Dangers that teens and kids face: A look at the data
Getting shot: Relatively few minors (ages 17 and younger) are shot in any given year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 
Teen pregnancy: The 
Drugs and alcohol: Overall drug use among young people has been more or less unchanged in recent years after rising sharply in the 1990s, according to the University of Michigan's long-running “Monitoring the Future” survey. Around 15% of eighth-graders, three-in-ten high-school sophomores and four-in-ten seniors report some use of illicit drugs (either illegal or prescription drugs not under a doctor's orders) in the past 12 months. Marijuana is by far the most commonly used drug, at all grade levels; 10th- and 12th-graders are next-most likely to report using amphetamines and the prescription drug Adderall, while inhalants are the second-most frequently used drugs among eighth-graders.
At the same time, alcohol and cigarette use has been declining for many years: Last year, 35.3% of seniors reported any alcohol use in the past 30 days (down from 54% in 1991), and only 11.4% reported smoking cigarettes (down from 36.5% in the peak year of 1997). Indeed, 12th-graders were about as likely to have smoked marijuana in the past 30 days (21.3%) as to have gotten drunk (20.6%).
Getting beat up: The 2013 youth risk study found that about a quarter (24.7) of high-school students said they'd been in a physical fight at least once in the past 12 months (down from 42.5% in 1991), though only 3.1% needed medical attention.
Black students were most likely to say they'd been in a fight – nearly 35%, compared with 28.4% of Hispanic high-schoolers and 20.9% of white students. Just over 8% said they'd been in a fight on school property, and 7.1% said they'd skipped school at least once in the past 30 days because of safety concerns.
