Miss Representation and Teen Pregnancy

This past week my AP Lang class has continued watching the documentary Miss Representation.  In case you missed some of my last posts, Miss Representation is a documentary about how the media has been misrepresenting women.  I have been reading some of my fellow bloggers posts from the past few days and a particular question that my friend Finley posted on his blog from the documentary but wasn’t able to come to a specific conclusion on got me thinking and I decided to do some more research into it.

            Finley had posed the question that he wasn’t sure how much teen pregnancy had actually increased in recent years as the documentary has suggested. I was also curious how true that was because it seemed to go against other statistics I had remembered hearing, so since Finley came to an unsure conclusion I did more research.

            I was able to come to the conclusion on this website that the amount of teenagers having sex has indeed increased in recent years.  Teenagers are also having sex at a younger age than before.  Although increased sexual activity and teens having sex at a younger age increases the risk of STDs, STIs, and pregnancy; the website also says that in recent years the usage of contraceptives has increased.

            When talking about teen pregnancy the website only talked about the high’s and low’s which occurred during 1990 and 2008.  During 2008 teen pregnancy was at a record low and a 42% decline from its peak in 1990.  Although this data only went until 2008 I came to the conclusion that teen pregnancy has decreased and not increased like the documentary claims.

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