Inside the Teenage Brain   Dark Adolescent Romance  For
adolescents, more romance = more depression and drinking  I'll
begin with the bottom line: Romantic involvements during
adolescence can be bad for you. They can be bad even for
adolescents who stay with the same partner and do not break up.
By "bad," I mean that adolescents who become romantically
involved, compared to those who do not, become more depressed.
Adolescent females become less happy. Both males and females
abuse alcohol more and become more delinquent if they become
romantically involved than if they do not. The results are
noteworthy because they come from a nationally representative
sample and a longitudinal design.  In the next few sections,
I'll wade into the weeds of the study. Then at the end, I'll re-
emerge with some big-picture points.  About the Study  During
the 1994-1995 school year, a nationally representative sample of
adolescents, ages 12 through 17, were recruited to participate
in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent