What Teens Really Think

Similar majorities of teens say the country is headed in the wrong direction. But virtually the same proportion of young people locally and nationally confidently predict that the country's best years are ahead of it. More than six in 10 teens nationally agree it's a good time to be growing up, and about an equal proportion of area high schoolers agree.

Both groups have similar dreams and delusions. About two-thirds locally and nationally say there's a good chance they will be rich someday. Nearly one-third also predict they'll be famous, including a majority of local African American teens, who expect both celebrity and riches. Even many less affluent black teens foresee wealth and fame: a finding that may indicate reassuring confidence -- or media-fed delusions.

Washington teens differ from their peers across the country in one troubling way: The girls here are far more stressed out. More than four in 10 local girls say they "frequently" experience stress in their daily lives; nationally, fewer than three in 10 teenage girls feel similarly harried. Only about one in four boys locally or nationally says he is frequently stressed out.

Even so, when compared with their parents, Washington teens are consistently more optimistic on a range of issues -- or, more precisely, they are less pessimistic. Across the survey, local teens express broadly negative views about the future.

"This country is headed in the wrong direction," says Kristin Spring, a 10th-grader at Chantilly High School in Fairfax County, echoing many of her peers. "There is more pollution. The population keeps growing. People are stealing. Crime seems to be getting worse." In the face of these problems, Kristin says, she relies on her "religious faith and my family" to sustain her. "They are always there for me."

It is puzzling that today's young people are so sour on these issues. In their lifetimes the violent crime rate has plummeted; so has the property crime rate. The divorce rate peaked in the early 1980s and has trended downward since. The story is more mixed on AIDS and on pollution. The advent of the "cocktail" treatment for AIDS has sent the AIDS death rate spiraling downward, though no cure seems on the horizon and the epidemic continues to rage abroad. On some key measures, the air and water are cleaner today than when these teens were born, though wetlands, old-growth forests and other natural areas continue to vanish, the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere continues to grow, and dirty water and foul air remain a growing problem in some parts of the world.

But in some ways, teens see the world improving. Kristin was born in South Korea and says race is not an issue for her and her multiracial, multiethnic group of friends. "I think those times are pretty much over," she says. "Most people in this generation know that race doesn't matter. And we'll pass [tolerance] on to our children."

Like Kristin, local high schoolers surveyed were optimistic about racial progress: Eight in 10 predicted that the races would get along better when they were adults. That's not surprising for kids a generation or two removed from the bitterness that festered in the wake of the battle for civil rights in the 1960s. Almost all say they have had a friend of another race, and 45 percent say they have dated someone of another race, nearly double the proportion of their parents, and a sign that racial barriers, once virtually insurmountable, slowly continue to fall.

Despite the number of teens who say race doesn't matter, teens' view of the world remains nearly as divided between black and white as their parents'. Three out of four white teens (76 percent) say now is a good time to be growing up, while slightly more than half of blacks (54 percent) agree -- among the largest racial difference found in these data and a gap that remains wide even among poor blacks and whites.

Nearly half of black teens (45 percent) say the country's best years are in the past; just over one-third of white teens are similarly pessimistic. Black teenagers also are far less trusting of major institutions than white teens, with one notable exception: organized religion. Here, a clear majority of blacks say they have great confidence in religious institutions while slightly more than one-third of whites are equally enthusiastic. (But even among blacks, the influence of religion is waning, with African American teens significantly less likely than their parents to say religion played a critical role in their lives.)

One feature cuts across the survey -- a yawning gender gap. Two-thirds of all boys say the country's best years lie in the future. Only half of all girls agree. A big majority of girls say it's harder growing up today than it was for their parents; fewer than half of all boys agree. Big majorities of boys say they have "a lot of" confidence in the military; just less than half of girls are similarly trusting. And girls are significantly more likely than boys to say there will be another terrorist attack on the scale of September 11.

It's always been tough to be a teen, perhaps even more so today, say a majority of area teens. Slightly more than half have a friend who has dropped out of school, and nearly as many have a friend who became pregnant. About half these teens say they know someone who is in a gang, and one in five report personally being the victim of crime or violence.