike A. Males

Teenagers. If that word calls to mind gangs of young criminals and irresponsible pregnant girls, think again. According to Mike Males, author of The Scapegoat Generation, young people are a lot more like adults than we may be prepared to admit. He shattered some stereotypes recently at a Wingspread conference.

Adolescents behave like the adult society that raises them. They did not land on a meteorite. We raised them. They share our values. They act like us. When we criticize their behaviors, we are really engaging in devastating self-criticism without a mirror. If teenagers behave like the adult society that raises them, their evil is the same as ours, and it is not curable by aiming increasingly absurd, cosmetic panaceas at the young.

Myth #1: Teenagers are uniquely violent and crime-prone.

Facts: Youths have slightly higher arrest rates than adults for public violence. But arrest figures substantially overstate youth violence. Police are over-inclined to arrest juveniles, especially minorities, therefore youths are arrested in much higher proportion than the volume of crimes they commit. In terms of crime volume, youths and adults contribute roughly equal rates for their respective populations.

Myth #2: The worst danger to youth is "children killing children."

Facts: Children are not the main killers of children: 90 percent of the children under age 12, and 60 percent of the teens age 12-17 killed in this country are killed by adults. Unlike adults, youths are uniquely unlikely to be killed by persons within five years of their age.

Contrary to popular images of youth, many young people are actively involved in their communities. Emma Nesby, 17, and Antonio Shannon, 18 are student apprentices working to rehab inner city housing.

Myth #3: Youth violent crime is skyrocketing, while adult violence is declining.

Facts: According to FBI statistics, from 1980 to 1994, youth violent crime arrests rose by 65 percent. But violent crime arrests among adults ages 30-49--the age group parenting teenagers--rose by an identical rate (66 percent), a fact which has received no attention. Most of the increase in violent crime among adults in their 30s and 40s appears to be domestic, reflecting the 300 percent increase in substantiated cases of household violence against children in the last 15 years.

Myth #4: Teenagers are innately prone to reckless behavior and are stimulated to violence primarily by media image, impulsiveness, and gun availability.

Facts: It is the United States that has the violence problem--our senior citizens are three times more likely to kill somebody than a European teen-ager. The U.S. black teen murder rate is a dozen times higher than the European white teen murder level. But when poverty is factored out, we have the European pattern. In societies with low poverty rates, violence peaks not in teen years, but at low levels around age 30.

Myth #5: Today's schools are cauldrons of drugs and violence.

Facts: Murder in schools is extremely rare. A student would have to attend school every day for 1.5 million years to run an even risk of being murdered. During 1992-94, 60 murders were committed at schools in the U.S. Meanwhile, 4,000 to 6,000 children and youths were killed at home by their parents or caretakers.

Self-absorbed and apathetic? Not Sarah Russell 17, and Audrey Johnson, 17, who spent part of their summer painting murals to beautify their hometown.

Myth #6: Teen-age birth rates are out of control due to teen-age immaturity, lack of information on sex, lack of values, and "children having children."

Facts: Teenage birth trends and rates are identical to those of the adults around them. The same factors that influence adult birth rates also influence teens. The biggest factor is poverty--six of seven teen mothers were poor before they got pregnant. The effect of poverty is to increase stress and to make events occur earlier in life (sex, parenthood, death.) Three quarters of babies born to teenagers are fathered by adult men.

Myth #7: Teenagers are the most at-risk for AIDS and members of the fastest growing group for HIV infection.

Facts: Teens rank third by age group when HIV infection was acquired. Nearly all HIV transmission is from adult partners or exploiters. Even among low-income youths, HIV infection rates are virtually zero among heterosexual teens with no risk factors. Yet among runaways, prostitutes, and those youth who engage in "survival sex" to get food, shelter, or money, HIV rates run as high as 17 percent.

Myth #8: Teenagers are high risk for suicide.

Facts: Teens are very low risk for suicide. Suicide rates for high-school-age youths are half those of adults. Most of the supposed "tripling" in youth suicide since the 1950s appears to result from more accurate coroner certification of teens deaths: "suicides" rose as "accidents" fell. Self-reports of suicide attempts or plans are found predominantly among females with histories of sexual abuse.

Myth #9: Teenagers are the group most at-risk of drug abuse and are suffering skyrocketing rates.

Facts: Teenagers are the least at-risk of drug abuse and, until recently, experienced plummeting drug problems. What is being hyped is mainly an increase of a few percentage points in self-reported, occasional marijuana use by adolescents--exactly the drug style longitudinal studies have found that poses the least risk of future drug problems. Very few teens use harder drugs or indulge frequently. Meanwhile, an explosion to record levels of middle-aged drug abuse is being ignored--even though parental drug abuse is now linked to more than half of all foster placements for child abuse and neglect.

Myth #10: Teenagers smoke because of immaturity, peer pressure and tobacco ads.

Facts: Youths from homes where parents smoke are three times more likely to smoke than others. Teens from social groups with high proportions of adults who smoke, such as blue-collar and poorer white populations, are about three times more likely to smoke than higher-income groups. Teenagers display the largest decline and the lowest rates of smoking over the past 25 years. But the evidence that tobacco ads influence brand choice among the fraction of teens who smoke is compelling. The evidence that tobacco ads lure teens to smoke who would not otherwise is virtually non-existent.

What can we do about these "myths?"

What I suggest is a two-part framework for analyzing and presenting research on youths and proposals to address their issues. First, the concept of "teenage" problems should be de-emphasized in most cases. There is really no such thing as "teenage sex," "teenage violence," "teenage drinking," or "teenage smoking." These are simply reflections of adult behaviors and often occur with adults whose practice of them is not condemned.

Second, research should be re-channeled away from analyzing "teenage" behaviors in isolation and should instead examine under what contexts adolescents act like the adults around them--that is, the vast majority of behaviors--with a particular emphasis on the variable of poverty. For these, prevention measures would be aimed more or less uniformly at all age groups.

... It is crucial that American institutions turn away from the destructive attack on youths and adopt a more integrated approach which recognizes that adult and teen behaviors are interconnected and that our fate is a shared one.

Excerpted from a Wingspread conference presentation by Mike A. Males, author of The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents. To order, see your local bookstore or contact: Common Courage Press, P.O. Box 702, Monroe, Maine 04951, tel.: 207-525-0900, fax: 525-3068.

This article has been reprinted from Youth Today, Vol. 5, No. 6, November/December 1996, supplement page 1, a publication of the American Youth Work Center, 1200 17th St., 4th Floor, NW, Washington, D.C.

WHO CARES ASKS YOUNG PEOPLE WHAT'S IMPORTANT

See the Summer 1996 issue of Who Cares magazine for a profile of young people, based on focus groups and a national poll of 1200 youth, part of the magazine's "Youth Voices" project. You'll discover, for example, that two-thirds of young people polled are giving time and energy through active service in their communities. Contact Who Cares at 1511 K Street, NW, Suite 412, Washington, DC 20005, tel.: 800-628-1692, or view the Web site at http://www.whocares.org.