It seems that teenagers are quite eager to have sex, if one were to look at the statistics, which show that the percentage of adolescent girls who use the morning-after pill is skyrocketing.
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Audio clip: Listen to audio clip. Ten years ago it was 1 in 12. The death rate for males in that age group is twice that of females, according to the CDC, and the risk of a crash increases with the number of passengers.
Additionally, the study found that from 2011 to 2013, 97 percent of teen girls who had sex had used a condom at least once. In 2002, there were fewer teens who knew about the availability of the morning-after pill.
The survey of 2,225 teenagers between the ages of 15 to 19 years old, have come up with new reports on contraceptives, sexual activity and teenage pregnancy that differ vastly from findings in 1988, when the National Survey of Family Growth conducted a similar study.
Tonya J. Powers, FOX News Radio.
By age 15, almost 18 percent of boys had sex and 13 percent of girls had sex.
According to Dr. Metee Comkornruecha, who specializes in adolescent medicine and works at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, said that the rise might be due to the fact that this form of contraception has become more popular.
There has been little change in how many sexually-active teens use birth control measures, with 79 percent of females and 84 percent of males using some method of contraception the first time they had intercourse.
However, National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy head program officer, Bill Albert, points out that this spike in emergency contraceptive use reveals that teens are clearly not good at contraceptives.
Plan B contains a high dose of levonorgestrel, the same hormone found in most birth control pills.
“Understanding these patterns and trends in sexual activity, contraceptive use, and their impact on teen pregnancy can help provide context regarding the recent decline in the US teen birth rate”, the researchers said. It now costs anywhere between $35 and $50 to obtain.
Kids are still frisky, of course, with 44% of female teens and 47% of boys saying they’ve had sex at least once. That’s why figuring out when teenagers start having sex, and what contraceptive methods they’re using matters; it’s the kind of information that can be used to tailor interventions toward those who need them the most. It’s hard to say, but there will always be a sizable proportion of teens who have sex, Albert said.
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