Poll-pourri - teenagers on tattoos, smoking, and drugs - Brief Article

Women's Quarterly, Summer, 2002 by Karlyn Bowman

Needlepoint News

How POPULAR are tattoos? In 1999, 22 percent of' those surveyed told interviewers from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal that someone in their household had a tattoo. In an August 2000 survey, by Harris Interactive for American Demographics in 2001, 10 percent said they personally have or have had a tattoo and 2 percent a body piercing (other than an earring). Sixteen percent of eighteen- to twenty-four-year olds have both. Young women were slightly more likely than young men to have body art. Fortunately, none of the respondents in the sixty-five and older group indulged in body piercing, though 5 percent did sport a tattoo.

Overall, teens regard tattoos on adults as a turn-off. A Gallup Youth Survey in 1997 found that only 19 percent of teens thought that tattoos made adults look more attractive, while 77 percent said they made them look less so. Also unappealing to teens: adults who chew tobacco (98 percent said it made them look less attractive), smoke cigars (92 percent) or cigarettes (89 percent), wear black leather and chains (87 percent), drink beer (84 percent), and shave their heads (82 percent). Thirty-nine percent said motorcycles made adults more attractive; 54 percent said it made them less so.

Young Fogeys

TATTOOS and body piercing aside, polls suggest that most teens are a pretty traditional lot these days. An April 2000 survey conducted by the Global Strategy Group for the White House Conference found that 91 percent of twelve- to fifteen-year-olds shared the same basic values as their parents. More impressive than that finding is a recently released Gallup review of a quarter century of its surveys of teens. Teens tell Gallup that courtesy is important to them. They don't condone profanity. They say divorce should be harder to get.

The proportion of teens of high school age in these Gallup Youth Surveys who "smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and experiment with marijuana" has declined dramatically over the course of these surveys. Nearly a quarter of teens in a 1979 Gallup Youth Survey said they had smoked in the past week. In 2001, only 12 percent gave that response. Thirty-eight percent said they had drunk alcoholic beverages in 1979; in 2001, 21 percent gave that response. Forty-one percent in 1979 had tried marijuana. In the latest survey, that number has been cut by half, to 20 percent.

Karlyn Bowman is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.