DoSomething.org wants to make it easier for high school students to understand just how hard it is to be a teen parent -- and they're doing it through asking teens to adopt a "text baby."
How it works: Using their phones, teens can text the word “BABY” to 38383, respond "yes" and then expect to receive baby-related demands in the form of text messages (like, "I'm hungry" or "poopie diaper").
“It wakes you up at 6:30 in the morning to tell you that it’s awake and you need to be, too," Alyssa Ruderman from DoSomething.org told Fox 40 News. "It tells you when it’s hungry, when it needs to be changed, when it’s tired or crying when it doesn’t know how to tell you what it wants… it simulates that situation."
Watch the video above for more on "Pregnancy Text."
Earlier in March, New York City initiated a different kind of campaign to prevent unplanned teen pregnancies. The city paid for advertisements on subways and buses meant to discourage young people from getting pregnant. One advertisement shows a crying toddler with the accompanying words: “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen."
The ads have not been well-received by all New Yorkers. MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry said on her show:
That is the kind of misleading statistic that might lead some people to, you know, blame young mothers for America’s deepening poverty crisis rather than putting the blame where it belongs, on a financial system that concentrates wealth at the top and public policies that entrench it there.
Tell us, what do you think about the pregnancy text program -- and the New York City campaign? Sound off in the comments or tweet at @HuffPostTeen.
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