Tag Archives: teens

Debate This: Should Parents Encourage Teens To Have Sex At Home?

Glamorizing Teen Moms?
Is teen pregnancy glamorized by shows like MTV's Teen Mom. Read More »
How to talk to teenage girls
Anyone can be a mentor. Here's how! Read More »
Pregnant Teens
Teen pregnancy is statistically a Southern thing. Read More »

North Carolina mom Patty Skudlarek says she would prefer her 18-year-old son have sex in her home. Why? Because she thinks its “safer” there. “With the kids having sex at home, it’s a safer environment, because, you know, it’s clean. And usually the place they keep the condoms are in their bedroom. So then they’re close by. And it’s just an environment they’re familiar with, as opposed to a motel, a car or a park, or wherever they’re doing it, these days.” Um, safer in what way? Safer in the way that there’s less risk of her son contracting bed bugs at two-star motel? Or safer in the sense that he’s more likely to use a condom if he’s doing it in his own bedroom? I’m sorry, but this is the kind of ignorant logic that encourages unsafe sex. It doesn’t matter where a teenager has sex, it matters how educated they are about it. Not once in this segment does Patty mention the more serious consequences of her son being sexually active — risk of pregnancy or contraction of STIs. Keep reading »

Girl Talk: I Just Remembered About The Time I Stole A Girl’s Boyfriend

Trust After Cheating?
Can you trust again after infidelity? Dear Wendy explains it all. Read More »
Tetris Dating Rules
Tetris is just one giant metaphor for life. Read More »
Dating Red Flags
guys
These red flags should send you running. Read More »

Sometimes, after you’ve experienced a traumatic event, your brain does all it can to protect you from trauma. In the case of physical pain, your body can go into a type of physical shock — like when car crash victims report that they were able to escape a burning car despite a major open leg wound because their bodies went into protective mode and blocked them from the pain of the wound. And in the case of emotional pain, victims often report burying psychologically traumatic episodes deep within their psyches as a way of moving on with their lives. And I suppose it was something akin to this that made me totally forget about the time I stole a girl’s boyfriend until right about now. Keep reading »

Fashion Flashback: Super Cute ’60s Style

We came across these photos of teen girls from the 1960s and fell in love. We thought you might also appreciate a glimpse into what hippie teens wore around high school campuses back in the day. I’m really wishing I had a pair of corduroy bells right about now…

Today’s Lady News: Teens Are Not Having Babies Like They Used To

  • Kids: they are not having babies like they used to. The teen birth rate fell to a record low in 2009 in a six percent drop from 2008 figures. It’s the second year in a row that the birth rate among teens has fallen. [Washington Post]
  • Ladies Shoes Me is a new French dating site where women pick men just like they pick … shoes? WTF? Way to objectify men as just another item for women to consume. [TechCrunch]
  • “Glee” actress Jane Lynch, a lesbian, and Dan Savage, a gay advice columnist who pioneered the “It Gets Better Project,” open up about the current status of gay rights in the U.S. [Newsweek]

Keep reading »

Getting Textual: Teens Send More Than 3,000 Texts A Month

Teens: step away from the cell phone. According to new data from Nielson, teens send an average of 3,339 texts PER MONTH. At the same time, voice calling is on the decline. Phone usage has decreased 14 percent from last year. More than 3,000 texts a month is an exorbitant number — that’s around six texts every waking hour. And if each text takes an average of 20 seconds, then kids are spending almost 20 hours a month texting. Keep reading »

Study: Acne Sufferers Have More Suicidal Thoughts

Being a teen is hard — but being a teen with really bad acne is positively suicidal, at least according to a new Norwegian study. Teens with bad skin are two times as likely to have suicidal thoughts, say researchers from the University of Oslo. The study examined the psychological habits of Norwegian teens. Fourteen percent of teens reported having “a lot” of acne, and of those, 25 percent said they had suicidal thoughts, compared to 11 percent of the overall teen population. Bad acne was also linked to a lower attachment to friends, and teens with acne tended to have fewer boyfriends and girlfriends, and do worse in school.

But — before you pull out the hanky in despair — it might actually be teens’ acne meds that are making them suicidal. A drug found in several anti-acne medication, Isotretinoin, has been linked to depression, suicide, and suicidal thoughts. So, basically, you’re damned if you have bad acne, and you’re damned if you try to do something about it. [CNN] Keep reading »

Letters To Our Younger Selves

Yesterday was my 34th birthday and after, like, my second or third glass of celebratory wine, I started thinking about how I’ve now spent the last 17 birthdays away from my parents. Half my life! If I didn’t feel like an adult before, that little realization certainly did it for me. And then I started thinking about what I was like 17 years ago and what 17-year-old me would think about 34-year-old me. (And then I had another glass of wine.) And then I woke up this morning and decided I’d write that younger me a letter. I wrote 16-year-old me a letter last year, but that was back when I was 32 (so much younger then!) and, well, now I’ve got more to say. So, after the jump, read my letter and then feel free to leave a note of your own in the comments. Keep reading »

Tavi’s Open Letter To Seventeen Magazine Over Its “Fat & Ugly” Cover Line

Prodigious pint-sized blogger Tavi has lept on the Seventeen magazine bashing bandwagon. And for good reason: The 13-year-old penned an open letter to Seventeen on her blog, The Style Rookie, over a downright evil cover line on its June/July 2010 issue, “The Party Drug That Can Make You Fat & Ugly.” Fat and ugly? Yeah, Seventeen went there.

Keep reading »

I-Dosing Gets Teens High Digitally?!

You’re probably asking yourself: “How the hell is it possible to get high digitally?” Well, you know those ecstasy-hungry and internet-savvy teens are always looking for the next big high. And apparently, one only needs a set of headphones, an MP3 player, and an internet connection to experience “i-dosing,” which involves purchasing “digital drugs” from a dealer on a website. Keep reading »

Oh, How I’ve Missed Ye, “Dawson’s Creek”

When “Dawson’s Creek” first aired, I was in 7th grade and was caught in a blissful lust-cloud of my first “relationship.” Gregory Ware* was the self-appointed Dawson of Pine Cobble School, not because he was so arty or into film, but mainly because he had blond hair kind of like Dawson’s, dressed like him (oh, how I don’t miss the days of baggy khakis and unbuttoned plaid shirts), and was the most attractive guy in our class. (However, it’s not like he had a ton of competition, considering the average class size at our teeny private school in Western Massachusetts numbered 20 or so.) If Greg was Dawson, then I took after Jen, because, well, I was a blonde. But I’d also become the school’s new girl, an import from New York City. At the time I transferred to Pine Cobble, Greg was “going out” with Haley, the Joey figure; the two had been friends for a while and lived close by. Although Haley and I became part of the same group of friends, we maintained a competitive relationship for years.

Just as quickly as partners swapped on the show, so too did hand-holding change at Pine Cobble. Keep reading »