Twilight spurs teenage biting phenomenon

I’ve been looking for an excuse to say Twilight is bad for you health, but apparently it wasn’t just wishful thinking. ABC News released this report Friday investigating the teenage phenomenon of biting, which is exactly what it sounds like: guys and girls biting each other’s necks, sometimes with the intention of drawing blood.

Holy shit, children, calm down. I can understand biting has this erotic undercurrent; it’s why vampire romance has been as successful as any genre hybrid over the years, especially of late with Twilight and “True Blood.” But whatever happened to hickeys and the occasional gentle nibble? Unless you need human blood to survive (and even then there are much safer ways of extracting it), you have no business chomping holes in your boy or girlfriend’s neck.

ABC interviews a sexologist who says this is a more extreme form of the sexual idea of wanting to “consume” your partner and “mark” them — essentially its supposed to signify dedication to each other. If only adults had the balls to tell these kids that their current relationship will end and they have no business consummating anything. Maybe not every relationship will, but you know the kids who feel compelled to bite each other aren’t the ones getting married in 10 years.

The sexologist goes on to mention that this is a more popular version of the dangerous stuff found in HIV chapters of Sex Education text books for the last 25 years: don’t share blood so you can be “blood brothers” and don’t share dirty needles. Come on children, this should seem like an obvious extension. Human bites also have a higher rate of infection than other bites. Maybe that’s because homo sapiens are not meant to bite shit. At least not in order to kill it, just chew it up.

I can’t decide whether this proves teenagers are endlessly stupid or that the Twilight craze seriously needs to end. Probably — no, definitely — both. I’ve heard about how screwed up “Breaking Dawn” is, so maybe the MPAA or the Obama administration should intervene before kids try dumber stuff because you know teenagers are always going to try and out-dumb themselves when it comes to high-risk behavior.

Okay, on a serious note, this is far from Twilight’s fault, but it is a pretty little excuse to resurrect the banned book lists of 19th Century America. If nothing else, this should be Exhibit A for why the motion picture industry should stop feeding the vampire craze and go on to something else for a change. As soon as “Breaking Dawn” parts 1 and 2 (ugh) are over and done with, I don’t want to see another vampire film put into production for at least 10 years. Otherwise I’ll probably get pissed and bite someone.