PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A recent study found that about 14% of U.S. high school students in the past year experienced physical and/or sexual violence by someone they dated.
Teen dating violence is associated with negative mental, physical, academic and social consequences, according to the study co-authored by Sarah McMahon, director of Rutgers University’s Center for Research on Ending Violence. She says adolescents as young as middle school age, and sometimes younger, also experience these abusive relationships.
“There's some research that shows that if you were raised in a family where abuse is normalized, that you're more likely to be either a victim or someone who's a perpetrator,” McMahon said.
She says social media plays a role in a growing number of online stalking cases, sharing images without consent, bullying, using location sharing, or controlling who someone contacts.
A 2021 U.S. government survey among high school students showed that 1-in-12 experience physical dating violence each year, and about 1-in-10 experienced sexual dating violence.
McMahon says peers are often aware of what is happening.
“But it's, it's a lot of responsibility right on teens to be figuring out what to do if they think that there's something that's not going quite right.”
That’s why she says schools are important settings for prevention. Both New Jersey and Pennsylvania require school districts to adopt policies that prevent and respond to dating violence. But it shouldn’t stop there. McMahon says parents should also have these conversations with their kids, even if they may be uncomfortable.
“Having conversations with their kids about what healthy relationships look like, and that if they're ever experiencing something different than that, they could come to them, I think it is super important to have those conversations early on.”