By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Only a day after the release of a major study that found alarming levels of sexually risky behavior among New York City teens, another study has found that half of all U.S. high schools have engaged in bullying or have been bullied themselves.
The Associated Press is reporting that a new study published in the most recent issue of Pediatrics found that nearly one-tenth of sexually active New York City high school students say they have had at least one same-sex partner and report higher-than-average rates of dating violence, forced sex and risky sexual behavior.
Of the thousands of teens polled in the study, 35.8 percent of girls and 34.8 percent of boys who claimed to have both male and female partners said they experienced dating violence in the previous year. These numbers are much higher than those of heterosexual teens.
Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute, which focuses on sexual and reproductive health issues, told the AP that teens with male and female partners “are obviously facing challenges.”
“These are kids in New York City where there’s more awareness and perhaps acceptance of non-heterosexual behavior, and you’re still finding such high reports of risk behavior and violence,” Lindberg said.
Another study conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics and involving more than 43,000 youth from 78 public and 22 private schools found more than half of the nation’s high schoolers reporting that they have either been been bullied or have bullied someone else in the past year.
According to USA Today, the study also found more than half of the students (52%) admitting they hit someone in anger in the past year with 28 percent saying they think it’s okay to threaten a person who angers them.
Sally Kuykendall, assistant professor of health services at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, has studied bullying for almost a decade. She told USA Today she believes kids are getting the message that “if you have a problem, you deal with it through violence. When children are exposed to violence, they’re going to think that’s the way to handle problems.”
Both media and domestic violence play a rule in these attitudes.
In addition to anger-related behaviors, the survey also found that 60 percent of students admit to having “cheated on a test,” with 34 percent saying they did so more than once. Surprisingly, students at non-religious private schools cited the lowest percentage (33%) while 56 percent of students in religious schools saying they have cheated.
Twenty-seven percent of the students said they “stole something from a store.”
Darcia Narvaez, associate professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, focuses on young people’s moral and character development, and points to child-rearing practices to explain these behaviors.
She believes children don’t get enough “positive touch” in the form of skin-to-skin contact from their parents, which promotes well-being, a moral sense and more empathy. Parents are holding their children less, she told USA Today, and are relying more on strollers and carriers.
“Self-regulation is affected by all these things,” she says.
Josephson plans to include questions about cyberbullying in the next study.
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