San Francisco – Conditions. “Funny Links.” A level of “conversation”, flirting and getting to know each other – usually done over text – can lead to attachment.
They are high school students. Have less sex. That’s what the studies say. But that doesn’t mean you’re having less sex.
The language of young love and lust and the actions behind it are evolving. And the shift is not being adequately captured in national studies, experts say.
For years, studies have shown that sexual activity among American high school students is on the decline. This trend continued, not surprisingly, in the early years of the epidemic, a A recent study At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The survey found that 30% of teenagers said they had had sex in 2021, down from 38% in 2019 and a sharp decline from three decades ago.
The Associated Press took the findings to teenagers and professionals around the country. Parents: Some of the answers may surprise you.
The meaning of sex depends on who you ask
For starters, what is the definition of gender?
“Hmm, that’s a good question,” says Rose, 17, a junior at New England High School.
She thought about it for about 20 seconds, then listed relationships between heterosexual, oral sex, and same-sex or LGBTQ partners. On her campus, short-term immersions — known as “conditions” — are typically low-commitment and high-risk from both a health and emotional perspective.
There are also “fun links” – when you meet in secret and don’t tell your friends. “I feel like a lot of people are quoted as having sex – not necessarily between a man and a woman.”
For today’s teenagers, the conversation about sexuality is moving from a binary situation to a spectrum and also the types of sex that people are having. And while the vocabulary around sex is changing, the main question in the CDC survey has remained the same since the government agency began the biannual survey in 1991: “Have you ever really had sex?”
“Honestly, the question is a little ridiculous,” said Kay, 18, who speaks as queer and attends a public high school near Lansing, Michigan. “There may be a lot of young people who say, ‘No, I’ve never had sex, but I’ve had other kinds of sex.'”
The AP agreed to use the teenagers’ first or middle names for this article because of the common concerns they express about the reactions of their peers for talking about their sex lives and LGBTQ+ relationships at school, at home and on social media.
Gender identity is evolving.
Many experts say the CDC’s findings reflect how teenage sexuality is evolving, gender fluidity is becoming more common and the stigma around identifying as heterosexual is diminishing.
Another finding in this year’s survey is that the number of high school students who identify as heterosexual has dropped to 75% in 2018. That’s down from 89 percent in 2015, when the CDC began asking about sexual awareness. Meanwhile, the proportion who identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual rose from 8 percent in 2015 to 15 percent.
“I wonder how the questions would be phrased differently if the young people were in the room when they were being asked,” said Taryn Gall, executive director of the Adolescent Sexual Health Association of Michigan.
Sex is just one of the topics covered in the CDC study. Youth Risk Behavior Survey. One of the main sources of national data on high school students’ various behaviors, it is conducted every two years and asks about 100 questions, including smoking, drinking, drug use, bullying, guns and sex. More than 17,000 students at 152 public and private high schools across the country responded to the 2021 survey.
“It’s a fine line to try to walk,” said Kathleen Etter, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, which led the study.
From a systematic perspective, changing demand makes it difficult to compare trends over time. The goal is to capture a national snapshot of teen behavior, understanding that questions can’t capture all the nuances. “It doesn’t allow us to go as deep as we want in some areas,” Etter says.
The national survey, for example, does not ask for oral sex, which carries the risk of spreading sexually transmitted infections. “We try to use a word that we know young people understand,” Ethier says of “sexuality.” “This term does not encompass all the ways young people express their sexuality.”
Is teen sex good news?
Beyond semantics, there are many theories as to why reported secondary sex has declined and what it might say about American society.
“I think some parents are excited and some are concerned, and I think there’s good reason for both,” says Sharon Hoover, associate director of the National School Mental Health Center at the University of Maryland. Health officials like to see trends in teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
“But what we don’t know is what this means for the youth scene,” Hoover says.
This year’s drop, the highest drop ever recorded, apparently It had a lot to do with the epidemic.It causes children to become withdrawn, isolated from friends and immersed in social media. Even as life begins to return to normal, many children are uncomfortable with face-to-face interactions and have diminished verbal communication skills, Hoover said.
The study was conducted in It’s the end of 2021, just after many K-12 students are physically back in the classroom Year of online education.
Many of the teenagers interviewed returned together when schools reopened. Strong social anxiety Mixed with the fear of contracting covid. That added a new layer to pre-epidemic sexual practices, such as pregnancy or contracting an STD.
“What if he gets sick? What if I get sick? What if I don’t have the people skills for this? “All these ‘what ifs’ definitely affected my personal relationships, and affected how I interacted with strangers or my personal partners.
Another concern is parents’ eyes, says college student Abby Tau, who questions whether helicopter parenting has played a role in what she calls “the fiction of our generation.” Tau, a senior at the University of Oklahoma, knows college students whose parents track their whereabouts using tracking apps.
“Parents get a push notification when they leave the dorm and return home to the dorm,” said Tau, 22, who is majoring in social work and gender studies.
Tow noted a “general sense of hopelessness” in her generation. She cited statistics showing that fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses these days. “I think there’s a correlation between students being able to drive and having sex,” she says.
Another reason for the decline in sex may be the easy access to online pornography, experts say. By age 17, a quarter of teenagers have viewed pornography online, with an average first exposure at age 12, according to a report released earlier this year by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit child advocacy group.
“Porn is becoming more popular with young people,” says New York-based sex education teacher Justine Fonte. Pornography shapes and distorts adolescent ideas about sexuality, power and intimacy, she says. “You can rewind, fast forward, play as much as you want. It doesn’t ask you to think about how the person is feeling.
Is there a definition of consent?
Many experts say the decline is partly due to a broader understanding of consent and the rise of “universal” sex education being offered in many schools, which have become targets in the ongoing culture wars.
Unlike abstinence-only programs, the lessons include understanding healthy relationships, gender identity, sexuality, and discussion on preventing unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Contrary to what critics think, if young people receive sex education, they are more likely to delay sexual activity, she said.
Some schools and organizations supplement sex education with peer counseling, where young people are trained to talk to each other about relationships and other topics that young people may feel uncomfortable bringing up with adults.
Annika, 14, is a trained Peer Ambassador at Planned Parenthood and a high school student in Southern California. She offers guidance to her friends in toxic relationships and concerns about the ubiquity of promiscuity among her peers, especially boyfriends. It is clear to her that the epidemic will disrupt her sex life.
The CDC’s 2023 survey, now underway, suggests the decline is temporary. Anika suspects Shul will show. At her school, at least, students seem to be making up for lost time.
“People are more excited because they lost those two years,” she says. She is often in the school bathroom where couples in the stalls next to her are having sex.
The meaning of sex again? “Any sexual act,” says Anika. “And sex is an act.”
To get a more accurate reading of adolescent sexuality, the evolution of language needs to be taken into account, said Dr. John Santelli, a Columbia University professor who specializes in adolescent sexuality.
“The word relationship had another meaning,” he said. “Relationship was just talking.”
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Jocelyn Gecker is an education reporter for The Associated Press in San Francisco. Follow her on Twitter http://twitter.com/jgecker
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