Read the news, and you might think teenagers’ lives are all sexting and bullying and Facebook. Especially if you don’t have one in your household to prove you wrong.
But not so. According to a new study released yesterday by the social change website DoSomething.org, American teens are also spending their free time – some of it, at least – volunteering.
How much volunteering they actually do, though, and why they do it, reveals some interesting aspects to how young Americans are prioritizing their lives.
To start first, though, with the basics:
DoSomething.org’s “index on young people and volunteering,” during which researchers collected data from more than 4,300 internet-using 13- to 22-year-olds, found that more than half of young people (54.2 percent) volunteered in 2011. And it’s not just because these students had to volunteer for school: 63 percent did not have any requirement to do service work.
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