Study Finds Youths at Risk, Neglected and Unoccupied

Nearly half of America’s adolescents have too little to do after school and are in danger of falling victim to gangs, drugs, sex or other activities that could limit their potential as adults, the Carnegie Corp. of New York said in a report released Thursday.

In one of the most stinging assessments ever made of this country’s youth programs, Carnegie has called on businesses and federal, state and local governments to provide greater resources for sports, recreation and other after-school programs, especially those that serve low-income teen-agers.

One of the main reasons that adolescents are being exposed to so many dangers, including violence and drugs, is that schools, churches, recreation centers and other community organizations are failing to provide youths with safe and engaging places to spend their free time, said David A. Hamburg, president of the Carnegie Corp. and chairman of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development.

American adolescents spend an average of 60% of their waking hours attending school, grooming themselves or working at jobs. The remaining 40%--at least five hours a day--is discretionary time when youngsters tend to watch television, have sex, take drugs or become involved in gang activities, the Carnegie study said.

There are 17,000 youth organizations in this country--including 4-H, Camp Fire Boys and Girls, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. However, the study said, many youth organizations face such serious budgetary problems that they are no longer reaching the youngsters who most need help.

In an assessment of after-school offerings earlier this year, The Times found that schools, public libraries, parks and recreation centers in Los Angeles County have experienced dramatic budget cuts over the last decade and a half. Those cuts, which began in California in 1978 with the passage of Proposition 13, have translated into shorter hours, fewer offerings and less adult supervision, especially in poor, inner-city neighborhoods.

The cuts have contributed to what Cal State Northridge Prof. Jack Foley calls “recreation apartheid,” children separated by income and race.

In middle-class neighborhoods there tend to be more after-school activities and programs than in poor neighborhoods because middle-class families often can afford to pay for the activities.

The gap, the Carnegie report said, is illustrated by a University of Chicago study of two unidentified Chicago neighborhoods.

In a largely white suburban neighborhood studied by researchers, there were more than three times as many youth activities offered by public and private organizations as there were in a low-income, mostly black, inner-city neighborhood. Public schools in the white neighborhood offered seven times as many extracurricular activities; public parks provided eight times as many programs.

Only churches tended to offer more to youths in poor neighborhoods, the Chicago study found. But many churches, like other organizations, are “out of touch” with what youths really need and want, the Carnegie report said.

Youth organizations too often skirt controversial issues, even though young adolescents are making life-altering decisions about substance abuse, sex, gang involvement and other risky activities, the report said.

Noting that millions of youths become involved in these pursuits and have no adult supervision after school, the Carnegie report estimated that of the nation’s more than 20 million adolescents ages 10 to 15, about 10 million are at moderate to serious risk of not reaching their full potential as workers, parents and citizens.

In support of its conclusions, the report cited studies showing:

* About 30% of youths report having had sexual intercourse by the age of 15, with nearly 10% reporting that they did not use contraception, putting them at risk of pregnancy and disease.

* By the time they are in eighth grade, 77% of youths report having used alcohol and 26% say they have five or more drinks at a time, putting them at serious health and safety risk.

* Adolescents who are unsupervised for 11 or more hours a week are twice as likely to become involved with drugs as those who have adult supervision. A 1988 study by the federal government found that 27% of eighth-graders spend at least part of their school week at home alone.

“America has always produced a few young people who were ‘at risk’ of not achieving productive adulthood--for a host of individual and societal reasons,” wrote Dr. James Comer, child psychiatrist at Yale University and co-chair of the Carnegie task force that drafted the report.

“But the number of young people in this circumstance has reached epidemic proportions,” he said. “Fully one-fourth of our nation’s youth face serious risk of not reaching productive adulthood, and another 25% are at moderate risk.”

Youths older than 12 or 13 are at greatest risk, in part because so many youth organizations target younger age groups, the study said. The relatively few organizations that serve older teen-agers tend to focus narrowly on rehabilitating drug addicts or gang members, rather than providing preventive programs.

When adolescents were asked by the Carnegie Corp. what they “wanted most during their non-school hours, they replied: safe parks and recreation centers; exciting science museums; libraries with all the latest books, videos, and records; chances to go camping and participate in sports; long talks with trusting and trustworthy adults who know a lot about the world and who like young people; and opportunities to learn new skills.”

Many young people said they would like to do volunteer work in their free time, but many adults never think to ask children and teen-agers to help, the report said.

The report called on all community organizations and agencies to re-evaluate their services to children and teen-agers. At least one of every two people who enters a public library, for example, is under the age of 18. But fewer than half of the nation’s libraries employ even one children’s librarian.

The report urged businesses, private donors and government agencies to put more money and thought into after-school youth programs. The Carnegie Corp. also asked states and communities to set up coordinating boards to bring together families, schools, churches, recreation centers and other organizations.

Members of the community who would like to work with children should be tapped, the report said. Senior citizens, for example, are a dramatically underutilized resource.

“Americans have let their community supports for youth fall into disrepair. It is time to start the task of rebuilding,” the report concluded. The 150-page report, titled “A Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Non-School Hours,” is being discussed this week at a two-day meeting in Washington of more than 200 national and local educators, health and recreation leaders.

Teen-Agers After School

A nationwide survey of eighth-grade students showed that 71.3% participated in at least one out-of-school activity. Here is a breakdown: BACKGROUND & % ANY OUTSIDE SCHOOL ACTIVITY Sex Female: 71.8 Male: 70.7 Ethnic Group Anglo: 74.4 Asian, Pacific Islander: 67.9 Black: 65.6 Indian, Native Alaskan: 60.9 Latino: 60.3 Socioeconomic Level Top 25%: 82.6 50% to 74%: 74.2 25% to 49%: 68.5 Bottom 25%: 60.0 Location Rural: 72.8 Suburban: 71.5 Urban: 69.1

Here are the types of activities in which the eighth-graders participated: ACTIVITY & % PARTICIPATING Scouting: 14.2 Non-school team sports: 37.3 Religious groups: 33.8 Summer programs: 19.2 Hobby clubs: 15.5 Y, other youth groups: 15.3 Neighborhood clubs: 12.7 Boys or girls clubs: 10.7

Source: National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988: A Profile of the American Eighth-Grader