Morning-after pills giveaway !

Most of us know MTV’s show “Teen Mom” in which girls show their lives as young mothers. It is obvious that these girls did not have the chance to opt for any contraception method after having unprotected sex, but this is a reality that is going be changed very soon, and this is one of the first steps.

New York City’s Department of Education presented their new educational program in which sexually active girls, as young as 14 years old, will have the chance to get the “Plan B” emergency contraception without her parents’ consent. There are 13 public high schools that will participate in this program, and parents already know how their daughters can opt for these pills.

Besides having oral and injectable contraceptives, school nurses will have the morning-after pills which are going to be given to girls without their parents knowing. This program is very similar to New York City’s high schools giving free condoms to sexually active teens as part of their Sexual Education Program.

In the United States, the “Plan B” contraception can be sold legally without a doctor's prescription, but those girls under age 18 still need one. Under this program, teens can tell the school nurse they have had unprotected sex. Then they will be tested to know whether they are already pregnant or not: if the test is negative, they will be given the morning-after pill that prevents pregnancy for up 72 hours after having unprotected sex.

About 7,000 teens get pregnant before reaching the age of 17, and more than half of them decided to get an abortion. The Department of Health stated that teen pregnancy is the first reason why girls drop out of school. Also, it was shown that only half of teen mothers graduate from high school, and less than five percent get a college degree before turning 30 years old.

Some people claim that this initiative will provide teens with the opportunity to decide over their future, and therefore it will make them grow up. Other groups claim that this program will lead to more unprotected sex among teenagers and an increase in the number of abortions made by young girls.

What side do you support? Do you think that young girls can make their own decisions, over their body and over a new life? What about their parents’ consent? Should they know their daughters’ decisions?

Facebook: A doubled-edge sword for kids

 Facebook, founded in 2004 by M. Zuckerberg, was initially directed to Harvard’s students only; however, nowadays everyone has access to it. We all know what this website is about, how it works, how to use it and most of us have a Facebook account.

  Facebook states that kids under the age of 13 are not allowed to have an account, but is not so difficult to lie about age on the website. Moreover, parents do not always allow their children to have FB accounts, yet kids can dive into FB on their own.

 The benefits of using the site seem to be not few compared to the adverse consequences of it: it improves children’s social skills by allowing them to have contact with other people, it gives them the chance to express themselves, it provides them online social media skills, it helps them to communicate with their classmates and discuss school work.

 The disadvantages, on the other hand refer to bullying, addiction to the website, an opened door to other websites not appropriate for teens or kids, and fake accounts with pedophiles behind them. Teenagers do not always know to differentiate right from wrong and kids under 13, or even 14, are exposed to great dangers they don’t even imagine. I think it’s not FB the problem, but an “age” one: FB is not necessary a bad thing, but it is when it's used by kids who have no idea what they are doing.

 So, if you had a child under 13, would you let him/her have a FB account?

Her name was Mary... something...

Marijuana is a drug which derivates from a plant named cannabis sativa and, according to the United Nations, it is the most consumed drug among people around the world. It is used either for medicinal, religious or recreational reasons, and consuming it at an early age can bring dreadful consequences.

The consuming of marijuana as a usual activity can have an effect on your cognitive processes! According to the research conducted by the scientist Madelein H. Meier, adolescents who make use of this drug showed a significant decrease in their intellectual coefficient in contrast with any person who does not consume this drug; 1075 young people born in New Zealand between the years 1972 and 1973 were part of the group that was studied until their thirty-eighth birthday.

It is believed that the persistent use of marijuana can have effects on memory and attention, and the results of the research show that teenagers who were more likely to consume this drug constantly showed a more noteworthy decline in their intellectual coefficient than the people who started consuming marijuana at an elder age. To quit smoking or to reduce the doses of cannabis does not restore the neuropsychological system among the users of cannabis in adolescence and believe that to smoke this drug at such a young age could have consequences related to neurotoxins.

Marijuana is extremely controversial given that it has a list of benefits—for example, decreasing asthma and migraine; also helps against depression—as well as detriments such as memory loss and issues related to body coordination; its legalization has been a never-ending debate. Considering both advantages and disadvantages, which side would you take?