The teen pregnancy epidemic

... is not real. From Slate.com, via The Week: "The U.S. teen birthrate dropped 6 percent between 2011 and 2012, and is now the lowest it's been in the 73 years the government has been tracking it." And this is most likely the lowest in the country's history, since people had children at much younger ages in the past in general (even if they happened to be married).

A small part of me thought that maybe this meant teens were getting more abortions, but I looked that up, and nope, that dropped, too, and precipitously:

(The chart is from familyfacts.org.) So why all the good news? Well, health experts theorize that the most likely culprits are good ol' increased sex education and more readily-available contraception. Keep up the good work, kids! Good job being too busy texting to get pregnant.