  We argue that a process of social interest is a balance of order and
randomness, thereby producing a departure from a stationary diffusion process.
The strength of this effect vanishes if the order to randomness intensity ratio
vanishes, and this property allows us to reveal, although in an indirect way,
the existence of a finite order to randomness intensity ratio. We aim at
detecting this effect. We introduce a method of statistical analysis
alternative to the compression procedures, with which the limitations of the
traditional Kolmogorov-Sinai approach are bypassed. We prove that this method
makes it possible for us to build up a memory detector, which signals the
presence of even very weak memory, provided that this is persistent over large
time intervals. We apply the analysis to the study of the teen birth phenomenon
and we find that the unmarried teen births are a manifestation of a social
process with a memory more intense than that of the married teens. We attempt
to give a social interpretation of this effect.
