America's escalating honesty crisis

He also warns that "the impact of this growing hole in our moral ozone" will only begin to be felt as this generation enters the workforce. "They're going to be nuclear inspectors and bank auditors and legislators and mechanics - and if they bring to their workplace the same kind of attitudes revealed here, just imagine the havoc."

In what Josephson terms "a wake-up call to the religious community," teens who say religion is very important in their lives nonetheless confess to significant levels of dishonesty. For example, 73 percent of students who call religion unimportant say they have cheated on exams - but so do 69 percent of students who say religion is very important to them.

Christina Sommers, an American Enterprise Institute expert on young people's ethics, says today's teens are generally kind, loyal, altruistic people - but "so undernourished ethic-
ally that it's amazing decency survives in them at all. No one has bothered to tell them the moral basics."

Josephson agrees: "These kids aren't moral mutants; their attitudes can be changed." He says adults can help raise youngsters' ethical standards by using "the TEAM approach: Teach good values. Enforce good values (by punishing misbehavior). Advocate good values when speaking with your kids. And Model good values in your own actions."

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Is it ever OK to lie?

f honesty among teenagers is on the decline, perhaps it's because the line between truth and lies for adults seems to get fuzzier by the day.

"If you cross the line enough times, the line disappears," says Tom Shanks, executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California. "We all lie, but the problem is when we stop noticing we're lying."

Studies have shown that the average American tells three or four lies a day. In other words, we lie about as often as we eat.

"The expectations these days are very low," says William Bennett, author of The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals.

It's not so much that people lie more than they used to; it's that we're exposed to more lies than ever before - whether from Washington or the Web, tabloid "news'' or advertising "hype.''

Are there degrees of lying? Is parsing words or using legal definitions the same as lying? Are there times it's acceptable to lie?

"There's nothing wrong with a white lie that has no consequence," Bennett says. "A big one in my house is: 'Bill, you've lost weight.' The serious lies are those where trust is at stake, where the circumstances are serious.''

Says the Rev. Jesse Jackson: "Lying is one of those human foibles that seem more serious when someone else is doing it. No one likes to admit to lying.''

Some have tried a high-tech fix. A $179 software package, "Truster," claims to be "a simple yet powerful software tool for identifying deception." Others have attempted to legislate the truth. Last year, an Iowa Senate committee proposed a law to ban lying by political candidates.

It's doubtful either technology or laws can ever rid the world of lying. Ultimately, every person is responsible for being his or her own truth police. Some simple advice: "When in doubt," Mark Twain wrote, "tell the truth.''

- Tom McNichol