No Sex For Today’s Teens

Young people between fifteen and twenty-four are having less sex.

A survey of 5,300 young people (done between 2006 and 2008) showed the numbers having sex dropped from 78 to 72 percent since the last survey in 2002. It’s a small drop but considered significant.

It’s also important to notice that there has been a steady decline in vaginal sex among this age group since 1988. So this also makes it very clear that the American trend of abstinence-only education is not what’s causing this drop.

Unfortunately, the survey didn’t go into the whys of it all. There’s lots of speculation, but we won’t know unless we ask the individuals involved.

It could be many different things, and really, a twenty-two year trend might just be showing us that the flower power days of drugs and sexual experimentation are over. Since the explosion of sex in the 60s and 70s people have levelled out a bit.

What else did the survey find?

– Women are twice as likely to have sex with someone of the same sex, even though the number who identify as gay is the same for men and women.
– More than half of young people had oral sex before vaginal sex.
– Vaginal and oral sex have declined, but anal sex stayed about the same.

None of this is really surprising, but it’s important for people to know what’s going on so they can tailor sex education to meet the needs of the young people.

And as long as they are having consensual sex and know how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, it really doesn’t matter how many of them are doing it anyway.

Contact the author here: mack@morningquickie.com