Slashdot Mirror
Sex Drugs and Texting
statesman writes "The Associated Press reports that teens who text frequently are three and a half times more likely to have sex. A survey of 4,200 public high school students in the Cleveland area found that one in five students sent more than 120 text messages a day or spent more than 3 hours a day on Facebook. Students in this group were much more likely to have sex. Alcohol and drug use also correlate with frequent texting and heavy Facebook use."
Popular people with more friends, who go to parties involving alcohol and drugs are more likely to have sex?
Who knew?
Cell phones and social networks are gateway drugs!
I have got to learn how to text.
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
Well when you consider most facebook lovers are women and most over texter's are women, it would make sense that women just want sex!
FTA: "The study concludes that a significant number of teens are very susceptible to peer pressure and also have permissive or absent parents, said Dr. Scott Frank, the study's lead author."
That's the key there. The same kids who are allowed to text that much and spend that much time on Facebook (3 hours a day? seriously?) probably aren't getting a whole lot of direction from their parents in any other aspect of their lives either. I'm guessing you could correlate high school dropout rates, teen pregnancies, and basically every other negative statistic involving teenagers with this same behavior. The unifying factor in all of it is permissive or absent parents. It seems that once their kids hit puberty, a lot of parents just sort of figure the kids have got their shit together and it's time to move from parent mode to friend mode. Yes, as kids age they need to be let off the leash a little more to live their own lives, but a lot of parents take that way too far and just sort of release the kids into the wild and let them sink or swim entirely on their own once they hit high school (or even middle school!). The result is the kids get the guidance they're missing from their parents from their friends instead, and that's never a good thing.
Yeah, because sex is just the worst possible thing you could ever do with your time.
I know every time I finish, I remark to my lady, "Well there's 3 minutes we'll never get back. Think of the bugs we could have fixed in open source software instead of this shameful, disgusting, awful, nasty thing we just did."
Teenagers who have a social life that is driven by peer validation, rather than, say, quality of social interaction or deep interest in a certain activity, are more likely to have sex and/or engage in risk taking behaviors in an attempt to impress those peers. I remember when I was growing up, parents were being warned about teenagers spending more than an hour a night on the phone being the cause of all types of 'naughty' 'nefarious' activity. In previous decades it was probably the kids who went to outdoor concerts, or the kids always heading up to a lovers lane or old quarry to drink. In the Victorian era these people were called dandies. The technology is essentially irrelevant, so long as that segment of the population exists, they'll do whatever is 'in thing.'
A 'social life' is not a one size fits all label. There are very, very few non-social people in the world, which is the main reason solitary confinement drives people nuts--it's that the value each person places on different types of social interaction varies enormously.
The other possibility is that teenagers have sex, drink, and use drugs because they enjoy those activities, just the same way that adults do. Yes, there are risks involved, and yes those activities are dangerous when pursued irresponsibly. That doesn't always mean that they are giving in to peer pressure.
Teens who chose not to have sex are typically making that choice because of the huge pressure society puts on them. Waiting until you are 18 to have sex is *not* biologically natural.