Health

Most Teens Now Say No To Sex

September 17, 1998 / 4:40 PM EDT / AP

For the first time this decade, more than half of America's high school students are saying no to sex.

And high schoolers who are sexually active are using condoms at the highest rate on record in the 1990s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

Dr. Lloyd Kolbe, director of the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health, said that the findings give further evidence that teaching teen-agers about safe sex hasn't resulted in more promiscuity. And he said the findings show that teens who are virgins shouldn't feel like outcasts.

"It's an important milestone because students who have not engaged in intercourse can say that they're in the majority," he said.

The 1997 survey of 16,262 students nationwide showed that a lower proportion of high schoolers are engaging in risky sexual behavior than in 1991, when the CDC began giving teen-agers anonymous questionnaires every two years about their sex lives.

Asked if they had ever had sexual intercourse, 52 percent of those surveyed in 1997 said no, compared with 46 percent in 1991. Asked if they used a condom the last time they had sex, 57 percent of students said yes, compared with 46 percent in 1991.

The trend toward abstinence in the 1990s is in sharp contrast to the 1970s and '80s, when sexual activity ballooned among teen-agers, Kolbe said. Sexual activity among girls 15 to 19, for example, jumped from 29 percent in 1970 to 57 percent in 1988, according to previous studies.

Kolbe attributed the recent declines to vigilant efforts by parents, schools and health officials to educate young people about safe sex and the risks of teen pregnancy, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

But he warned there are still plenty of conflicting sexual messages in movies, television and other media. "I think they're fragile changes," he said. "The worst thing we could do is be lulled into complacency."