A series of articles in this week’s Lancet highlights the wide range of health risks faced by adolescents in the modern world.
Professor Susan Sawyer of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues point out that there are about 1.8 billion people aged ten to 24 years in the world today, that is, more than a quarter of the world’s population.
Their health status is at risk from harmful drinking, illicit drug use, and sexually transmitted diseases. These risks are made more dangerous by social media, claim the experts.
"The present generation of young people will take a different path through adolescence from previous generations and will face new challenges to their health and wellbeing along the way," they write.
Around the world, poverty, inadequate education, mass unemployment, migration, natural disasters, and war can have "devastating effects on the health of young people". Furthermore, digital media, industrialisation, globalisation, and urbanisation "have changed traditional family and community influences, resulting in less ‘social scaffolding’ of adolescents".
In a second paper, Professor Russell Viner of University College London, UK, and colleagues state that improving access to education and employment and reducing the risk of transport-related injury are some of the best ways to improve adolescent health.
Cultural, religious, and other social factors also strongly moderate the effects of a nation’s wealth on adolescent health, they believe, adding: "Nations with greater income inequality have poorer adolescent health across all outcomes."
"Improving adolescent health worldwide requires improving young people’s daily life with families and peers and in schools, addressing risk and protective factors in the social environment at a population level, and focusing on factors that are protective across various health outcomes," they conclude.
Adolescence: a foundation for future health. Sawyer, S. M. et al. The Lancet April 25 2012 doi :10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60072-5
Adolescence and the social determinants of health. Viner, R. M. et al. The Lancet April 25 2012 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60149-4
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