The Union Leader has a front page story titled CDC Survey finds Texting a NH Hazard. The article is about risky teen behavior with an emphasis on texting. They quote experts, which is amusing when you look at the big picture. Trust me.
Cigarette smoking makes an appearance in the article, which is only important because when I read it I said, no frikkin way. I actually said that out loud. It was what drove me to dig into the actual report, where I found all kinds of news we could have used to put what was reported in a proper context.
The report this article is based on concludes that NH’s smoking rate for high school age kids is 13.8%. It is reported as falling to 13.8%. But just last year the American Lung Association, which claims to use more extensive (including CDC data), pegged that number at 19.8%. The ten year rolling average for high School aged student smoking in New Hampshire is 19.98%.
While I’d like to think this abrupt reduction is a cultural thing the problem with this misinformation is much simpler than that.
Newspapers choose headlines and print content to sell newspapers, and the report they took their data from is based on a pathetically tiny sample.
The actual CDC report used, which surveys a long list of behaviors, sampled 1,634 teenagers in grades 9 through 12. The overall response rate from that tiny sample was only 77%. That’s 1350 high school kids answering any given question on the survey. It’s not exactly conclusive.
While the texting data is eye-popping, it is from a miniscule portion of the population. Disregarding that, and this matters more, in the absence of historical crash, injury, and fatality data to go with it, it is almost meaningless, unless you want to sell newspapers or attract the attention of bloggers who like to question things like this. That be me.
I skimmed the survey. Here are a few more admissions, if we can even call them that, from that report.
None of the High School aged teenagers admit to every carrying a weapon in school.
Did you know that 60% of them admit to rarely or never using a bicycle helmet?
7.9% of girls and 3.3% of boys reported being forced to have intercourse.
40% say they have smoked pot, with 24% saying they currently smoke.
Heroin, 2.7%, meth 2.9%
Of the 1634 teenagers of which 1350 were the average number of respondents, 42.8% report having had intercourse, 4% of those before age 13.
While these may all be indicative of larger trends, we can’t assume that. And as I mentioned above, the drama headline used to pimp the texting data is useless without other information unless you are giving free emotional support for things like texting and cell phone bans.
Is texting while driving a distraction? Hell, yes. Is it stupid and dangerous, certainly. Are teenagers more inclined to do stupid and dangerous things; they always have. Is texting a NH Hazard? We don’t have real data, just emotion, presumption, and a lot of rhetoric.
So that is what this is. An article with little in the way of information, no context, and an eye-popping headline. It might sell a few more newspapers, but if the Union Leader wants to do the community a service, it will get into the weeds and report the limitations of the results, and add some comparative data that places those results in a relevant context.
