单选题
New data released today from the Partnership for a
Drug Free America suggest that not only are girls now drinking more than boys,
they turn to drugs and alcohol for more serious reasons as well. The report,
which analyzed results from the 2009 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS),
a survey of teen attitudes and behaviors, shows that the number of middle-and
high-school girls who say they drink has increased by 11 percent in the past
year. Boys have stayed at about the same level, hovering around 52
percent. These numbers are more indicative of a long-term trend
than a sudden uptick. In 2005 the rate of girls who had used alcohol in the past
year as surveyed by the partnership hit 57 percent, only to fall back to 55
percent in 2007 and 53 percent in 2008. (During that same time, boys continued
to fall within a couple of percentage points of 50 percent, but the changes were
not statistically significant. ) These aren't the only data to
note issues involving girls and drinking. According to Monitoring the Future, an
ongoing study that monitors the habits and attitudes of young Americans, the
number of high-school students who admitted being drunk in the previous 30 days
has changed dramatically for boys compared with girls. In 1998, 39 percent of
boys reported being drunk in the previous 30 days, compared with 26.6 percent of
girls. Ten years later, in 2008, 29.2 percent of boys reported being drunk
during the 30-day period, while girls stayed relatively steady at 26.2 percent.
"The numbers go down for boys and girls, but they go down much more dramatically
for boys," says Amelia Arria, director of the center on young adult health and
development at the University of Maryland, School of Public Health. "It
represents a 25 percent decrease for boys, but only a 1 percent decrease for
girls. Girls are staying kind of level, and boys are dropping. "
For years, boys were the focus of underage-drinking interventions, but
for the past decade, researchers have seen a close in the gender gap.
Researchers speculate that more products devoted to making drinking easier and
tastier—the sugar-laden beverages known as alco-pops—are a factor. "There's a
whole new raft of products that have come out in the last 10 to 12 years that
were oriented to young females," says David Jerigan, executive director of the
Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth. "Alcohol now gets sold to girls as a
functional food: it gets sold with calorie information, a drink of fitness, a
drink with health benefits. " But girls may be less concerned
about their figure than they are about, well, everything else. The Partnership
for a Drug Free America results also show that girls are more likely to
associate drugs and alcohol with a way to avoid problems and relieve stress.
(Boys, on the other hand, show dramatic increases in seeing drugs and alcohol as
social lubricants, in 2009 compared with 2008, they were 16 percent more likely
to see them as a way to make socializing easier, and 23 percent more likely to
label drinking as a necessary ingredient for a party. ) Teen
girls are more likely to be attuned to their feelings, says Leslie Walker, M.D.,
director of adolescent medicine at Seattle Children's Hospital, and therefore
may seek alcohol as a way to self-medicate. "Girls tend to be more internalized
with issues that are happening anyway. It makes sense that if they have some
stress and things that they are dealing with, they're going to take care of
themselves instead of reaching out. " Recent research on the
adolescent brain has shown significant differences between males and females.
Arria says, "Girls tend to be more sensitive to emotional stress,
neurologically. Girls mature a little bit earlier in parts of the brain; boys
develop later in those areas." That increased sensitivity, she says, combined
with more relaxed attitudes and easier access to alcohol, may explain the
difference in boys and girls when it comes to drinking. It's
also possible that the more developed emotional brain allows girls to be more
self-aware and honest about their motivations than boys. "I think early on,
girls are more willing to admit negative emotions than boys," says Eric Wagner,
professor at the Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work at
Florida International University."They might be drinking for the same reasons as
boys, but boys are much less likely to admit those reasons." In his
interventions with high-school students, says Wagner, kids are still very much
drawn to traditional gender stereotypes, with boys associating drinking with a
type of macho culture. The stress of figuring out gender roles,
of doing well in school, and of the larger social and economic realities has led
this generation's teenagers to be more anxious than previous generations, says
Walker. "It's a particularly stressful time for kids right now. They're seeing
their parents stressed right now about the economy and jobs and thinking, what
is there going to be for me?" Adults, says Walker, often
minimize the stress felt by their children, which can seem trivial compared with
grown-up problems—after all, kids don't have to worry about paying the mortgage.
But to teenagers, that stress is very real, and the coping mechanisms they use
to deal with that stress set a lifelong pattern. "They're learning the tools
right then for what they're going to use to handle adversity for the rest of
their lives." And as more and more studies show the danger of alcohol on
developing brains, it's important that the tools they use now won't damage them
later.
单选题
Which of the following best indicates the main idea of the passage?
A. Teen girls are drinking more than boys for different reasons.
B. Measures should be taken to relieve the stress and worries of teen
girls.