Health
Why American Teenagers are Having Much Less Sex
(The Washington Post) – The sex life of the American teenager is apparently far less busy than it was in generations past.
Less than half of teens older than 14 said they’ve had intercourse, a sharp drop from rates in the ’80s, a new CDC study found. The majority of those who do choose to become sexually active are using some form of protection. And, in the last decade, the popularity of the so-called “morning-after pill” among girls has more than doubled.
Teen births, meanwhile, have plummeted about 57 percent over the last 30 years.
Researchers surveyed roughly 2,000 boys and girls, 15 to 19. (They also interviewed about 1,770 young adults, 20 to 24, about their high school encounters.)
The share of teen girls who reported they’ve had sex at least once dropped from 51 percent in 1988 to 44 percent in 2013, they found. Abstinence was more pronounced among the guys: 60 percent of teen boys in 1988 said they’d had sex, compared to 47 percent in 2013. Much of the decline for both boys and girls occurred between 1988 and the period of 2006-2010, and numbers have held steady since then.
