There’s No Teen Sex Epidemic. Really.
Every once in a while I post about the latest high-profile bad scholarship on youth and students. There’s all sorts of crap social science writing out there, but in this particular field what makes a splash is research that reinforces prejudices about young people — that they’re narcissists, that they’re overly entitled, that they drink too much, that they’re having too much sex too soon.
That last one is a biggie. Ask any middle-aged person about young people’s sexuality, and chances are they’ll bend your ear about how young people are having sex earlier, more casually, and more recklessly than ever before. You’ll hear all about “the hook-up culture,” and rainbow parties, and so on and on.
But there’s no evidence of any such shift, and in fact all the data we have points in the other direction.
Here’s a great write-up of what we know about heterosexual teen sexual activity. Compared to twenty years ago, teen girls aged 15-19 are 20% more likely to report being virgins, and boys the same age are more than 25% more likely. Three-quarters of girls who have had sex say they were in a serious relationship when they lost their virginity.
This is all self-reported, of course, but it’s backed up by hard data. Teen pregnancy rates have plummeted since the mid-1990s, after holding steady for the previous two decades. Today’s teenagers are just half as likely to get
That last one is a biggie. Ask any middle-aged person about young people’s sexuality, and chances are they’ll bend your ear about how young people are having sex earlier, more casually, and more recklessly than ever before. You’ll hear all about “the hook-up culture,” and rainbow parties, and so on and on.
But there’s no evidence of any such shift, and in fact all the data we have points in the other direction.
Here’s a great write-up of what we know about heterosexual teen sexual activity. Compared to twenty years ago, teen girls aged 15-19 are 20% more likely to report being virgins, and boys the same age are more than 25% more likely. Three-quarters of girls who have had sex say they were in a serious relationship when they lost their virginity.
This is all self-reported, of course, but it’s backed up by hard data. Teen pregnancy rates have plummeted since the mid-1990s, after holding steady for the previous two decades. Today’s teenagers are just half as likely to get
