It’s not intended as a survey of which teenagers say they’ve had sex, of course. It’s intended as a survey of which teenagers have had sex. But self-reporting is the only way to get at that particular question, or the question of whether teenagers are using birth control, and which methods. Some reported results are supported by data: birth rates among teenagers are at their lowest ever recorded in the United States, suggesting either a decrease in sexual activity or an increase in birth control use (which most teenagers now report that they are using the first time they have sex). Beyond that, the teenagers’ answers are just that: their answers. Either fewer of them are actually having premarital sex or fewer are willing to admit it.
Teenagers also say different things about why they’re not having (or claiming to not have) sex yet. Dr. Gladys Martinez told The New York Times that the primary reason teenagers have always given for never having had sex was that “doing so was against their religion or morals.” But in previous surveys, the No. 2 reason boys gave was not wanting to get a girl pregnant; this time it’s that they haven’t found the right person yet. That’s either very sweet (a surprising 18 percent fewer boys say they’ve had premarital sex than in the 2002 survey) or just more support for the idea that many teenagers at least have the birth control thing down.
Maybe it’s because I’m not the parent of a teenager, but I’m having trouble figuring out what I should take away from this particular piece of research. That may be because of the age group surveyed — aren’t you, as a parent, more concerned about teenage sexual activity among 13- to 17-year-olds? Or maybe it’s because I’m caught up in that difficulty with the self-reported data. Maybe I’m cynical, but I put more credence in a truly anonymous Internet survey than in one that involved an adult sitting in your bedroom. (And research suggests I’m right: in voter turnout surveys, the results of the survey more closely reflect the actual voter numbers when a survey is done over the Internet than when possible voters are asked by phone if they voted.)
Have sexually active teenagers really become a minority? Or do teenagers just perceive adults as less tolerant of teenage sex, and so while they may be putting out, they’re shutting up? In either case, what’s changed from a mere decade ago, and is that change a good thing?
The number of unmarried teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 who reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that they’ve had sex has dropped below 50 percent. The
, based on data collected from 2006 to 2010, shows that about 43 percent of unmarried teenage girls and 42 percent of unmarried teenage boys say, on a survey administered by a C.D.C. interviewer but conducted largely on a laptop with headphones, that they’ve had sexual intercourse at least once. In 2002, the last year such a report was published, 51.1 percent of girls and 60.4 percent of boys said they had had sex by 19.