This Scares Me

OK, so I was checking my hotmail account and I like to read the little news blurbs that are highlighted. This one scared me. It really shows how much things have changed, even since I was in school. It is a list of statistics gathered by the Tyra Banks show. It was collected anonymously and then she also selected people from the survey to participate in a panel on her show. Here is the list:

• On average, girls are losing their virginity at 15 years of age.
• 14 percent of teens who are having sex say they’re doing it AT school.
• 52 percent of survey respondents say they do not use protection when having sex.
• One in three says she fears having a sexually transmitted disease.
• 24 percent of teens with STDs say they still have unprotected sex.
• One in five girls says she wants to be a teen mom.
• About 50 percent acknowledge that they’ve hit someone.
• One out of three teens has tried drugs

Here is the link to a snippet from her show, which shows some of the girls on the panel and also Tyra's interview on the Today Show. In her interview she talks about some of the main reasons that girls are having sex at such an early age. One of the main ones is that we are not talking to our kids about sex, another is a desire for someone to love them, hence the girls wanting to get pregnant. All I have to say about this, is that it is extremely scary. We need to talk to our kids, especially our girls, openly about sex. They need to know what it is all about.

Also, the next interview down discusses the correlation between teenage pregnancy and how much television our kids watch, stating that kids don't need TVs in their rooms, which is what my family's rule always was. I find these clips especially interesting, because the advice given is what those of us who grew up in the church have heard our whole lives.