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More Teens Sex
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Teen pregnancy is at a record low in the U.S. , and a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may explain why.
The new data, collected from 2011-2013, shows that adolescents are delaying sex, being more responsible with birth control and have better birth control access and perhaps more cultural support than any previously studied generation. Still, there are improvements to be made, particularly for some groups who are at higher risk of pregnancy than their peers. Here's what we learned from the latest data on teens and sex:
Teens are continuing to delay sex for longer, said the CDC's lead author Gladys Martinez. Back in 1988, 51 percent of teen girls and 60 percent of teen boys reported having sex at least once between the ages of 15 to 19. Now those numbers are 44 percent and 47 percent, respectively, holding steady from a previous CDC report that used data collected between 2006 to 2010.
Teens who delay sex until older adolescence, or age 17 and up, are more likely to use birth control during their first sexual encounter. This is significant, explained Martinez, because teen girls who used birth control that first time were half as likely to become teen moms than those who did not.
"The data on sex activity and contraceptive use, linked together with the data on the probability of having a teen birth, all line up in helping explain the recent decline in teen birth rates,” Martinez concluded.
The chart on the left shows that rates of sexual activity are holding steady with 2006 to 2010 levels, while the chart on the right shows that teens who don't use birth control for their first time are more likely to become pregnant in their teenage years.
The vast majority of teens (79 percent of girls, and 84 percent of boys) use birth control during their first time, and condoms were their most commonly-reported method. Martinez pointed out that in addition to being cheap and accessible, condoms are the only birth control methods that also protect against disease.
Also of note: Emergency contraception use rose from eight percent in 2002 to 22 percent in 2011-2013 .
The most likely explanation for this major increase is the changing access to emergency contraception, Martinez hypothesized, as it is now available over the counter with no age limits .
Gender Equality Is Improving Sexual Health
“In the previous decade, if a girl had a condom with her, there was a fear she’d be called a slut,” said Brindis. “But a woman’s right to be protected against an unintended pregnancy or STD or HIV has become a greater part of the social norm, so those numbers have been increasing over time."
The graphic above shows that while condoms are the most popular method of birth control at 97 percent, withdrawal comes in second at 60 percent. The pill, the patch and depo provera, a hormonal injection, are on the decline, while emergency contraception and hormonal implants are up.
Considering how dicey the withdrawal method is as a means of birth control ( Planned Parenthood warns it takes a great deal of "self-control, experience, and trust”), it’s alarming to see how many teens report having used it at least once to avoid pregnancy. But Martinez notes that it mirrors adult use; 60 percent of U.S. women also report using withdrawal at least once.
Brindis also emphasized that this data shows “ever use,” as in, has a person ever used a given method of birth control, even one time. By no means does it indicate that withdrawal is some teens’ primary method of birth control, she said. Instead, high pullout rates mean simply that adults have to do a better job helping teens anticipate sexual encounters.
"It may not be the best safety net, but it is a safety net that young people may have to rely on when they’re caught in the moment,” she said. "We have to help young people anticipate what happens in that moment."
The bottom line here: the kids are alright, but we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back just yet. U.S. teen pregnancy rates, while historically low at 26.5 per 1,000 women , are still the highest among nations that track this sort of data.
"We’re not in the promised land yet, but we’re going in the right direction and it’s taken a whole village to make an impact on this issue," said Brindis. If the U.S. wants to continue on this path, she said, the country needs to start zeroing in on at-risk teen subgroups that still might see parenthood as a more fulfilling and realistic path than college or career training.
"We need jobs and we need kids to graduate from high school," Brindis concluded. "These kinds of strategies that go beyond the availability of condoms and clinics are a very important part of the formula."
10 Must-Know Birth Control Facts See Gallery
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Professor Claire Brindis, an expert on teen health at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at University of California, San Francisco, thinks that the report’s findings are “great news” for American teens. Brindis credited everything from the Affordable Care Act to condom visibility in films -- look no further than the recent “Trainwreck” for evidence -- for higher rates of birth control use and the continued delay of teens' first sexual experience. She also said that changing social norms about a woman’s sexuality have contributed to smarter sexual choices in teens.

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Over Half of U.S. Teens Have Had Sexual Intercourse by Age 18, New Report Shows

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An estimated 55% of male and female teens have had sexual intercourse by age 18 and approximately 80% of teens used some form of contraception at first sex, according to a new report by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
The report, “Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use Among Teenagers in the United States: 2011-2015,” features the most recent data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), conducted by NCHS, and compares the new data to past NSFG data. The data represent all teens in the U.S. and were derived from interviews with 4,134 male and female teens 15-19 years of age over the period 2011 through 2015.
The report documented the following findings:
The full report, “Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use Among Teenagers in the United States: 2011-2015,” is available at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr104.pdf pdf icon
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Sara is a staff writer for Live Science, covering health. She grew up outside of Philadelphia and studied biology at Hamilton College in upstate New York. When she's not writing, she can be found at the library, checking out a big stack of books.

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The percentage of teens in the U.S. who have had sex has ticked down since the 1980s, a new report finds.
The latest estimates — which are based on data gathered from 2011 to 2015 — are that 42 percent of girls and women ages 15 to 19 who have never been married have had sex, down from 51 percent in 1988, according to the report. For guys who have never been married, 44 percent have had sex, down from 60 percent in 1988.
These trends follow another pattern that researchers have observed in previous studies: Teen birth rates are also on the decline, according to the report published today (June 22) by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [ 10 Facts Every Parent Should Know about Their Teen's Brain ]
Indeed, the researchers found that the surveyed teens' views on pregnancy played a large role in their decisions about whether to have sex and their likelihood of using contraception .
In the report, the researchers analyzed data on more than 4,000 teens ages 15 to 19 who were interviewed for the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) from 2011 to 2015. The NSFG is a national survey of people ages 15 to 44 in the U.S. that involves in-person interviews conducted by the survey researchers.
The majority of teens in the survey said that when they had sex for the first time , it was with someone with whom they were in a relationship: 74 percent of teenage girls and women said their first partner was a significant other, and 51 percent of teenage boys and men said the same.
A very small percentage of teens — 2 percent of teen girls and women and 7 percent of teen boys and men — said that their first partner was a person that they had "just met," the report found.
Among the teens who hadn't had sex yet, the most common reason was that it was against their religion or morals. Other common reasons included not having found the right person and not wanting to get pregnant or to get someone pregnant.
The new report also looked at contraception use among teens.
The researchers found that 80 percent of teens reported using contraception when they had sex for the first time. And among teenage girls and women who'd had sex more than once, a whopping 99 percent reported that they had ever used some form of contraception when they had sex.
Teens cited condoms as the most common form of contraception they used during sex, with 97 percent of girls and women and 95 percent of boys and men saying that they had ever used condoms. Also, 60 percent of teen girls and women reported having used the withdrawal method (the report did not give the percentage of boys and men who reported using this method), and 56 percent of teen girls and women reported ever using birth control pills , according to the report. [ 7 Surprising Facts About the Pill ]
The researchers also found that a larger percentage of teen girls and women said they would be "very upset" if a pregnancy occurred compared with teen boys and men. Nearly two-thirds of teen girls and women said they would be very upset if they got pregnant, compared with 46 percent of teen boys and men who said that they would feel the same if they got a girl pregnant.
Indeed, teenage girls and women who said that they would be very upset about a pregnancy were also more likely to use contraception compared with those who said they would be pleased with a pregnancy, the researchers found.
And one in five teens who have never had sex cited not wanting a pregnancy as their primary reason for avoiding intercourse.
Originally published on Live Science .
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Our conversations are sprinkled with slips, pauses, lies, and clues to our inner world. Here’s what we reveal when we speak, whether we mean to or not.

Posted February 26, 2020

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Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

A few months ago I read a disturbing article by Kate Julian in The Atlantic . It reported that contrary to popular belief, young people today are having sex far less often than their parents and grandparents did when they were young. While that might be cause for celebration for some (I’m a parent of five children in their late teens and early 20s and happy that none has experienced an unwanted pregnancy ), I became much more worried when I read that young adults are also becoming much lonelier than ever before.
Put those two facts together, and we have a problem which is snowballing into a crisis.
First, the sex part of the problem. While masturbation and the use of porn are rising thanks to the internet, young people are reporting far fewer hookups or even committed relationships. It’s not even clear if they want sexual contact given the emotional demands it places on youth.
Without committed, or at least serial, sexual partners, our kids are going to have less sex. People in committed relationships have the most sex despite the stereotype of stale relationships under-performing and hot singles acting like rabbits. Remove that consistency, and make relationships difficult to find, and suddenly we have a problem that is thwarting our children’s social and psychosexual development. Whether reviewing surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta or studies by individual academics, these trends are clear: Young people may be spending more time online and looking for sex but they are having very little success when it comes to getting it on with real people. Birth rates are falling, but so too are young people’s experiences of intimacy and the social skills it takes to be in a relationship.
There are plenty of possible reasons for this shift, including the difficulty these days of asking someone to a movie: It is so common now to hear young people describe social contact with a relative stranger or even an acquaintance as “creepy” that we have to accept that there are few easy ways for young people to meet any longer. Then there are facts like young people staying at home longer with their parents and a failure to launch, combined with distractions like social media and video games—neurological triggers with remarkably similar effects on young brains as sex. Whatever the reason for the decline, it is clear that our kids are avoiding sex and with it the opportunity to feel connected to others.
Which brings me to the part of the story that really caught my attention : While staying at home and masturbating doesn’t seem like the end of the world, when it becomes a substitute for years of social experimentation and learning how to be intimate, loneliness is the natural, most likely outcome. And loneliness, unfortunately, is a big problem. According to a recent paper in Psychological Medicine authored by Timothy Matthews and his colleagues at Kings College London, 18-year-olds who reported being lonely as children were at far greater risk for mental health problems and to report worse physical health as well as risky physical behaviors like risk-taking . Just as bad, they used more negative coping strategies like substance abuse . They were also less confident about finding a job and more likely to be unemployed, which would seem to predict further social isolation and a slower transition to independence—which would hopefully make having a sex life easier. Combined, too little sex and a growing pattern of loneliness is damaging our kids.
Of course, there are ways other than having sex for young people to confront loneliness. But sex is an important part of our development. The real issue is that sex is one of many ways that young people gain a feeling of connection. When the pathway to intimacy and social cohesion is frayed or torn altogether—if the number of young people who are still virgins in their late 20s is any indication, I’d have to say it is definitely broken—then clearly something has gone terribly wrong with what should be a fairly normal process of growing up.
I know there are no simple solutions, but maybe we need to start by thinking less about protecting our
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