Only a quarter (25%) of the 13-year-olds surveyed are currently dating – and nearly three-quarters (63%) think 13 is too young to date. Sixty percent (60%) of 13-year-olds surveyed say they think you should not have sex before marriage, according to the TIME poll. Almost all (90%) consider their relationship with their parents excellent or good. Two-thirds (68%) say parents have the right amount of involvement in their lives while only 7% say they are much too strict. Nearly two-thirds say faith was very important or somewhat important.

TIME this week produced four different cover versions, each featuring a 13-year-old that attends the United Nations International School in Manhattan.

TIME set out to study what life at thirteen is like in 2005, what has changed and what hasn’t, what helps 13-year olds and what haunts them—and where they see themselves headed, in a cover story, “Being 13,” on newsstands Monday, August 1st.

“What does it mean to be 13? Backstage adults, watching on tiptoe, waiting to go onstage,” writes TIME’s editor-at-large Nancy Gibbs. “It is the age of childhood leaning forward and adulthood holding back, when the world gets suddenly closer, the colors more vivid, the rules subject to never ending argument.”

In its 21-page package, TIME reports on the disturbing trend of cyberbullying. According to a new study by researchers at Clemson University to be presented at this month’s American Psychological Association meeting, 18% of 3,700 middle schoolers surveyed had been bullied online in the preceeding two months. The phenomenon peaks at 13: one-fifth (21%) of eighth-graders surveyed reported being cyberbullied recently. Cyberbullying is anything from spreading rumors by email to harassment by instant message.

Courtney Katasak, a soon-to-be eighth grader in Kennesaw, GA, got an IM from someone using the name ToastIsYummy and thought it might be a friend with a new screen name. Instead, she received teasing lines and a link to a porn site. “Then they kept sending me these inappropriate messages. I blocked the screen name so they couldn’t talk to me, but I didn’t know who this person was or what they were trying to do. It freaked me out,” she says.

Highlights of TIME’s package include:

Is Middle School Bad for Kids? (p. 48) For the past decade, middle schools have been the educational setting for roughly two-thirds of students in Grades 6-8. But increasingly, communities are questioning whether they really are the best choice for this volatile age group. Many cities around the country are in various stages of reconfiguring their schools away from the middle school model and toward K-8s, TIME editor-at-large Claudia Wallis reports. A series of studies depict U.S. middle schools as the “Bermuda Triangle of education” as one report put it. It’s the place where kids lose their way, academically and socially—in many cases never to resurface.

The Push to be Perfect (p. 56) Cheerleading may in fact be the ultimate magnifying lens for the manifold pressures of being a modern 13-year-old, TIME’s Dallas bureau chief Cathy Booth-Thomas reports. Good grades are a must, not only to get into college—just five years away—but also to keep their spot on the squad. Peer pressure is rising as old friends suddenly become jealous enemies or embarrassing reminders of a childhood left behind. Then there are the simmering rivalries…finally, there’s the pressure to perform.

Feels Like Teen Spirit (p. 60) Many evangelical churches see 13-year-old hearts and minds as the ultimate battlefield in the culture wars. If Jesus is competing with 50 Cent for the soul of today’s youth, megachurches like Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, are making sure the Lord is not outgunned, TIME’s Nathan Thornburgh reports. Their junior high worship area features a million-dollar sound system and mammoth movie screens that play to an audience of as many as 1,000 teenagers on Sundays.

What They Won’t Tell You, and Why (p. 63) Gradually, every parent becomes aware that his or her child has adult concerns, wants acres of privacy and no longer trusts the goodwill of parents in the same old way. Michael Thompson, psychologist and co-author of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, shares tips on how parents can help.

Style: TIME’s Jeremy Caplan identifies the ‘must-have’ items for thirteen-year-olds today.

Five thirteen-year-olds write first-person profiles in TIME:

Rose Buchberg of Los Angeles, CA: My Life as a F.A.T. Girl;

Joseph Charles of Los Angeles, CA: Got to be Bad to be Cool;

Duresny Nemorin of Miami FL: Poetry is What I Love;

Armaan Rowther of Irvine, CA: Why I Don’t Go on Dates;

Katherine Rack of Oak Park, IL: Not a Minute to Spare

Additional first-person profiles will be on Time.com: www.time.com/13.

© 2005 HealthNewsDigest.com