by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(June 6, 2008) A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that teens are having less sex, smoking few cigarettes and doing fewer drugs than they were 10 years ago.
The new data is from the CDC’s 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS), a survey administered every two years to about 14,000 high school students across the U.S. It tracks trends in high risk behaviors such as drug and alcohol use and sexual behavior.
In 1991, 46 percent of high school students said they had never engaged in sexual activity. In 2007, 52 percent said they were still virgins. Black teens showed the greatest improvement in risky sexual behavior over the last decade. In 1991, 82 percent said they had ever had sex but by 2007, that number had declined to only 66 percent.
For those who were sexually active, the number of sexual partners also declined. In 2007, 15 percent said they had four or more partners, down from 19 percent in 1991. This is significant because multiple sex partners is a major cause of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases which are currently infecting 70 million Americans. Of the 19 million new cases occurring each year in the U.S., half are in people under the age of 25.
As to why the rate of sexual activity in youth is declining is not something addressed in the study, officials say.
“ . . . In the overall trends analysis, it (sexual activity) has gone down throughout this time period,” said Howell Wechsler, Ed.D., MPH, director of CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health. “The YRBS tells us what’s going on. It doesn’t give us indication as to what are the factors behind that. I’m sure there are many different factors.”
Other high risk behaviors have also declined, the study found. Only 44 percent of teens in 2007 said they had at least one drink in the month before they were surveyed, down from almost 51 percent in 1991. Marijuana use peaked in 1999 with 26.7 percent of teens saying they had smoked pot at least once in the last 30 days. In 2007, that number had declined to only 19 percent.
The most dramatic improvement was found in tobacco use. More than 36 percent of teens reported smoking cigarettes in 1995, a number that dropped to only 20 percent by 2007.
“We are pleased that more high school students today are doing things that will help them stay healthy and avoiding things that put their health in danger. Unfortunately we are not seeing that same progress among Hispanic teens for certain risk factors,” Weschler said.
Hispanic teens were found to be more likely to attempt suicide, and use cocaine, heroin or ecstacy. On the positive side, they were less likely to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol.
“The new report tells us that while large numbers of today’s high school students continue to engage in behaviors that place their health at risk,” Wechsler said, “the percentage of students engaging in many of these risk behaviors is lower today than it was in the early 1990s.”
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