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Is the United States truly a teenage wasteland? Some of the most recent statistics are not encouraging. But the 2005 results from the biannual Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, released Thursday, do offer some good news. Since 1991, when the CDC first start taking the survey, the percentage of students who rarely or never wear seatbelts has dropped from 26 to 10 percent, and the percentage with four or more sex partners during their lives has dropped from nearly 20 percent to less than 15 percent. Still, parents may find it alarming that 18.5 percent of high school students admitted that they had carried weapons like guns or knives in the month before the survey, 43.3 percent had drunk alcohol, 23 percent had smoked cigarettes and about 20 percent had used marijuana. NEWSWEEK's Karen Springen spoke with Howell Wechsler, director of the CDC's division of adolescent and school health, about trends in risky behavior and the government's role in reducing it. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: What surprised you about the 2005 survey results?
Howell Wechsler: We have 14 years' worth of trends. Contrary to what a lot of people think, our kids are doing better. Most of the high-school risky behaviors have gone down ... The single most dramatic change is seatbelt use. It may not sound very sexy, but it's the thing that will save more lives than anything else. Sexual activity is down, tobacco use is down compared to the 1990s. Most illegal drug use is down. [But] too many young people's level of risk behavior is still too high. Thank goodness, most things are going in the right direction. There are two important categories that are not. One is suicide attempts. We haven't made any progress there. And things are going in the wrong direction with obesity and eating enough fruits and vegetables. And some behaviors might be flattening out, like tobacco use.
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What responses were most worrying to you?
I think the most alarming is the series of questions asking, "Did you start doing that before age 13?" Sixteen percent, or one out of six kids, smoked before [they were] 13! And one out of four kids have had a drink of alcohol—and we're not talking about a sip. The episodic heavy drinking really shakes me up. The question asks, have you had five or more drinks of alcohol in a row? You get one out of four high-school students saying yes. I'm gone after two beers, and they're drinking five in a row.
Why did the government decide to start conducting this survey?
Data is power. You need to know how well the kids are doing to track progress over time, to see how well the nation is doing. The trend is to develop health objectives for the nation, quantifiable objectives. Here's where we stand now, and here's where we expect to get. Every year we've been adding more and more states and cities participating. We're at our all-time high. We had [nearly 14,000 students in] 40 different states and 21 large urban school districts participating [this time].
What does the government do with the data?
It's used all the time by people who wish to educate others about the importance of health-promotion activities. It's used to assess how well certain programs are doing, whether we should put more resources into certain programs. The states and cities use it extensively to raise public attention on the challenges facing our young people. It's used to educate young people themselves. There's a whole aspect of health education that revolves around teaching children about sexual norms. While the numbers are just terrifyingly high in many of these risk behaviors, typically it is a small minority that is doing each of the risk behaviors. Yet young people might perceive that it's the majority that's doing it.
The survey shows variations among different racial groups. For example, white students are more likely to engage in frequent cigarette smoking and heavy drinking. What conclusions can we draw from these differences?
Unfortunately, people sometimes have some stereotypical views. Black students are least likely to report use of just about all of the substances. What we want people to do is just look at the data and shed any presumptions or stereotypes they might have.
The survey also shows gender differences.
Boys are more likely to do the things that might lead to injuries. They're more likely to do the episodic heavy drinking and high-risk sex activities. More boys are overweight. This feeds into our programmatic activities. It feeds into the research that we support. It feeds into the programs in states and communities that we provide funding to.
Why do you think fewer students are engaging in some of the high-risk behaviors?
There are probably different answers for each of the behaviors. There's very strong evidence that seatbelt use is related to the laws that allow police to stop you if you're not wearing a seatbelt, even if you're not doing anything else wrong: "Click it or ticket." We think that had a major impact. We have very good data showing that the states that invested more in tobacco education had greater reduction in tobacco use among young people.
You're a father yourself. How does knowing the survey results affect what you talk to your kids about?
I have a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old and three in their early 20s. I do bring the survey up at the dinner table, to point out something that's alarming because it's rising and ask if they're running into it at school and how they would respond ... As a parent, you've got to know what's going on.
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