Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
7 Figures: The Dangers Kids and Teens Face
7 Figures: The Dangers Kids and Teens Face
Dec 23, 2025 11:55 PM

Parents worry a lot about their kids. But which dangers are most probable? Pew Research recently conducted a study examining the data on the dangers that teens and kids face.

Here are seven figures you should know from the report:

1. Around 15 percent of eighth-graders, three-in-ten high-school sophomores and four-in-ten seniors report some use of illicit drugs in the past 12 months. More than 1-in-3 (35.3 percent) high school seniors reported any alcohol use in the past 30 days, and 11.4 percent reported smoking cigarettes. Seniors were also as likely to have smoked marijuana in the past 30 days (21.3 percent) as to have gotten drunk (20.6 percent).

2. Nearly 1 our of every 4 (24.7 percent) high-school students say they’ve been in a physical fight at least once in the past 12 months before the 2013 survey. (Only 3.1 percent needed medical attention after the fight.)

3. In 2012, the arrest rate for youths ages 10 to 17 was around four of every 100 youths. While the rates for all racial subgroups has been declining, the arrest rate for black youths is still more than twice that of any other group.

4. There were 24.2 births per 1,000 teen females in 2014, a record low. The rates, however, differ considerably between racial subgroups: the highest subgroup birth rate was Hispanic teens (41.7 per 1,000) while the lowest was Asian teens (8.7 per 1,000).

5. About one-in-ten adolescents, or around 2.6 million, have experienced major depression in the past year, with 7.7 percent saying their depression caused severe impairment.

6. In 2013, the last year for which there plete data, 1,258 youths were reported killed by firearms (equivalent to 1.71 per 100,000), and 6,104 suffered nonfatal firearm injuries (8.29 per 100,000). Broken out by subgroups, the rate of nonfatal firearm injury was 1.68 per 100,000 for white youths, 5.3 per 100,000 for Hispanic youths, and 24.67 per 100,000 for black youths.

7. According to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, only 332 stranger abductions were reported last year; since 2007, the number of stranger abductions has ranged between 200 and 520.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Why the media lynched the Covington kids (and why they’ll do it again)
No one following the news could have missed the media’s misguided hysteria over students from Covington Catholic High School allegedly surrounding and taunting an American Indian activist. However, not only was the erroneous feeding frenzy – which included incitement to violence against minors – predictable, but its repetition is inevitable. On Saturday, a story went viral that the previous day the Covington kids, wearing MAGA hats, had left the March for Life only to barge into the Indigenous People’s March...
Is your child wealthier than half the world’s population?
CNN: “The top 26 billionaires own $1.4 trillion — as much as 3.8 billion other people” Time magazine: “The World’s Top 26 Billionaires Now Own as Much as the Poorest 3.8 Billion, Says Oxfam” The Guardian: “World’s 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, says Oxfam” You’ve probably seen these headlines—or ones like them—in articles about economic inequality. You might have even assumed the claim must be somewhat revealing about global inequality. But it isn’t. In reality, such...
Solving Africa’s state-society gap
The advent of 2019 has many wondering what kind of world will emerge in the next many years. Predictions of disruptive, technological change, and the transfer of geopolitical power abound. A recent report by the Hoover Institute specifically analyzes what kind of political, economic, and technological trends will form on the continent of Africa, given the shifting sands of our times. One portion of the report pays particular attention to African governance. Given that governance is a key ingredient to...
9 quotations from Martin Luther King Jr. on work, wealth, and love
U.S. citizens today mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but the Baptist minister’s inspirational plea for civil rights and human dignity echoed across the Atlantic and inspired millions around the world. In his memory, here are nine quotations from MLK Jr. on work, trade, morality, and love. On international free trade: Maybe you haven’t ever thought about it, but you can’t leave home in the morning without being dependent on most of the world. You get up in the morning,...
Martin Luther King Jr., moral philosopher
Almost everyone has read Letter from Birmingham Jail – a brilliant essay. Just about everyone recognizes Martin Luther King Jr. as a great civil rights activist and orator. Which he certainly was. But this misses the full picture. Martin Luther King Jr. was not only an activist or simply an orator – he was a great moral philosopher. Frequent Acton Institute lecturer, Pastor Christopher Brooks, refers to Dr. King as the “greatest moral philosopher that this nation has ever produced.”...
Understanding the causes of inflation
Note: This is post #107 in a weekly video series on basic economics. In the last post in this series we learned that according to the quantity theory of money, if the amount of money in an economy doubles the price levels also double, causinginflation. The consumer, therefore, pays twice as much for the same amount of the good or service. Can we put this theory to the test? In this video, Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution University looks at...
Twitter and Covington Catholic: A modern day, media created thriller
In a creepy scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, The Birds, Melanie (Tippi Hendren) is waiting outside a school to pick up a student. Behind her, crows begin amassing on the playground equipment. When she finally turns and sees them, pletely unnerved – and eventually, as she helps the children evacuate the school, the birds attack. Fifty-plus years onward, there’s a new ornithological thriller but it’s not playing at your local theatre. Just log on to Twitter and watch the...
The demonization of the Covington Catholic school boys
Sadly, it is ing increasingly challenging to hold and freely express unpopular or unconventional ideas in the United States. If possible legal sanctions are not yet a reality, the social environment is increasingly hostile toward those who dare not pray according to the gospel of political correctness. In recent weeks, we had numerous examples of how media-fueled intolerance is slowly replacing the law of the land or, at least, making the fundamental freedom of expression fall by the wayside. Vice...
Radio Free Acton: The life of Francis Schaeffer; Netflix’s ‘Watership Down’
On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Caroline Roberts speaks with Stephen Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College, about the life and work of Francis Schaeffer, 20th century protestant evangelist. After that, host Bruce Edward Walker talks about Netflix’s new series, “Watership Down,” with John Ehrett, writer, attorney and editor at the Conciliar Post. Check out these additional resources on this week’s podcast topics: Buy “Schaeffer: On the Christian Life by William Edgar” Learn more about Schaeffer’s contribution to...
Signals for service: Lessons from the invention of the price tag
As we continue to confront a range of top-down efforts to manage and manipulate prices, whether through tariffs, subsidies, or government-directed wage controls, much of the surrounding debate tends to focus on arbitrary notions about “just prices” and “the balance of economic power.” What’s less discussed is the actual function of prices in a free economy, and what’s truly at stake if we forget or neglect it. Most simply, prices are signals for service, giving us critical information about human...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved