New York City Department of Social Services

Two weeks ago, we here at the Voice reported on the new campaign conducted by the Department for Social Services. Along with a YouTube video series and teen texting program, anti-teenage-pregnancy ads that should make you feel uncomfortable were introduced to straphangers on subways across the five boroughs.

(For a reminder of what they look like, check out this one on the right and the rest of them here).

Seriously, it was only a matter of time before someone (or a few people) got pissed.

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New York City Department of Social Services

Only Nick Kroll's pet plastic surgery ad for Comedy Central's Kroll Show has this beat.

Today, ads in the same vein as the one seen on the right will pop up on subways everywhere. Their main theme: Fifty percent of teenagers do not understand the seriousness of pregnancy at such an early age. And, as you can see, they're bound to grab any viewer's immediate attention. We guess that's advertising at its core, right?

The campaign is the latest from the NYC Department of Social Services to address the issue of teen pregnancy. It will be followed with a YouTube video series later this month as well as an informational text message program for young adults. In both, the Health Department will attempt to reiterate that message.

The new ads rides off the recent controversy brewing over the city's CATCH program. This initiative (increasingly) places Plan B and birth control in the hands of public school health workers, naturally infuriating the parents of students subject to the in-school contraceptives.

But that story parallels the news that teen pregnancy has dropped more than 27 percent in New York City over the past decade. Although the numbers split drastically by borough and race, Health Commissioner Tom Farley pointed to two reasons for the overall decline: Teenagers are having less sex and using more protection.

And, now, there might be a third: that these ads will scare the living daylights of kids everywhere.

You can check out the whole collection here.

[jsurico15@gmail.com/@JSuricz]

Two things: less sex, more protection.

According to the Daily News, that's the word coming from the New York City Health Department to explain a serious downward trend. In new data released yesterday, the City's youth has undergone a 27 percent drop in pregnancies over the last ten years.

The results have led Health Commissioner Tom Farley to point to his Department's efforts to provide more access to contraceptives (like condoms, Plan B and birth control) in schools - a move that hasn't exactly gone over well with some parents. However, his reasoning is not that more contraceptives directly caused less pregnancies; it's just the impression they give off to students:

"It shows that when you make condoms and contraception available to teens, they don't increase their likelihood of being sexually active. But they get the message that sex is risky," Mr. Farley said. This might explain why sexual activity in high schools has dropped by a quarter as well.

However, not all the statistics provided are reasons to celebrate.

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via

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Taylor Momsen, teen smoker.

​There is a new quitting-smoking study coming out in October, and this one focuses on teenagers at the beginning of their illustrious smoking careers. The study shows that a smoking cessation program in combination with exercise is the most successful way to get teenagers to stop smoking entirely, compared with a "brief intervention" (a 15-minute stop-smoking lecture that could only have elicited eye-rolls) and an old-fashioned smoking cessation program. The researchers think they've pinpointed the reason: More »

Interpol is investigating the peculiar story of a 17-year-old boy who walked into Berlin's city hall and said he had been living in a forest outside of the city for five years. He told investigators that he lived in the woods with his father who died two weeks before the boy arrived in Berlin. Despite living in a German forest, the Independent reports the boy speaks fluent English and only knows a few German words.

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A new study has found that only 10 percent of parents believe that their teenagers drink, and only five percent think that their kids smoke weed. For comparison's sake, consider the fact that 52 percent of teenagers say they drink and 28 percent say they smoke weed.

In other words, science has found that teenagers lie to their parents. Revelatory enough in and of itself, but the New York Times ups the ante and asks real live teens about their drinking and drugging behavior in a blog post: "If You Drink or Use Drugs, Do Your Parents Know?"

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via Rookie

Tavi Gevinson, the teenage fashion blogger and budding media mogul, has launched her new online magazine for adolescent girls. Rookie is here, it has a cool vintage-y design, and the first issue features contributions from big names like Sady Doyle, Dan Savage, Joss Whedon, and Zooey Deschanel. There are a handful of articles so far, from a roundup of different adults recounting their first year of high school to a back-to-school fashion editorial featuring girls who are impossibly chic for high-schoolers. Overall, Rookie looks to be miles ahead (aesthetically and substance-wise) of most media targeted towards teenage girls.

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