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A UK government program that allows teenager girls to receive birth control implants at school without their parents' knowledge and consent has some parents outraged. Government officials say it's an effective way to combat teen pregnancy. Parents say it's a complete violation of their rights as parents. Morality-minded individuals are concerned that this will result in rampant sluttiness. Teenage girls sit sullenly texting and rolling their eyes. It's a tense situation all around. More »
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A Maryland teenager who asked Maryland state legislators to vote 'no' on marriage equality for her 14th birthday has become the first human to successfully break the homophobe sound barrier. In her speech before Maryland's Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, she managed to claim being gay is a choice, that parents of gay kids are harming them, that gays indoctrinate children, and that redefinition of marriage will lead to all other words being redefined. Wow. A full Homophobic Bingo card. What does she win? More »
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From the perspective of most people over the age of 21, the way teenagers use technology seems like some unsolvable puzzle from the future. Predictions about which products they'll flock to inevitably turn out to be wrong, and that certainly seems to be true in the case of Twitter. More »
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During Monday night's State of the Union address, President Obama proposed that every American be required to stay in school until they turn 18 or graduate. Now, Republicans, like a bunch of wingtip-wearing circa 1985 Beastie Boys, have leapt to fight for the right of teenagers to drop out of school. This is surprising coming from the party that advocates requiring teens who seek abortion to notify their parents and applauded a move to restrict the sale of Plan B to girls under 17. Should teenagers have rights of self-determination, or shouldn't they? Make up your mind, guys! More »
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Parents of young men who have been busted and sent to jail for having sex with underage girlfriends are fighting anti-sex offender laws on their sons' behalf. Sex offender registry standards are unfair, they say, and enforcing statutory rape laws when the two people involved are just two kids in love is unjust. Is it? More »
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Results of a new survey show a dearth of knowledge of basic human biology among America's teens, especially when pants are off and hormones are running high. How bad is it? About half of the teens who got pregnant while not using any form of birth control say they didn't contraceptively arm themselves because they didn't believe that it was possible for them to get pregnant. Another quarter didn't wrap it up because their partner pressured them to go au naturel. Oh, brother. More »
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There's been a ton of hysteria about all the blowjobs teenagers are allegedly giving and getting these days, but relatively little talk about how teen girls actually feel about giving head. Now a group of researchers has decided to ask them, and the results are kind of disturbing — turns out that for some girls, oral sex is "like homework." More »
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This week 15-year-old Amanda Cummings died after jumping in front of a bus on Staten Island with a suicide note in her pocket. Cummings was fairly popular, but her death has highlighted the issue of bullying once again. Her friends and family say she'd been hiding the fact that a group of girls were picking on her, and the harassment is part of what drove her to take her life. More »
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Parents might prefer that their teenagers just accept what they say without argument. But a new study reveals — perhaps unsurprisingly — that teens who push back against their moms' words tend to be better at resisting peer pressure as well. More »
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Recently we've been hearing that fewer teens are having sex, but you haven't forgotten the hysteria caused by reports of teen "rainbow parties," have you? Good, because there's a new teen sex problem that actually exists. Researchers found significant number of teen girls are having group sex, and it's often non-consensual. More »
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We really want Michele Bachmann to leave us alone and stop trying to ruin our lives, and we're adult women who've never met her, not teen girls under her care. Yesterday, Michele Bachmann offered some insight into the plight of her three biological daughters and 412 foster children while promoting her book on Sean Hannity's radio show: More »
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Despite the fact that TV shows like Glee are corrupting children by teaching them that it's cool to have protected sex with your long-term partner, according to a new study from the CDC, the number of teens losing their virginity has dropped drastically in the last decade. Unfortunately, the CDC still has no idea why kids' passion for illicit fornication has waned, so the study's usefulness is limited. However, it's still a great opportunity for adults to theorize about what could possibly be going through teens' heads, much like when someone over 30 tries to figure out what the kiddies see in Justin Beiber. More »
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As if the SAT's, ACT's, PSAT's, Driver's License Exam, and that weird scoliosis test where you have to stand topless behind a screen in the locker room wasn't enough, American teenagers have one more test to add to their to-do list: an HIV test. More »
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There's still hope for all the stupid teenagers out there: according to a new study, IQ isn't set in stone like scientists thought; it can fluctuate more dramatically than the out-of-control hormones coursing through teen veins. More »
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And now, from the man who brought you "How to Operate Your Home on a Budget," "Sex Problems of Young People," and "Tests for Husbands and Wives," comes "Sex Differences Between Men and Women & Nagging Wives"!!! More »
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Here's some encouraging and surprising news for those of us who learned everything we know about the current state of teen sexuality from 16 & Pregnant: More teens are using condoms than ever before. While the show frequently features young men who expend all their mental energy on figuring out how to hurt their baby's mother with just a series of grunts, new statistics show that in real life, teens are actually pretty responsible. More »
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Move over, Silly Bandz; there's a new inscrutable youth fad in town — it's fancy crap designed especially for the inside of lockers. And parents of tweens can't spend money on them quickly enough! More »
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After years of sexual education that willfully denies the possibility that kids are going to have sex no matter what, some schools in Texas are starting to teach curriculums that information on contraception. This is partly because it isn't as cheap to yell, "Don't do it!" to teens as one might think, and there's less federal money available for abstinence-only programs. But the bigger reason behind the shift is that people are finally facing the fact that abstinence-only programs simply don't work. More »
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Officials at a school in Britain decided that girls were spending too much time fixing themselves up in the girls' bathroom, so they banned makeup. When girls kept showing up to school looking like Taylor Momsen, administrators took the next logical step: Ripping the mirrors out of the walls and providing teachers with "makeup removal kits" (we're guessing this high-tech makeup detection kit consists of a pack of makeup remover wipes). More »
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Lawmakers in Mississippi haven't responded to pressure from groups pushing for comprehensive sex education, so health advocates put the problem into terms they could understand. In addition to the tremendous emotional and financial costs for teens who get pregnant, a new analysis found that these young parents cost the state $154.9 million in 2009. Yet, officials still say teaching kids about contraception should be optional. More »
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Facebook is already annoying young an old alike by allowing friends to upload unflattering photos and provide updates on their virtual farming endeavors, but now the site has finally gone too far. It seems that thanks to the social networking sites, America's youth have discovered alcohol and drugs. More »
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Procter & Gamble says its website BeingGirl is meant to give young women important advice about puberty and their bodies. But some groups say it's actually a ruse to sell products. More »
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A Kuwaiti teenager is in some hot water after flying into a shoe-throwing rage and destroying a chandelier worth over $1.8 million. More »
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A new study shows that having sex may actually reduce teenage misbehavior — but only if teens are in relationships. More »
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The Awl has been reading the August issue of Seventeen for some reason and spotted this gem: A column called "LIES He Tells You Straight To Your Face." Maybe it's best that girls learn they can't trust anything guys say, from basic facts about their lives to their love of kittens. It paves the way for Cosmo to scare them them into thinking men are lying about what they want in bed and in all likelihood, sleeping with their best friend. More »
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According to The National Science Foundation and UCLA psychologist Adriana Galvan, teenagers may not be the overly "moody" nutjobs that TV and movies have often said they are. Odd, I know! More »
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Sure it's 2011, but it can't hurt to know the ins and outs of summing up a 30-minute 1990s teen sitcom in 30 seconds or less. Just to keep it in your back pocket. In case it comes up. More »
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As a teen, my bedroom served as a canvas of self-expression: magazine cut-outs of my favorite actors and actresses, posters of my favorite bands and movies, and photos of friends covering every inch of free wall space. Photographer Rania Matar's series "A Girl And Her Room" features images of teenage girls in their bedrooms and seeks to capture the transitional period between adolescence and womanhood. More »
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Just as you might have suspected, listening to OK Computer on loop may have something to do with depression. But scientists have discovered a surprising upper: books. More »
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A naked menace is stalking our fellow countrymen and countrywomen, and especially our countryteens. Across the land, the purple mountains with their majesty and plains unapologetically fruiting, teenage girls are sending boys pictures of their boobs. This is a Giant Problem. More »
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Continuing a long tradition of baseless alarmism and personal anecdotes woven into manufactured non-trends, this weekend's Wall Street Journal features a piece wherein the mother of a 13 year old girl simply cannot believe that the nation is letting its teenage daughters leave the house dressed like little harlots. Why do we let girls dress like that? laments Jennifer Moses. This piece is more problematic than Elton John playing Rush Limbaugh's wedding, but let's focus on two of its especially off-putting elements- slut-shaming and obliviousness. More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5783773&view=rss&microfeed=true A team of French Canadian researchers followed 400 adolescents' friendships with members of the opposite sex and published their findings in the Journal of Research on Adolescence. Among their findings: while girls receive certain perks from befriending boys- access to alcohol from boys who reached the legal drinking age of 18 first, for example- adolescent girls tend to receive the most emotional support from their friends of the same sex, while boys receive their emotional support from their opposite sex friends. Girls who had a larger number of opposite-sex friends at a younger age tended to use alcohol and drugs at a higher rate, while boys with a large number of female friends did not. More »
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After deciding that she couldn't tell her mother the marks on her neck were the result of a "fantasy biting" encounter with a 19-year-old man, a 15-year-old Twilight fan concocted another totally plausible explanation: While jogging, a man attacked her and proceeded to gnaw on her neck. More »
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A new study shows teenagers take more risks when their friends are watching. Which shouldn't be surprising — except that the study methodology implies something deeper than peer pressure may be at work. More »
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Another day, another story about something bad Facebook does to kids. Today's finding: it may contribute to eating disorders. More »
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If the Parents Television Council wants kids to stop watching Skins, they should definitely keep announcing it's chock full of sex and drugs. It'll be just like that time people complained about Jersey Shore and everyone stopped watching it! More »
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At Frayser High School in Memphis, 90 girls are pregnant or have had a baby this school year, nearly 20 percent of the school's female population. Now of course, reporters are scrambling to blame Teen Mom and "pregnancy pacts." More »
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A new study purports to show that Japanese people are increasingly uninterested in sex. And people seem especially concerned about undersexed young men. More »
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Parents may try to limit their teen's exposure to negative images in the media, but according to a depressing new study, it doesn't matter. Even teen girls whose friends watch lots of TV have an increased risk of eating disorders. More »
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Last year's tragic suicides and the It Gets Better Project have spawned a sort of backlash, with some experts saying life for many gay kids is already better. But the truth may be that we just don't know. More »
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