Teens Who Work May Be in Danger

Friday, March 16, 2007

Nancy L. Brown, PhD

There was some bad news from research, done with more than 900 teens done at the University of North Carolina, published in the March issue of Pediatrics. The article suggested that teens aged 14 to 18 who work in retail and service jobs during the school year put in an average of 16 hours a week, often at dangerous and unsupervised jobs. Too many and late hours, using dangerous machinery, handling large sums of cash, and serving alcohol were some of the violations of federal child labor laws reported by the teens who participated in the research.

Like I suggested in earlier post about Teens & Work on Teen Health 411, if your teen works, know the laws in your state and help them understand the importance of not doing anything that violates those laws. In addition, parents should be willing to step in if their teen is being asked to violate those laws.

Photo credit: sylvar

Tags: Healthline, teen health, work-related injury, teen employment

Labels: Alcohol, Employment

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