Voter turnout in the United States presidential elections
Recent decades have seen increasing concern over the fact that youth voting turnout is consistently lower than turnout among older generations. Several programs to increase the rates of voting among young people—such as MTV's "Rock the Vote" (founded in 1990) and the "Vote or Die" initiative (starting in 2012)—may have marginally increased turnouts of those between the ages of 18 and 25 to vote. However, the "Stanford Social Innovation Review" found no evidence of a decline in youth voter turnout. In fact, they argue that "Millennials are turning out at similar rates to the previous two generations when they face their first elections."
Youth smoking
In 2016, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that upwards of 4 million middle school and high school students in the United States currently used tobacco products. National epidemiological surveys often deliver key findings on the proportion of youth that are consuming tobacco. The National Youth Tobacco Surveys (NYTS) was designed to provide data on middle school and high school students tobacco behaviors, as well as attitudes, beliefs, and exposure to pro- and anti- tobacco influences. Results from the 2011-2016 NYTS revealed that approximately 20.2% of high school students (grades 9-12) reported current tobacco use, which was defined as having used any tobacco product in the past 30 days. In further support of these findings, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) is a prominent epidemiological survey that assesses national and state-level information on alcohol, tobacco, illicit drug use, as well as mental health, in the United States. The NSDUH defines current cigarette smoking as smoking all or part of a cigarette over the past 30 days. The 2012 NSDUH survey revealed that 6.6% of youth between the ages of 12 and 17 were current cigarette smokers. Females and males had similar prevalence estimates, 6.3% and 6.8% respectively. The demographic breakdown was such that Caucasian youth exhibited the greatest prevalence of smoking (8.2%), followed by Hispanic or Latino youth (4.8%) and African-American youth (4.1%). Breakdown by age revealed the age range between 16 and 17 had highest prevalence (13.6%), followed by the 14 to 15 age range (4.6%), and the 12 to 13 age range (1.2%). In terms of socioeconomic status, there was a greater prevalence of youth currently smoking below the poverty level (7.6%) than at or above the poverty level (6.2%). An examination of regional differences across the United States demonstrated the highest prevalence of smoking among adolescents in the Midwest (7.8%) and South (7.2%) regions, followed by the Northeast (5.7%) and West (5.1%) regions. Results from these epidemiological studies underscore the continued prevalence of cigarette smoking among adolescents. Prevention and control measures that reduce smoking in among adolescents can improve the nation's short- and long-term health