Education is free.
From Mike Males "Youth Facts"
These and other stories @
http://youthfacts.org/index.htmlWelcome to YouthFacts
YouthFacts seeks to debunk the barrage of modern mistruths about youth, restore a climate of fairness and integrity when discussing youth issues, advance verifiable and evidence-based information to better inform youth policy, enhance the integration of youth into democratic and multi-cultural citizenship, and build a culture that values and trusts its young people.
We have grown increasingly alarmed at the inability or refusal of aging America to respond rationally to clear, dramatic generational changes in crime, violence, drug abuse, mortality, AIDS, imprisonment, and social and political attitudes over the last 30 to 40 years. The future of our diverse society demands more factual, alternative information and discussion than today's stifling consensus.
Myths About Today's Youth
This section (under construction) details myths about teens today.
Oxycontin. Ignore the avalanche of media reports, drug-war officials, and interest group scares that Oxycontin and other prescription drug abuse is a teenage epidemic. A top Centers for Disease Control epidemiologist told Congress middle-aged white men are dying the most from abuse and misuse of drugs--especially pharmaceuticals. And drug overdoses are exploding.
2006 youth crime. Yes, it's feeding time again! The FBI's just-released 2006 crime figures are already being pounced on by police, reporters, and their always-wrong "experts" like James Alan Fox to grab bucks and ratings. Here's a guide to the anti-youth distortions you'll be seeing and the truth about the latest changes in youth crime--good and bad. Also, the girl-crime apocalypse continues to be a myth, as girls' crime, especially murder, falls sharply.
Blaming youth. Officials from acting US Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu and the drug czar to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America are rushing to blame young people for America's drug and alcohol crises. Addicted parents? Abusive families? Troubled adults? Officially, these problems don't exist. See also the open letter to the Partnership challenging this cowardly crusade.
The most crazed drug rant ever. Drug czar John Walters tirade against teenagers at a September 6 press conference sets a new low, even for his cruel, lunatic drug war policy that has brought danger and heartache to America's young people--and the older generations, whose rampant drug abuse he STILL (even after a record 31,000 deaths, 800,000 hospital cases, and 600,000 imprisonments) refuses to admit even exists. Unfortunately, the Marijuana Policy Project's Bruce Mirken shows the same unreasoned panic about teens and and denial of real drug crises that make today's drug-reform lobbies as irrelevant as Walters.
Frightening news about teens: Girls and boys are happy--happier than ever before--our best surveys show. What terrible news! Look for culture warriors, popular authors, psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries, agencies, and news-media panic mongers to step up efforts to convince teenagers that, despite their optimism, they're really miserable and depressed.
Enough Lindsay! Bad enough that the American news media relentlessly exploit celebrity gossip. But it's excruciating when reporters, commentators, and self-serving treatment "experts" cast troubled young stars as symbols of all "young people today." If the Associated Press's and other miserably crass reporters want a poster child for a generation packed with drug and alcohol addiction woes, try Lindsay's dad from hell.
Enough MySpace! Atlantic Magazine's latest megafeature is just the latest overwrought junk-media panic that your teen faces epochal dangers online. Leave those kids alone. Teens are in far more danger of murder and rape in church than unsupervised on the Net.
Quick quiz: what age group shows the biggest rise in violence, serious crime, and drug offenses? It's not youth or young adults... the massive crime epidemic the news media, the cops, interest groups, and "experts" endlessly scapegoating youth refuse to face.
Obama demagogues the "entire generation of young men" Senator Barack Obama exploits fears of the least violent generation of young African Americans on record--while excusing his own more violent and crime-prone older generation.
The "teenage brain" The handful of "experts" who claim "science" has "discovered teenagers act as they do" are stretching neurological studies far beyond their bounds, indulging primitive strereotypes about adolescents, and generally demonstrating their own lack of cognitive development.
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Teenage sex" As interest groups and politicians fall over themselves to grab credit for the dramatic decline in what we call "teenage births," read about the giant irony no one wants to discuss--one that exposes just how ludicrous today's "debate" over "teenage sex" has become.
Beating up on girls The distorted, poisonous attack on today's girls and young women as meaner and more violent, depressed, materialistic, shallow, etc., by authors, the news media, and interest groups across the spectrum reveals the cruelty of commentators apparently threatened by the spectacular advances in health, safety, and better attitudes among Millennial females.
Shootings Are schools "full of angry kids" waiting to commit mass shootings? In fact, in a nation that leads all other Western nations in gun murders by far, our high school and college campuses are safer than Denmark....
Crime But aren't youth committing more serious crimes today? NO. They're committing FEWER than previous generations. In 1965, the FBI estimated youths under age 18 accounted for 30% of all serious violent and property crime in the country. In 2005, that figure was 17%, the lowest level ever recorded....
Do teenage mothers save taxpayers money? A university economics team's long-term analysis that all sides agree is the best ever done reaches an astonishing conclusion: having babies during teen years is an economically rational decision by poorer young women that leads to higher incomes and lower public costs over time. Why haven't you heard about this research? Because all sides depend on vilifying teen moms as costly fools.
Mental Health Crisis The mental health crisis that isn't! Statistics don't support fears of a psychological emergency on our college campuses.
Teenage Drinking Yes, heavy drinking IS a problem...all across American society. We hear incessantly about the 5.5 million teenage and the 8.9 million young-adult binge drinkers ages 20-24. But why does no one mention that the same National Household Survey finds 11.5 million binge drinkers ages 30-39, 11.3 million ages 40-49, 6.2 million ages 50-59, and 4.5 million ages 60 and older?....
Drugs After spending hundreds of billions of dollars and imprisoning millions over the last 25 years, the United States now suffers the worst drug abuse crisis in history. A record 31,000 Americans died directly from abusing illegal drugs in 2004. But it's not teens--40-59 year-olds comprise BY FAR our worst drug abusing population, especially for heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and drugs mixed with alcohol. Teens are being scapegoated for the burgeoning middle-aged drug crisis...
Suicide Teenagers are the least likely of any age group to take their own lives, and their rates of self-destruction (suicides and other deaths indicating suicidal intent, such as accidents by guns, poisoning, hanging, and undetermined intent) have plummeted in recent decades. A high schooler is three times more likely to suffer a parent's suicide than the other way around. Why, then, are teens stereotyped as suicidal risk takers?....
Teen Drivers You've seen the mass hype about "teen killers on the road" as if Americans were in dire peril of being wiped out every time we venture off the curb. So: how many miles does the average teenage driver have to drive before suffering even odds of being in a fatal accident? The answer, and the truth about the unconscionable scare campaign vilifying teen drivers, add up to an "expert" disgrade.
November 14, 2007
Latest Media Mistruths about youth
If America's news media covered other groups with the same sensational, factless bigotry inflicted on youth, we'd call it hate speech.
CRIME
CNN's Anderson Cooper's keeping-it-dishonest escapism on Chicago youth killings
TEEN DRINKING
Younger Girls Binge Drinking? No, more girl-fearing junk from CBS et al
SHOOTINGS
Are schools and campuses full of more troubled, violent, suicidal youth? NO!
SEX OFFENDERS
Associated Press uses blatantly biased statistics to fabricate an increase in juvenile sexual violence.
DRUG DENIAL
CBS News, a drug-war funded "university" junk researcher, cops, and "experts" show why the US has the world's worst drug abuse problem.
EXPLOITING TRAGEDY
A one-year increase in teen suicide brings out the hypers, exploiters and drug peddlers who failed to note (again) that far more teens need help with suicidal parents.
Why are books on teens today so atrocious?