I read a story this morning about a survey of teens in Thailand between the ages of 13 and 15. The results are pretty disturbing. But first of all you must consider that surveys here are very suspect because they are usually faked or manipulated to give answers to suit the surveyors. Even surveys done by “respected” organizations are not very useful except to give some general idea and only after you discount the often obviously slanted questions. In this case it was the Department of Health who did the survey. So, remembering that, we look at the results of this poll which was reported in the Daily Xpress.
First there were the results of drinking. Of course we expect these number to get worse each year because that seems to be the trend everywhere in the world. 20 percent say they had been drunk at least once. Hmm, I think that is not very useful because a lot of teens might try it once and then rarely or never drink again. That is a poor survey question unless there are more questions to go with it, like do you drink often or on special occasions, etc.
74 percent said they have smoked cigarettes. That is a lot but again I think that doesn’t mean they regularly smoke.
About teen sex, 10 percent of the boys said they have had at least two sexual partners. Only 1.8 percent of the girls had. So a few girls seem to be making the rounds with many boys, which is typical isn’t it?
The result that I thought was particularly disturbing is the number of teens who have seriously thought about suicide, 8.5 percent of the teens. That was made up of 9.5 percent of the boys and 7.5 percent of the girls. That is really sad. I kind of believe this type of thinking is increasing because we hear of teen suicides in the news a lot more often than in past years.
Remember these are teens between the ages of 13 and 15. So these kind of behaviors are becoming more common at younger and younger ages, assuming these survey results are meaningful and not just made up to serve the interests of the Dept of Health.
Tags: teens, Thai Culture
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July 2nd, 2009 at 4:39 am
Yes, your right, surveys are always are always suspect. Also consider where the survey was conducted {specific locale that is} and out of what number of teens are these results based. Is it a group of teens that total 100 in the poorest region? Nevertheless, any result is disturbing, however it seems a culture not much different from what is reported here in Australia. What they cold start asking is WHY?
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:57 am
I think they were trying also get to the “why” of it because they also asked some questions about family life. A high percentage of the teens said their parents don’t know what the teens are doing in the free time because they are too busy. Also a lot of teens said they are very lonely. I think that is a common cause of many problems, parents not involved or close to their kids and kids lonely and get depressed.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:04 am
I thought about suicide after my last gf died.
Hard to bear if you’ve been through it.
I can relate to some of these kids. Even as an adult myself, I can still relate.