It's repost...... We found it when search some article for paper about teens and in many countries just to see how far impact our life especially to teens.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While the media bombards us with alarming statistics about the number of teenagers having , few reports shed light on what might encourage teens to become ually active in the first place. Three studies offer some insight into ually active teens: environment, age of partner and perceived family support may affect young people's decisions to have .

In a study presented at a meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA), researchers at the University of Kentucky followed 950 teenagers at 17 high schools in Kentucky and Ohio from 9th to 11th grades. They found evidence that teens who have tend to think their friends are too, even if they're not. "You're 2.5 times more likely to have by the 9th grade if you think your friends are having -- whether or not they really are," says Katharine Atwood, assistant professor at the Kentucky School of Public Health. Plus, teens tended to overestimate how many of their friends were ually active. Only 33 percent of kids in the study had had by the 9th grade, but 31 percent said that most or all of their friends had had . "If you can persuade them that fewer are having than they think," she says, "that can have a significant impact on their behavior."

Among young girls, a partner's age is a risk factor for ual activity. "The younger the girl is at the age of first , the more likely she is to have a much older partner," says Harold Leitenberg, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Vermont. His study, published in the Archives of ual Behavior, found that of 4,201 girls in 8th through 12th grades, those who lost their ity between ages 11 and 12 tended to have partners five or more years older. For girls who had later inadolescence, the partner's age disparity was much smaller. Early ual initiation was also associated with a number of behavioral problems. "Ignoring the age of the partners, the earlier a girl was when she first had , the greater her risk of suicide attempts, alcohol use, drug abuse, truancy and pregnancy," Leitenberg says.

The good news is that while teen may not be wholly preventable, the health risks it involves can be reduced through communication within the family. More research presented at the APHA meeting showed that frequent parent-child discussions about and its dangers may prevent teenagers from engaging in risky ual behavior. Researchers at Emory University questioned 522 ually active African-American adolescents about the openness and support that their families provided. Adolescents who felt that their families were more supportive were less likely to have unprotected , and thus were at a lesser risk for pregnancy and disease.

Source : http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200107/teens-and-

By : Alison Calabia