What Kills Youngsters?
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Experts report that adolescents are dying at an alarming rate -- often from risky behavior. Some researchers divide the population aged 10 to 24 into three distinct groups, then identify the patterns that affect their health and lives.
Preadolescents between 10 and 14 are forming the habits that will affect their health later in life. Those between 15 and 19 are taking the risks and testing the bounds of their independence. Young adults from 20 to 24 have more freedom to engage in promiscuous sex and other risky behavior patterns.
- Of the 34 million U.S. residents in the 10 to 24 age group, 37,000 die each year.
- Thirty percent are killed in car crashes -- almost half of which are linked to alcohol -- and roughly 10,000 are murdered, commit suicide or die of complications of AIDS.
- Experts estimate that two-thirds of the deaths could be avoided if parents and their children did a better job of recognizing risks and guarded against them.
- The death rate for young girls in the U.S. is twice that of their peers in the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and Germany -- while the rate for U.S. boys is 160 percent that of boys in Sweden, which has the lowest rate.
Today, say observers, even many adolescents recognize that risky behavior may fatal consequences, given the spread of AIDS and sexually transmitted bacteria that no longer surrender to antibiotics. Thus a Center for Disease Control study released in September shows that sexual activity has declined among high school students for the first time in two decades. Nevertheless, 10 percent of all adolescents report they began having sex before their 13th birthday.
Source: Steve Sternberg, "Teen-Agers in Turmoil," USA Today, October 5, 1998.
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