TEENS & SELF-IMAGE
11th annual survey results

Results roundup: What 272,400 teens said about how they feel about themselves.

Survey results: Complete national survey results.

Faith: Religion plays a powerful role in teens' everyday lives.

Mental health: 37% of teens surveyed have a friend who has considered suicide.

Teen roundtable: Our Teen Panel talks to Tipper Gore about being accepted, sexual pressures and their parents' infuence.

Voices: Advice, insights, questions from students. Respondents who were picked for honors.

Bolster yourself: Learn 10 ways teens and parents can work toward a healthy self-image.

Issue date:
May 1-3, 1998

"Valuing God is cool"

34% of respondents say religion plays a powerful role in their everyday lives.

Joey Harper, 15, of Bossier, La., wears an increasingly popular bracelet that reminds teens to consider in troubling situations: "What would Jesus do?"

n one of the most unexpected results of USA WEEKEND's survey on Teens & Self-Image, students cited religion as the second-strongest influence in their lives, outranked only by parents, and surpassing teachers, girlfriends, boyfriends, peers and the media.

"It's like a safe place," says Jolisha Offutt, 18, of Louisville. "It's a hope that there's a way to live that's better."

Jolisha should know: She's been arrested for shoplifting and has two friends who were teen mothers. "I had to make a change in my life. You can get on bad drugs, become an alcoholic; in Kentucky, kids get killed over shoes. It's scary." But newfound spirituality has given her new hope: "I became drug-free and an A student. The key was my religion."

Studies confirm what Jolisha discovered on her own, says Stanford University teen expert William Damon: Religion is "one of the most powerful influences on young people. There aren't a lot of positive things that predict avoiding risk -- not IQ, where you live, all that stuff. Religion is one of the few positive things you can add to a child's life."

recent Gallup Poll shows 45 percent of Americans go to church weekly, but that number jumps to 55 percent for teens. The media projection may be Beverly Hills, 90210, says Phil Vischer, creator of VeggieTales, a children's religious video series, "but a lot of kids reject that."

One such kid is Joey Harper of Bossier, La. He sports a bracelet bearing the letters "WWJD," reminding him to ask himself in tough situations: "What would Jesus do?"

"Everyone's tempted -- go out, get drunk, get arrested. But if you think, 'Who would Jesus hang around with?' -- it helps put it in perspective."

Yet some fear a rise of religiousness in a secular school world means a rise in Christian religiousness, creating conflicts for students of other faiths. Those conflicts play out in schools every day. Laura Warren, 14, a Jewish student in McLean, Va., played in a soccer tournament on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement; in an essay in the school paper, she acknowledged she had made the wrong decision. "The world doesn't stop for Jewish holidays," she wrote. "This makes my life a little harder, and yet a little better. It makes me work harder to talk about my religion and show how important it is."

The Rev. Billy Kyles of Memphis says teens "are very spiritual. We may not see it, but they are." Kyles, whose face was emblazoned on the national consciousness as he stood next to Martin Luther King Jr. at the moment the civil rights leader was shot, spends a lot of time talking to teens. "They want parameters," he says. "We try to cater to them by giving them jeans with names on them and shoes that fly, but what they really want is for you to tell them that God has given them power."

Photo Credit: BRIAN COATS FOR USA WEEKEND