The LAST Thing Teens Should Be Doing Is Being In "Dating" Relationships

Only people mired in the horrible era of the 1950s as some "golden age" would ever wring their hands over the fact that many teens don't date, and they aren't "depressed" over it  but are probably a whole lot better off not getting tangled up in romantic dramas.  They are avoiding not just the inevitable heartbreak, but they are avoiding pregnancy (and the ruined or stunted lives that go with it) and STDs.  Why the hell would teens want to go back to that?

I have long believed the best birth control out there for young people is to have other interests, including extracurricular activities and hobbies, and not be pushed into relationships so early in their lives.

The world has radically changed in this regard, and  mothers especially need to quit pressuring their daughters to center dudes and get involved with them.  For fuck's sakes, marriage in general is on the way out, and certainly early marriages, shotgun marriages, and forced marriages are not things to be nostalgic over.

I didn't do the dating routine in my teens, but it was a different era then as there was intense pressure for girls to "couple up" with some dimwitted guy by the end of high school.  A lot of girls I went to high school with got married right after graduation, and even a few before graduation.  Very few married for the first time after age 25, and I was the lone straight female holdout (so far as I know) from my graduating class of 1973.  Women were treated like shit even as society at large was gradually drifting away from the 1950s horseshit.   They had few options other than find some dude and marry right out of high school and have babies as young as possible.   I was right on the cusp of social change, and I was way ahead of my time rejecting the whole family life deal altogether.  I didn't want it, and that was that.  However, there was a lot of pain knowing that my friends in high school had a lot more freedom than I did because my mother went semi-batshit when she was going through the change and trying to run her kids.  I didn't want to have to deal with her at all, so I just didn't do the dating thing at all in high school.

Article:

But a recent study published in the Journal of School Health reveals that adolescents who choose not to date fare as well as, or better than, their coupled counterparts in social and leadership skills.

They're also less depressed.

"We know that romantic relationships are very common among adolescents -- in fact, a majority have been involved in some type of romantic activity by 15 to 17 years of age," says Brooke Douglas, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Georgia who conducted the study with Dr. Pamela Orpinas.

"It's also known that romantic relationships are important for teenagers' individual development and wellbeing. So that made us ask: What does this say about teenagers who are not dating? Are they social misfits?"

People aren't doing that "dating" and marrying the "high school sweetheart" anymore.  Who the fuck in  his or her right mind would ruin his or her life chained to another person when there are many years people should be out furthering their education, trying to embark on careers, and getting their damned shit together?

I am one who is horrified when I see forums on websites like Facebook about baby boomers or nostalgia, and people have the unabashed gall to actually BRAG they married at age 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, or whatever ludicrously young age they married, and then BRAG about how many years they have been married to an equally stupid person who married young.  It is horrifying to me.  Sorry, but it is.