The sexuality of US adolescents includes their feelings, behaviors and development, and the place adolescent sexuality has in American society, including the response of the government, educators, parents, and other interested groups.
Teenage pregnancy is four times as prevalent in the US as in the European Union, but has been steadily declining since 1991, reaching a record low in 2012, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and continuing to decline through 2017. The CDC said in 2007, 35% of US high school students were currently sexually active and 47.8% of US high school students reported having had sexual intercourse. In 2017, the percentage sexually active was down to 28.7%, and the percentage who had ever had intercourse was 39.5%. According to a 1994 study, every year an estimated one in four sexually active teens contracts a sexually transmitted infection (STI).
In 1999, a Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 95% of public secondary schools offered sex education programs. More than half of the schools in the study followed a comprehensive approach that included information about both abstinence and contraception, while approximately one third of schools provided students with abstinence-only sex education. In 2002, most Americans favored the comprehensive approach. A 2000 study found that almost all schools included information about HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in their curricula. There have been efforts among social conservatives in the US government to limit sex education in public schools to abstinence-only sex education curricula. The effectiveness of abstinence-only programs has been an issue of controversy.
Sexual practices
Self-report surveys suggest that half of those 15 to 19 have had oral sex. That percentage rises to 70% by the time they turn 19, and equal numbers of boys and girls participate. Research indicating that oral sex is less risky to teens' emotional and physical well-being than vaginal sex has been advanced; researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, do not believe that conclusion is warranted. They found that oral sex, as well as vaginal sex, was associated with negative consequences. Of adolescents engaging in oral sex only, girls were twice as likely as boys to report feeling bad about themselves, and nearly three times as likely to feel used. Despite their behaviors, 90% of adolescents "agree that most young people have sex before they are really ready."
The average age of first sexual intercourse in the United States is around 16.8 for males and around 17.2 for females, and that has been rising in recent years. For teens who have had sex, 70% of girls and 56% of boys said that their first sexual experience was with a steady partner, and 16% of girls and 28% of boys report losing their virginity to someone they had just met or who was just a friend.
Teens are using birth control (contraceptives) more today when they lose their virginity than they did in the past, and partly because of the AIDS epidemic. Of sexually-experienced adolescents, 78% of girls and 85% of males used at least one contraceptive when they lost their virginity. A detailed qualitative study of girls' loss of virginity found that their experiences "were almost all quite negative (and, in some cases, horrific)." Before age 15, "a majority of first intercourse experiences among females are reported to be non-voluntary." (See definition of rape.)
Adolescents who are better students generally initiate sexual activity later than those who are poor students. In addition, among those seventh- and eighth-graders, those with personal and perceived peer norms that encourage adolescents to refrain from sex are less likely to engage in it.
The percentage of teenagers who report that they are currently sexually active has been dropping since 1991. By 2005, the overall percentage of teenagers reporting that they were currently sexually active was down to 33.9%. A lower number of sexually active teens are "quite positive in terms of their health and their well-being."