Outside the Box

Just the Facts: Major Crises Facing the World’s Adolescents

That sounds chilling, doesn’t it?  According to the United Nations Population Fund, the current adolescent generation (Generation Y) is the largest adolescent generation in all of history with approximately 1.2 billion individuals coming of age.  It is a global concern that adolescents are leaning too much on their peers and the media for advice on how to survive, compared to past generations when adolescents relied upon tradition to tell them how to brave the world.  I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing, however; traditions are usually outdated and non-relevent to the day-to-day interactions of adolescents, especially with the new technilogical advances of the past twenty years.  Now, with internet dating, MySpace, Facebook, and iPhones, traditions don’t cover the new areas of life.

Gender inequality, ironically enough, is still rampid throughout the world.  In many places, woman still can’t own property.  Families in some societies do not invest as much in their daughters’ health or education as they do their sons’.  Because of lack of employment, poverty, and lack of opportunity, adolescent woman are more vulnerable to trafficking, coercion, and even child marriages.  Child marriages!  It blows my mind that child marriages still go on, but it’s true.  Annually, between 700,000 and 4,000,000 adolescent girls are forced into the sex trade.  That’s four million girls each year.

Adolescent sexual activity is also on the rise, causing HIV and other STD’s to spread rampantly.  Half of all new HIV cases are among people 15-24 years of age.  That means about 6000 adolescents and young adults are becoming infected with the virus each day, most of which are females.  Schools still don’t teach much about sexually transmitted diseases; most teenagers only know what other teens tell them about STDs.  Different countries have tried different approaches, many of which use mass media to get the message out.  This message usually involves abstinence, faithfulness, and condom use; however, I don’t really think this message is working.  Most people don’t know that you can still get virsuses even while using condoms; I’d have to say that ninety percent of teenagers don’t know that you can get an STD from oral sex.  Here is what Wikipedia says about oral sex:

“Chlamydia, human papillomavirus (HPV), gonorrhea, herpes, hepatitis (multiple strains), and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)—including HIV—can be transmitted through oral sex. While the exact risk of transmitting HIV through oral sex is unknown, it is very low. Any kind of direct contact with body fluids of a person infected with HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) poses a risk of infection. The risk from most of these types of infection, however, is generally considered far less than that associated with vaginal oranal sex.

If the receiving partner has wounds or open sores on their genitals, or if the giving partner has wounds or open sores on or in their mouth, or bleeding gums, this poses an increased risk of STD transmission. Brushing the teeth, flossing, undergoing dental work, or eating crunchy foods such as chips relatively soon before or after giving oral sex can also increase the risk of transmission, because all of these activities can cause small scratches in the lining of the mouth. These wounds, even when they are microscopic, increase the chances of contracting STDs that can be transmitted orally under these conditions. Such contact can also lead to more mundane infections from common bacteria and viruses found in, around, and secreted from the genital regions.”

Surprising to me yet again is this fact; the leading cause of death for young women (age fifteen to nineteen) is complications during pregnancies, making adolescent pregnancies not only a very large obsticle in a woman’s professional life, but also dangerous.  Many of these deaths are due to complications from delivery, but some are due to abortions gone wrong as well.  In my opinion, I think that more teenagers should get abortions, but that depends on each and every situation.  If that adolescent is financially stable, either through their man/boyfriend/husband or through their parents, then I think they should pursue having the child.  However, if they are not in a place where they can responsibly take care of the child, then I do think it is better to have an abortion.

All in all, adolescents have a lot to worry about, and I really do not think these issues are really addressed by adults in the world.  Many just shrug it off, and that is wrong.  Take this knowledge and put it to use in everyday life; that way, you can not only address these risks, but spread the word about them the next time some old geezer complains about them “darn teenagers”.

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