A new study confirms what many already suspect: Adolescents who get tattoos or body piercings are more likely than their undecorated age-mates to have sex, drink excessively, do drugs and even consider suicide. But the association between looking bad and being bad surprised even the researchers, who thought that the increasing prevalance of teens' tattoos and piercings would weaken the link. "With tattoos and piercings becoming much more common these days, I didn't expect the correlation to be as strong as it was," said Army doctor Sean Carroll, the study's lead author. |
