In a parked car: 12
8/86Percentage of Americans between the ages of 15 and 19 who say they have shoplifted: 43
9/86Percentage of teenagers’ favorite songs that they say are about sex, violence, satanism, or drugs: 7
Percentage they say are about love: 26
11/87Tuition for a week at the Dollars ¢ Sense management camp for teenagers in Florida: $600
Federal funds spent last year to promote celibacy among teenagers: $3,000,000
11/89Percentage of Americans who say that “lack of opportunity due to poverty” is a main cause of teenage violence: 50
Percentage who say that “rock music lyrics that glorify sex and violence” are a main cause of teenage violence: 52
8/89Amount a Florida mother is seeking in a suit against a teenager who stood up her daughter for a prom date: $49.53
9/89Percentage of Chinese teenagers who can correctly identify the size of the world’s population: 85
Percentage of American adults who can: 35
7/90Sales of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles merchandise since the film was released in April: $500,000,000
Sales of tickets to the film: $110,000,000
11/91Number of times CBS interrupted Miss Teen USA on the first night of the Soviet coup with bulletins on the crisis: 0
4/91Average number of months an American teenage girl is sexually active before using birth control: 12
4/91Rank of white, Hispanic, and black girls, among those who lose the most self-esteem during puberty: 1,2,3
6/92Percentage of American fathers who say their children should have “more sexual freedom” than they had as teenagers: 15
7/92Chances that a teenage American male has seen Wayne’s World at least three times: 1 in 10
11/94Chances that a U.S. teenager has not spoken to either parent for more than ten minutes during the last month: 1 in 5
2/94Chances that a white teenager arrested on drug charges will be transferred to an adult court: 1 in 70
3/94Number of the 61 children murdered in Chicago last year whose mothers first gave birth as teens: 47
9/94Percentage of sexually active teenagers who say they usually have sex in their own or their partner’s home: 72
3/95Ratio of the number of black teenagers citing violence as their school’s biggest problem to those citing racism: 6:1
3/95Percentage of American teenagers who cite “not being in love” as the best reason not to have sex: 4
9/96Chance that an adolescent American boy has been intentionally hit or kicked in the genitals: 1 in 10
1/97Rank of Texas, the state with the least generous welfare program, among states with the highest adolescent birth rate: 2
Rank of North Dakota, the state with the most generous program: 50
11/97Average percentage of teenagers in the world’s 44 largest countries who recognize the Chicago Bulls logo: 93
4/97Factor by which the number of teenagers using marijuana last year exceeded the number arrested for violent crime: 16
4/97Percentage of black teenagers who say it is “extremely important” to learn U.S. history and geography in high school: 59
5/97Hourly rate charged by Mighty Moms, a Minnesota group that confronts rowdy mall teens with “verbal judo”: $20
6/97Chance that a U.S. teenage girl will be pregnant within one month of becoming sexually active: 1 in 5
12/98Chance that a gay Massachusetts teenager reports being threatened or injured at school in the last year: 1 in 4
7/98Number of days last March that a Georgia teen was suspended after wearing a Pepsi shirt on his school’s “Coke Day”: 1
2/00Rank of self-inflicted wounds among the top injuries for which teenage girls were hospitalized in New York State in 1998: 1
Rank of assault among the top causes of injuries for which teenage boys were hospitalized that year: 1
Percentage who consider the practice “gross”: 55
2/01Number of Hooters girls who visited a teenage leukemia patient in a Philadelphia hospital last fall at his request: 3
4/01Chance that a TV character engaging in sexual intercourse during the 1997-98 season was a teenager: 1 in 33
Chance last season: 1 in 11
10/02Number of teenagers enrolled last summer in Secure Corps, a “homeland security training” camp in Pennsylvania: 92
3/02Number of Swedish teenagers convicted of lese majesty in December for hitting the king with a cream cake: 4
Total number of Swedish officials hit by cream cakes last year: 3
8/04Minimum number of developing countries whose adolescent birth rate is lower than that of Phillips County, Arkansas: 94