﻿The kids are all right.

We know this because every two years, the federal government asks thousands of teenagers dozens of questions about whether they are all right. Since 1991, it has sent something called the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey to more than 10,000 high school students every other year, to inquire about all sorts of bad behaviors that range from drug use to unprotected sex to fighting at school.

The overarching question this survey asks is basically: How much trouble are you getting into?

The answer, lately, has been, “Not that much at all” — especially when you compare today’s teens with their parents, who came of age in the early 1990s.

Most of the survey questions show that today’s teenagers are among the best-behaved on record. They smoke less, drink less, and have sex less than the previous generation. They are, comparatively, a mild-mannered bunch who will probably shoo away from your lawn quite respectfully (and probably wouldn’t dare set foot on your lawn to begin with!).

This is different from what adults typically expect. Polls show that we generally think teens’ behavior is getting worse. One 2013 study, for example, asked Americans whether the teen pregnancy rate had gone up, down, or stayed the same since 1990. Half of respondents said it was going up, and another 18 percent said it was the same. Only 18 percent got the right answer: Teen pregnancy has declined dramatically over the past three decades.

This isn’t just a story about teen pregnancy. Look, for example, at how today’s teenagers compare with the high school students of your day. Just tell us what year you were born.