Secret life of Indian teens
"I am a virgin. But I know everything about everything," Mimi, a 15-year-old Bangalore girl, flips her ponytail, looking around to make sure all eyes are on her. "Everyone I know has touched first base, at least." That's "kissing and necking", she explains to her parents. Notes are regularly exchanged between girls after sexual encounters and discarded i-Pill packs are often found in the bathrooms of the posh convent she studies in. "I'm sure you won't remain a virgin by the time you turn 18," her mother interjects tearfully. "Dude, will you let me finish," Mimi rebukes. "I'm not stupid enough to get into trouble."
Trouble is the one certain truth about her: she is a teenager. A face among the nation's 250 million adolescents- the world's largest. But how well does the nation know her? Not enough, going by the furore over the new Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Bill, 2010 proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development ("Does it mean 12-year-olds will start having sex?"). But now a host of surveys is figuring out what it means to be a teenager: they pack in 38 hours of activities into a day- work, chat, browse, talk, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, smoke, drink, splurge, do drugs, have sex, get pregnant-and they can't wait for the future to arrive. Unknown to the nation at large, teenage seems to have taken on a whole new meaning. To Delhibased counsellor Gitanjali Kapoor, it's a cultural moment: "Constant exposure of different types of media is enhancing their inquisitiveness, encouraging them to question and stretch their boundaries."
Not that the teens care. For them, it's LOL (Lots Of Love) all the way. Sex is cool because, gosh, everybody's doing it. Twenty-five out of 100 teenage girls in a big-city school are sexually active, reports the Indian Association of Paediatricians. But to Taki, 19, a Delhi girl (who prefers to be known by her nickname like the rest of her peer group in this story), that's a gross underassessment: "Over 75 per cent of my classmates are not virgins". Some of them are into serious romance, some are "just FWBs" ("Friends With Benefits. Not dating but together... just a convenience thing".) Some boys carry condoms in their pockets because they don't know when "they might get lucky". During high school socials, dark corners of the venue are "reserved" by couples beforehand, so that they can go and "do it" in a crowded room, "just for the thrill of it", Mimi explains.
In the world of adults, statistic is truth. And surveys reveal*, it's a generation that spends 10 hours a day on some sort of a media, two hours on social networking sites, 1.6 hours on the phone, four hours 23 minutes a week on computer games. While 66 per cent carry mobile phones to school, 47 per cent can't live without TV. Over 45 per cent drink alcohol five times a month and 14 per cent use tobacco. Yet 70 per cent teens show signs of depression and 48 per cent think about suicide. A survey released by one of Bollywood's biggest hits last year, Udaan-all about a 17-year-old boy, who gets expelled from boarding school for sneaking out to watch a semi-porn film-shows: one in five teens watches porn before age 13; every second teen necks and kisses, 15 per cent in the school loo; one out of five claims to have had sex; 90 per cent believe in premarital sex, with 45 per cent of girls opting for clandestine abortions.
If every generation needs a cultural marker, Facebook is the canvas on which the digitally nimble teens spill their secrets. What used to be the rush to the school canteen to tell everyone what's going on has become the rush to social networking sites. "We are the original Facebook generation," says Soapy, 17, a Kolkata boy now based in Delhi. "It took off in 2004, just as we started getting our hands on computers." It's also the new status symbol and an attitude signal. "It can make you or break you." He spends 45 minutes a day on Facebook ("My cousin Miko checks it every hour"), has 600 Facebook friends ("Oh, some have 2,000") and has not changed his profile picture for eight months ("So people are not poking me as much as they used to"). Mimi says, everyone, even 11-12 year-olds, has a Facebook account: "They all say they are 18". Ask her how, and she says "Duh!".
"Duh" is a slice of teen sarcasm aimed at people who state the obvious. What it hides is the danger of entering the world of strangers when you are not quite ready for it. Exactly what happened this week to two teens in Mumbai when they allegedly typed "what's up?" to strike a chat with their principal on Facebook and followed it up with "F***k off" and "Go to hell". One got away. But censured at home and suspended from school for a month, the younger boy, 13, has possibly learnt the lesson of his life. "It's the nature of the medium," says Shelja Sen, consultant psychologist in Delhi, "You can't be held accountable. You don't have eye contact. And you can be as nasty and aggressive as you please." Soapy has a different explanation: "Facebook is like a road. You can bump into anybody but would you speak to all and sundry? Younger people just don't get it. They are not the Facebook generation, you see."

Despite those highs and lows, Facebook is the place where they measure each other's cool quotient. And every teen is aware of the subterranean war of attitude and outlook that rages on the social networking website. As everyone checks out everyone else, the profiles send out varying signals. A massive friend count means, "Don't expect me to give you too much attention." A nicely photoshopped Wall indicates, "I am so weird, wacky and wonderful." Profile shots updated on hourly basis mean, "Check me out, I'm cool".
If you look bad in a photograph, you will be tagged 'Hahaha'. To avoid that label, the pressure to look good on sites goes up tremendously and vanity becomes the byword. "I know girls who put in 'photo albums' of their face taken from different angles," says Rahi, a 14-year-old Mumbai student. The most-feared word among girls, not surprisingly, is "fugly"-a combination of fat and ugly-she points out. "For boys, the in thing now is to flaunt sixpack abs, if they have it," points out Soapy. "And a lot of people are posting pictures taken in a loo-home or a fivestar- in front of the mirror."

Mimi's primary function on Facebook is to keep in touch with boys she meets at socials. She has a lot of "guy friends" and she helps them check out profiles of interesting girls ("Girls they can hit on"). For Rahi, it's a great way to flirt with boys ("I can say things I could never say on their face"). The moment Piu, 15, a student of Modern High School in Kolkata, started dating a year ago, she announced it to the world by changing her "relationship status" from "single to engaged" ("I loved the attention I got".) Her friend, Mou, recalls the only time her parents banned Facebook: "I changed my relationship status to 'widowed' when I broke up with my boyfriend. Some people reported to my parents and there was a huge drama at home."
The year was 2004, when a sex clip, passed around by a bragging schoolboy to his friends, made its way to video disc-sellers in Delhi. The MMS scandal and its unapologetic teen hero and heroine sent shockwaves across urban India, even making it to the iconic Anurag Kashyap film, Dev.D. Today, most teens seem to know couples who post intimate photographs for joy, of girls who get flamed on the Net, of friends who are stalked and bullied by strangers on the cyber space. According to a survey done by Chennaibased NGO, Tulir, 42 per cent of teens on the Net face harassment online. But Taki reassures: "Chill. You can make your account secure. And, really, everybody's smart enough to avoid unknown people on the Net