The Mythical Decline of Teen Sex

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control released areport touting a “significant” decline in teen sex—14 percent for females and 22 percent for males—over the last 25 years. The topic is what Internet media types call “clickbait.” Sure enough, within hours, headlines like TODAY’S TEENS ARE HAVING A LOT LESS SEX THAN PAST GENERATIONS and TEEN SEX RATE LOWEST SINCE THE 1980S appeared like so many paparazzi at a Kim Kardashian shopping spree. Read the whole report, however, and you may be disappointed—or not, depending on your view of these matters and the age of your children. What the numbers really say is that with the exception of using more emergency contraception—a.k.a. “the morning-after pill”—teens haven’t changed their sexual habits much since the agency’s last survey in 2002.

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