Helping Young People Resist At-risk Behaviors

This article will deal with some at-risk behaviors that are new to our times. Its goal is to provide a helpful kit filled with research-based strategies that teachers, parents, church and community leaders, counselors, health-care professionals, and others can use in their work with youth. In addition, the article will provide information that can be shared with young people who need to be aware of lurking dangers, as well as what strategies they can use both now and in the future, when they establish their own families. Because of the urgency of those matters, teachers and administrators should talk about these issues in a variety of courses and forums, not just marriage and family classes, or only in parent-teacher meetings or fliers sent home with students. The new at-risk behaviors discussed below relate to electronic media and its various social incarnations. Unless otherwise stated, all research and statistics in this article refer to work done in the United States, though in many cases they are applicable elsewhere as well