While the past decade has seen reductions in risky behavior by young people, it has also highlighted newer and perhaps more dangerous threats, according to the results of a survey released June 7.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention administered the 2011 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, an anonymous questionnaire, to high school students to identify major public health risk behaviors.
On a positive note, the survey showed that some important risky behaviors declined in the past few years. Between 1991 and 2011, the percentage of young people who rode in a car with a driver who had been drinking alcohol in the past 30 days declined from 40 percent to 24 percent. The number of young people who had driven drunk decreased from 17 percent to 8 percent from 1997 to 2011.
And the study found that more young people are wearing seatbelts. In 1991, the percentage of students who never or rarely wore a seatbelt was 26 percent, but by 2011 that figure had fallen to 8 percent.
But the survey also found discouraging information about smoking habits. About 18 percent of high school students reporting smoking cigarettes, and 23 percent said they used marijuana, an increase of 2 percentage points since 1999. Most notably, however, the survey highlighted the dangers of technology, particularly when technology is combined with driving.
This topic was added to the survey because of “national concern that these behaviors had become more widespread among today's youth, which our data now confirm,” said Howell Wechsler, EdD, MPH, director of CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health.
The survey found that one in three teens has texted or emailed while driving a car.
“Teen drivers distracted by technology cannot maintain lanes, lose their braking reaction time, and due to their inexperience, are three times more likely to be involved in a fatal car crash than an adult,” Wechsler said during a news teleconference.
Cyberbullying also emerged as a modern threat. One in six teens said they had been bullied online or via text message in the past 12 months.
Wechsler said the take-home message of the survey was the concern about new technologies, and he said adults should counsel teens on the dangers of both technological distraction and cyberbullying, both of which can have deadly consequences that he says are “entirely preventable.”
Wechsler said many of the results of the survey are encouraging, but improvement is needed.
“These findings also show that despite improvements, there is a continued need for government agencies, community organizations, schools, parents and other community members to work together to address the range of risk behaviors prevalent among our youth,” he said.
Results of the 2011 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey are online at www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association