Social Issues in Education: Teenage Pregnancy, Bullying, and Television Media

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Introduction
Teen age pregnancy is one of the common problem that is escalating from the past
couple of decades. Today, young girls who are below the age of 20 gets pregnant and they do
not consider the consequences has to be followed later. Today, young girls are unaware about
the cause of effects of teenage pregnancy and it not only affects them but the entire family is
affected along the child. So, it is quite important for all the girls to be aware about the teen
pregnancy stats and also know how a teenage pregnancy can change their entire life forever.
The first step towards prevention would be the day when a girl and her parents would know
the facts about the teen pregnancy. Today, over the years, teenage pregnancy has become
slightly of an endemic (Kearney & Levine, 2012).
In early 1990’s, teen girls were aware of the effects of pregnancy and they used to get
pregnant very rarely and if in some cases, if they were pregnant, they were almost frowned
upon. According to the past history shown in America, it was stated that three out of ten girls
are pregnant at least once before they turn out to be 20 years old. So this contributes to 70,000
teen girls to be pregnant every year. The television media has always played a negative role.
Girls who gets pregnant in high school is not that easy as the teens think because it seems
easy to watch series and but it is not all applicable in practical life. Movies and the shows on
the television media such as MTV’s 16 and pregnant and Teen Mom documents how a teen
mother lives her life and faces the problems and challenges. So, in order to stop such cases, it
is very crucial to make the teens aware about the facts related to pregnancy and what are its
harmful effects on one’s life (Secura, Madden & Peipert, 2014).
Problems
There are huge number of problems that are related to teen age pregnancy and also
sources like television media and bullying. When a teen girl gets pregnant, she has to leave
the school because she has become parent and she needs to take care of the child as well. It
was found that over 50% of the teen mothers are not graduated. Apart from this, those who
complete their studies take the help of their parents. However, it is also analyzed that
daughters who get pregnant take help of their parents to serve their grandchildren so that girl
can complete her study. There are only few schools who offers day care programs to teen girls

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after they get pregnant. It was found that less than 2% of the total teenage mothers has earned
a college degree at the age of 30. This has took place just because they have someone
excluding herself to take care and nurture for. Working, taking care of child and going to
school is not an easy task. Race has also impacted in the teen age pregnancy. It was found that
in 2008, teen age pregnancy rate that took place among Hispanic teens and African American
teens lied between 15-19 years. This was only because of the poor poverty level that was seen
between two races and lack of knowledge and education at schools as well as at home. In
addition to this, bullying is referred to unwanted behavior of an individual that mostly take
place in school children which creates imbalance on one’s health. The person who is bullied
lay sometimes suffer from long lasting problems and quite often the problem may be serious
too (Strasburger, Cross, & Moreno, 2013).
Bullying affects not only the victim but also the people around. Those who are the
witness, those who suffer and those who bully, all of them are equally affected. There are
many problems associated with bullying such as mental pressure, substance use and
sometimes suicide too. Suicide is considered to be one of the most common problem faced by
young age (Ttofi & Farrington, 2011). Those who are bullied have negative impact on
physical and mental health. People suffer from depression and stress and they feel lonely and
sad all the times. They may not be able to take proper sleep and eat. Kids who study at school
may reduce the academic performance and they may skip or get dropped out from the school
(Hinduja & Patchin, 2014).
Similarly, television media has also played a major role and created a negative impact
on the whole world. The total amount of violence that is created with television media is
highly growing up. Today an average child looks at 12000 violent acts per year in television
media. Violent acts include murders, rapes and many more. Heavy doses of watching
television has increased aggressiveness and changed behavior in an individual and apart from
this, youth are also involved in committing suicides after linking their real life with that of
television series (Zillmann & Bryant, 2013). In today’s generation, rap music is one of the
root cause of all the negative impacts. The lyrics involved in rap music do not convey any
important message. The music just follows the beats but they do not show any positive