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Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

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Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#121

Post by stephengillie »

pjdemers wrote: post #82
maxander wrote: post #9

The thing that will save the world from overpopulation- the internet. Both as a source of information, and perhaps as a way of abstracting social interactions that otherwise would have more opportunity to be acted out in sweatier ways.

A while back I saw some study said that said women who grow up with a TV in the house have on average, 1 less child than their mother. And this was holding even as we go into the 3rd generation of kids with TVs at home. The Internet, and especially mobile Internet, are like TV * 5. So maybe this is right.

This might have more to do with medical advancements in the past 100 years, than with the social impact of television.

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#123

Post by valvar »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #103
eru wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps wider access to contraceptives still encourages more sex, but there were other forces even stronger in the other direction?

Mathematically, sure, that's fine. Empirically/theoretically, you've dug yourself into a hole that is difficult to get out of. You're going against Occam's razor so now you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do.

It's not clear to me how (and if) Occam's Razor should necessarily be applied in this context. We are not choosing between a very simple, and a vastly complex alternative. Rather we are choosing between an unintuitive and probably complex option (contraceptives are causing less copulation - this does not sound at all like a simple suggestion to me), and admitting that our models and data may not be complete. Either way we need more research to be able to more clearly identify the root causes.

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#124

Post by tajen »

protomyth wrote: post #4
dpweb wrote: post #2

As a teenager in the 80s, (as a joke) tried to buy condoms. Guy wouldn't sell them to me said I was too young.

I take it that the gas station bathroom didn't have them? In ND, every gas station seemed to have had the same condom dispenser. I've always wondered what company was responsible for them and who stocked them.

Were they stocked ;)? I'm always doubtful about public policies since I discovered that the 3 suicide lines in France were only open during certain hours, and certainly not at night.

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#125

Post by mistermann »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #103
eru wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps wider access to contraceptives still encourages more sex, but there were other forces even stronger in the other direction?

Mathematically, sure, that's fine. Empirically/theoretically, you've dug yourself into a hole that is difficult to get out of. You're going against Occam's razor so now you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do.

> You're going against Occam's razor so now you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do.

Where did this idea come from?

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#126

Post by mirimir »

Joof wrote: post #74
gozur88 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much actual evidence is there that this has anything to do with contraception? I'm getting old now, and from what I can tell contraception was just as available when I was a teen as it is now.

When I was a teen (10 years ago) a friend of mine was a drug dealer. He dealt morning-after pills to girls who couldn't get them normally.

So many years ago, I knew an acid chemist who provided abortions as a favor for friends, using ergometrine aka d-lysergic acid beta-propanolamide. But forgone profits were huge, given the potency differential ;)

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#129

Post by mleonhard »

bobbytherobot wrote: post #48
gozur88 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much actual evidence is there that this has anything to do with contraception? I'm getting old now, and from what I can tell contraception was just as available when I was a teen as it is now.

There is _more_ contraception options now available to teens. I know for a fact that IUDs were not being given to teens a decade ago, they were barely just being given to adult women in the U.S. Access to the Morning After pill has greatly increased for everyone. Then you have options like Depo-Provera. On top of that, the stigma around using the pill decreases all the time. Parents are willing to get the pill for th…

Vasalgel, an excellent contraceptive for men is slowly making its way through the FDA's testing process: https://www.parsemusfoundation.org/projects/vasalgel/

Re: Teen birth rate hits all-time low, led by 50% decline among Hispanics and blacks

#130

Post by astrodust »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #79
mirimir wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. Porn for lots of boys, and celibacy for lots of girls. But hey, maybe they'll just grow out of it. My generation eventually grew out of promiscuity. Or maybe "aged out" is more accurate ;) HIV was a huge bring-down, too :(

Girls look at porn. Times have changed man.

I read about a study where they were trying to see if there were differences between people who viewed internet porn and people who didn't, yet on the university campus they could not find a single person in their surveying who hadn't viewed porn at least once.
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