Are teens really holding off on having sex?
Among teens, it seems, virginity may be making a comeback. But why?
A new study released yesterday by the National Center for Health Statistics reports that 27 percent of males and 29 percent of females between the ages of 15 and 24 say that they've never had any kind of sexual experience. That's slightly higher than the 22 percent reported for the same age group in 2005.
Younger respondents were less likely to have had sex, according to USA Today andMSNBC.
The new results are from data collected between 2006 and 2008; 13,495 people ages 15 to 44 were surveyed for the 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth, including 5,082 people ages 15 to 24.
In the new study, 58 percent of girls and 53 percent of boys age 15 to 17 reported never having experienced any kind of sex. That's up from 48.6 percent of girls and 46.1 percent of boys in that same age group in 2002. Predictably, the numbers of those abstaining from sexual contact dwindled as their ages rose: Among 20- to 24-year-olds, 12 percent of women surveyed and 13 percent of men surveyed said they had never had sexual contact, compared with 8 percent for both sexes in 2002.
"I think a lot of people misconstrue this as meaning they've never had vaginal sex," Anjani Chandra, a health scientist at the NCHS and lead author of the study, told MSNBC. "But this is no sexual contact of any kind. They didn't have oral sex or anal sex. They didn't have anything."
But what's leading teens and young adults away from temptation?
When it comes to "why," studies like this always raise more questions than they answer for me; there are just too many ways to spin the results in order to make them support whatever theory you want them to. For example: If fewer young men and women age 15 to 24 are having sex, that could mean:
A. Abstinence-only education is working!
B. College students are spending more time studying and less time hooking up!
C. Purity pledges! More young people are saving sex for marriage!
D. They're heeding Bristol Palin's message!
E. We don't really know.
The answer is E, of course. Here's why:
A. It's not abstinence-only education: According to a report released by the Washington, D.C.-based Guttmacher Institute, the pregnancy rate among teenagers in the United States rose for the first time in 10 years, and the United States has higher rates of teenage pregnancies, births, and abortions than other other Western industrialized countries. Researchers blame Bush-era laws supporting abstinence-only education.
B. They're still hooking up (or doing something other than studying): In their new book, "Academically Adrift," sociologists Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia determined that 45 percent of college students make little academic progress during the first two years of a four-year degree. There are plenty of reasons, and plenty of loopholes, in the study, but even if kids are studying more, it doesn't mean they're having less sex, even at religious schools. Brigham Young University basketball star Brandon Davies, 19, was just suspended for breaking BYU's code of honor, not for lying or stealing or cheating or drug use, but for having consensual pre-marital sex with his 18-year-old girlfriend.
C. It's not the purity pledges: A 2009 study A study published in the journal "Pediatrics" showed that just five years after committing to a "purity pledge" (which, by the way, is how the effectiveness of many abstinence-only programs are gauged), 82 percent of teens denied having even made the pledge at all, and the age at which they first had sex was the same as those who hadn't taken the pledge. In fact, the biggest difference between the pledgers and nonpledgers was that "pledgers are less likely to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease before marriage."
D. Bristol Palin's influence: Um, no. Have you seen her Public Service Announcement with The Situation?
Are teens telling one another that they just want to be friends-without "benefits"? Or could the study have been skewed by people who felt uncomfortable telling a stranger about their sexual history? It's impossible to tell, but whatever the reason, we'll take it, for now.
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Also on Shine:
11 surprising truths about teens and sex
"Teen Mom 2" star tells young women to use birth control
Bristol Palin and The Situation get awkward about sex
