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

"My mom treats me like a person"

USA WEEKEND's Teen Panel talks to Tipper Gore about being accepted, sexual pressures, and their parents' influence.

Jabari Stewart, 14, with Gore

o most people, Tipper Gore is known as the wife of Vice President Al Gore, the one who once demanded parental advisories on CDs for kids and the mother of four children growing up in the spotlight.

But to a small group of Washington, D.C.-area students, Gore is someone else entirely: someone they open up to periodically on topics they care about. Recently, Gore, mental health policy adviser to the Clinton administration, sat down for the 11th time to talk to teens in a roundtable discussion arranged by USA WEEKEND. Most in the group had been on the magazine's Teen Panel before. This time, the focus was the subject of this special report, Teens & Self-Image.

"It's really important that we hear from [teens] about the real issues they are dealing with in everyday life," Gore says of her reason for participating in the Teen Panel.

Here are excerpts from the 90-minute discussion, taped at the Newseum in Arlington, Va., for the PBS program Freedom Speaks.

SEX AND THE MEDIA

Jaime: In Seventeen magazine, [teens] are always reading about "Should I sleep with my boyfriend? My boyfriend doesn't want to use a condom." If you look at the magazine, it's called Seventeen. So it's saying a lot of teens are sleeping with their mates.

Jabari: Right. They give a perfect example of how sex is becoming more acceptable. Really, there's no reason to be having sex as a teenager, but the media try to show you it's becoming more and more acceptable among teens.

Geoff: I have friends that have had sex, but they're never that ready to dive in. Usually, it's a timid thing by both people, and they're very scared about it [but think], "This is what we're supposed to be doing because this means we really love each other." Or, "This is what everybody else is doing."

Ajay: [Having sex] is obviously being reflected as something that's of the norm. And people want to be normal, whatever that can be defined as, so they can feel accepted.

THE "HIDDEN PROBLEM" OF DEPRESSION

Gore: Depression is kind of a hidden problem among teenagers -- not just the blues for a couple of days, but a more serious incidence of depression lasting for weeks and months. And suicide is the second leading cause of death among teenagers.

Jaime: I know someone who pretends to have depression because she is an attention-craver. And she tried to pretend she was going to commit suicide. She made a little nick on her wrist with scissors or something, just because she wants attention.

Gore: Anybody who is going to go that far probably needs help. Something is wrong to cause her to do this. Maybe you and some of her other friends could say, "I'm not going to keep playing this game. Let's talk to someone and see that you do something real here."

Miyun: We have the blues more often than people of other ages because we have all of these things pressuring us.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PARENTS

Jabari: The most positive influence is your parents. If you are brought up in a household where you're given attention and you're allowed to speak, you have self-confidence.

Elainia: My mom knows me better than anyone else in this world, and we have a unique relationship. I can talk to my mom. She treats me like a person she's honestly interested in.

Gore: So very personally, people have to be known by someone. Their parents, one parent.

Jaime: But sometimes when you're having a problem you want your parents to back off. You always want your parents to be there, but you don't want them to be in your business.

Miyun: I want them in all my business. They should be the people who steer you, because they've gone through this.

RELIGION HELPS

Gore: It's good to introduce religion, because we tend to forget that is a huge influence in people's lives.

Kimberly: I basically shape all my views on life and issues through my religion. When I go to my youth group in church, I feel I belong. I'm glad that there are other people like me, that there is actually somebody else who understands what I'm feeling.

Elainia: In physics, the key to stability is a low center of gravity, and it's formed by a solid foundation. That's what people need for stability: a solid foundation. That's how you stop yourself from being influenced by everything and swaying to this and swaying to that. If you have something strong within you or something strong to hold you, that's what the real key is.

Photo Credit: MOLLY ROBERTS FOR USA WEEKEND