13 Comments Add your own

• 1. Wendy  |  May 7th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

  

  They also think they are invincible, smarter than everyone else, and that they should get to do whatever they want because all their friends have cooler parents and get to do whatever they want. Oh, and that stomping up stairs and slamming the bedroom door makes a point.

  Signed,
  Mother of a new teenager

• 2. Rustmeister  |  May 7th, 2009 at 4:32 pm

  

  While the youthful are full of many things, wisdom isn’t one of them.

• 3. John Foust  |  May 7th, 2009 at 4:50 pm

  

  I’ve never heard that suggestion.

  “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned.” – Mark Twain

• 4. Elliot  |  May 7th, 2009 at 5:07 pm

  

  John, you most often hear it implied when it comes to the increasing acceptance of gay marriage or the idea that the Democratic party will be running things unchallenged for the next twenty years.

• 5. John Foust  |  May 7th, 2009 at 5:47 pm

  

  When I see surveys that show younger people are more accepting of that, I didn’t take it as evidence that they were more wise. I thought it was just a survey. After all, we let them vote at 18. What they think does matter in terms of which policies might be implemented.

• 6. Concerned West Bend Citizen  |  May 9th, 2009 at 6:03 pm

  

  I’d be curious to see the statistics to back up any of your claims in this post.

• 7. John Foust  |  May 9th, 2009 at 6:37 pm

  

  Here’s an interesting analysis:

  http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/bush-may-haunt-republicans-for.html

• 8. Elliot  |  May 9th, 2009 at 6:52 pm

  

  Thanks for that link showing that younger people are trending left.

  I just went and grabbed some quick links for my other “claims”, but did anyone really need any of this backed up with stats?

  SMOKING:

  The rate of smoking is still highest among young adults and college students.

  DRUG USE

  According to the British Crime Survey 2005/2006 the highest levels of recent drug use were reported by the 16-19 and 20-24 year age groups.
  Most young people moderate or completely stop using illegal drugs and moderate their alcohol use by their mid to late 20s when they ‘settle down’ and take on adult responsibilities.

  DANGEROUS DRIVING:

  Car crashes are the leading cause of death among teenagers, according to the IIHS, and moving up the age requirement is a sure way to reduce the death toll, reports the AP.

  BINGE DRINKING

  Binge drinking, often beginning around age 13, tends to increase during adolescence, peak in young adulthood (ages 18 to 22), then gradually decrease.

  UNPROTECTED SEX:
  I may have made a bad assumption about unprotected sex:

  83% of teen females and 91% of teen males report using contraceptives.

  On the other hand, I’m not sure I believe them considering:

  Of the 18.9 million new cases of STIs each year, 9.1 million (48%) occur among 15-24-year-olds.[22]
  •Although 15-24-year-olds represent only one-quarter of the sexually active population, they account for nearly half of all new STIs each year.[23]

  TEXTING WHILE DRIVING:

  Nearly 50 percent of teens admit to text messaging while driving

  BIRTHS OUT OF WEDLOCK:

  A record number of babies — nearly 1.5 million — were born to unmarried women in the U.S. last year. And those moms were more likely to be 20-somethings than teenagers, according to new federal data released Friday.
  “This is not a teenage issue,” says Stephanie Ventura,. a demographer with the National Center for Health Statistics. “Women in their 20s are accounting for a huge percentage of these births.”

  Remember, I said young people not teens.

• 9. John Foust  |  May 9th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

  

  Correlation, causation, pish posh. I bet there are relatively very few out-of-wedlock births from the 50-60 year-old women. Young people are having more sex than old people. Don’t make me look it up. You can only catch some STIs once, right? When’s it going to happen? And not all forms of contraception are “unprotected” when it comes to STIs.

• 10. Elliot  |  May 9th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

  

  I’m not even sure where this thread is going anymore.

  The purpose of the post was to point out that maybe Democrats shouldn’t be so proud of winning the youth vote. After all, maybe voting Democratic is just another high risk behavior like the ones young people are already indulging in. (Plus, it’s a FUNNY observation. At least, it’s funny to me.) ;)

• 11. Dean  |  May 9th, 2009 at 11:25 pm

  

  “Don’t make me look it up.”

  Please don’t. I don’t think I could survive the result. :)

  Elliot, always with the funny stuff. Aren’t you ever serious?

• 12. Elliot  |  May 10th, 2009 at 7:13 am

  

  Was Jonathan Swift ever serious?

• 13. John Foust  |  May 10th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

  

  Only in the little-endian versus big-endian debate. That’s serious stuff in the computer biz.

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