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-enforce the Malaysian law. -Raids upon cyber cafes and malls which are often roamed by teenagers should be conducted more frequently. -emphasise on moral education in school. -make it compulsory for teenagers to join beneficial co-curriculum activities. -the government should prob work hand-in-hand with teachers, as they can be teenagers' guidance and counsellor. -Youth activities such as the National Service and the Rakan Muda Program also benefit teenagers. By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent Published: 12:01AM BST 27 Mar 2007 A growing gap between puberty and adulthood is to blame for high rates of pregnancy, binge drinking, smoking and sexually-transmitted infections among teenagers, experts said yesterday. Researchers said many problems facing today's young people were caused by the age at which they reached physical maturity falling while the ages at which they finished education, married and had children increased.

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Dr Russell Viner, a consultant in adolescent medicine at the Institute of Child Health, University College, London, said the weakening of the family, community and religion made the difficulties worse. He and others called for adolescents to be treated more like adults through measures such as lowering the age at which they can vote to 16. Dr Viner, whose work is published today in The Lancet medical journal, said: "A prolonged adolescence, shaped by powerful socioeconomic forces, has seen new health problems emerge. "We now have more difficulty in defining the end of adolescence than in the past. It used to be marriage, children and financial independence. These days people are getting married later and the average age of the end of education is getting higher.

"As house prices increase many young people are living with their parents for longer and are financially dependent into their twenties. We have reproductively capable kids but a long period in which they are not psycho-socially aware. We have a society in which the connections between young people and parents, school and other social institutions have become more tenuous." The age of girls getting their first periods when humans were hunter gatherers - about 20,000 years ago - has been estimated at 12-13. Changes such as agricultural settlement and then the industrial revolution led to rises in the ages of puberty and when society considered children to be adults. While the latter continued to increase, the age of puberty dropped in developed countries during the 20th century, as diets improved and poverty rates fell. In the UK girls now have their first period on average in the six months after turning 13. Since 1970 the proportion of adolescents suffering a range of health problems and engaging in behaviours associated with health dangers has increased dramatically. Britain has among the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe and while the proportion of smokers has fallen in the general population, it has increased among the young. The latest Government statistics show almost 7,500 girls under the age of 16 and 39,600 under 18s became pregnant in England in 2005. Dr Viner said: "We need to re-think all of our age limits for young people. The age of 18 is graven in stone for doing many things but there is little biological validity for this."