Conclusions and Reflections

Throughout this study, I have found that there is an enormous amount of resources and material about teen pregnancy and prevention available to teens online. The difficult task is sorting out the facts and statistics. The purpose of my site is to provide teens with a sort of “best of” summary of teen pregnancy and prevention websites. I examined main sites such as www.plannedparenthood.com, www.stayteen.com, and www.thenationalcampaign.com. After reading forums that teens use to ask questions about pregnancy, birth control, sex, etc, I built my site around the informaiton that teens really want to know.

The most interesting part of my study was researching whether or not internet resources have a major effect in reducing teen birth rates. I found that there is a strong relationship between increased internet access and a reduction in teen pregnancy rates. The internet offers an enormous amount of information that can help educate teens on pregnancy prevention techniques and inform them of their options when dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.

Although the internet has made an impact on teen birth rates on a national scale, teen birth rates in third-world and developing countries remain high. According to a study by Save the Children, ninety percent of teenage births worldwide occur in developing countries (see http://www.savethechildren.org/publications/mothers/2004/Children_Having_pp8_26.pdf)

Teenage mothers and their parents face serious health risks in these developing countries because of a lack of proper medical care. In addition, having a baby as a teenager enormously increases their odds of not recieving a proper education, living in poverty, and having a lower standard of living. 

Due to the digital divide, many poorer countries do not have as much widespread access to the internet. As a result, they are not able to stay as informed or as educated on birth control and teen pregnancy as those who do have easy access. I believe that if we work to shorten the digital divide and provide poorer nations with more internet access (especially in the poorest regions), we will see teen birth rates begin to decline and the standard of living begin to increase, as they did in America.