Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
7 Figures: The Dangers Kids and Teens Face
7 Figures: The Dangers Kids and Teens Face
Jan 11, 2026 8:01 AM

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
Kishore Jayabalan: Initial Thoughts on Encyclical Leak
Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Istituto Acton in Rome: “The fact that this draft has been leaked well in advance of the encyclical’s official release shows the great interest in what Pope Francis has to say about the environment. To be sure, he will frame the issues in Christian terms, as the pope must always do. My concern is that he will blame the market economy for basically all our environmental degradation and neglect the very important role private property and...
Crank Up The Air Conditioning: It’s Good For The Economy
If you are of a “certain age,” you grew up without air conditioning. As unthinkable as it is now, we made due with window screens and fans. And we survived. Honestly, it was pretty miserable sometimes. Especially if your dad happened to have a vinyl recliner that you sat on during hot, humid August days watching Brady Bunch re-runs. Peeling yourself off one of those is an experience that will scar you forever. Air conditioning is more than just a...
How American Catholics View Pope Francis and Global Warming
Since Pope Francis will be addressing climate change later this week the Pew Research Center has released a survey showing what American Catholics think about boththe pontiff and global warming. Not surprisingly, the surveyfound that global warming is a “highly politicized issue that sharply divides American Catholics, like the U.S. public as a whole, mainly along political party lines.” About seven-in-ten U.S. Catholics (71 percent) believe the planet is getting warmer, and nearly half (47 percent) attribute itto human causes....
Why the Price System is One of God’s Artworks
At an auction in2007Andreas Gursky turned 99 cents into $3.34 million. Well, sort of. Perhaps it’d be more accurate to say he turned99 Cent II Diptychon, a photograph depicting an interior of a supermarket, into a few million. At the time this was the most expensive photograph in the world. Even more amazing is that this wasthe third print of the same image that had sold for millions. Two others sold in 2006, one for $2.25 million and another for...
5 Facts About the Magna Carta
Today marks the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta. Here are five facts about this English documentwhich helped to establish the rule of law: 1. Magna Carta (Latin for “the Great Charter”), also called Magna Carta Libertatum (Latin for “the Great Charter of the Liberties”), was a peace treaty between King John of England and rebel barons that was sealed on June 15, 1215. Magna Carta established for the first time the principle that everybody, including the...
Court to U.S. Army: You Allow Vampire Mickey Mouse Tattoos, Why Not a Turban?
If the Army can make an exception to its regulations for a vampire Mickey Mouse tattoo, why can it not do the same for a turban? That was part of a federal court’s thinking in a ruling ordering the Army to allow a Sikh college student to join his college’s NROTC unit without having to shave his beard, cut his hair, or remove his turban. Iknoor Singh, a junior at Hofstra University and an observant Sikh, has “long dreamed of...
Have Christian Female Entrepreneurs Changed The World?
Christina M. Weber says that Christian women have been trail-blazers in showing us how to balance family life, work and worship. In the 20th century, Weber says that political ideologies tried to break down family life. Marxists munists promoted disconnection between children and their parents with patible work schedules. They also destabilized marriages with the encouragement of promiscuity and lust. The agenda—dependence on the state above family and God — fueled the economic and political goals of their leaders. But...
Pope Francis Encyclical Leak Fuels Speculations
A draft of Laudato Sii is circulating and causing an uproar. This document seems to align with climate scientists, arguing that “the bulk of global warming is caused by human activity.” However, this draft may not be the final encyclical, Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said that it is merely a “intermediate version” and not the final encyclical. Whether or not this is the final language and content that will be in the ing encyclical on the environment, much...
Dory Rowing in the Canyon: Where Work and Wonder Meet
One day, while riding down the Colorado River, Amber Shannon suddenly realized her vocation. “I really wanted to row little wooden boats down big rapids with big canyon walls,” she says. “That was the life dream.” Although it may sound impractical to some, tour guide John Shocklee calls being a boatman in the Grand Canyon “the most coveted job in the world.” “It’s definitely easier to get a PhD than it is to get a dory here in the Grand...
Michael Miller: First Reaction to Leaked Encyclical Draft
Michael Matheson Miller, Research Fellow and Director of Acton Media at the Acton Institute: “Pope Francis has spoken consistently about the need to end exclusion for the world’s poor. Since the environmental movement often neglects the challenges of the poor, it will be interesting to see how the encyclical addresses the call to environmental stewardship in the context of poverty and economic development. “ ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved