First Kisses are Awkward & Awesome
More Teens Should be Having Them
Teens should be having more sex. There I said it. Actually, I’ve been saying it for a very long time. (Here’s proof from 3 years ago.)
The percentage of high school students who have ever had sex has been steadily declining and the percentage of high school students who are miserable has been going up. I’ve been saying for years that these two things are related. Now, new post-pandemic numbers are out, and others are starting to echo my sentiments that this decline isn’t just about sex, and it isn’t necessarily a good thing.
The CDC started collecting data on teen sex as part of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (known as the YRBS, though I’m not sure why we drop one S). It launched in 1991 and is conducted every two years. The YRBS asks about a lot of other things as well, like if teens wear their bike helmets, eat healthily, experience bullying, have suicidal thoughts, or have ever held a gun.
Sex was lumped in with these other risk factors for understandable reasons—at the time teen pregnancy rates were at their highest in generations, and HIV was deadly. When the survey started over half of all high school student had had sex (54.4%) and by senior year that was up to 67%.
So we all went about trying to get teens to have less sex so that they didn’t get pregnant or get an STI. (The lower teen pregnancy part happened thanks in large part to better contraception, but STIs among young people are still a huge problem.)
The abstinence-only folks peddled a religious message of morality and saving sex for marriage to save your soul. They made sex seem shameful and argued that kids who had it were dirty and used. (See classroom games that compare sexually active teens to a rose with no petals, chewed gum, spit, and an unwrapped peppermint patty that had been passed around the room.)
The comprehensive sexuality education folks—of which have always been a card-carrying member—took a different approach that emphasized consent and condoms and contraception and validated abstinence as a choice that many kids were actually making. But the limitations on what we could and couldn’t say in classrooms and the arguments we had to make to get into those classrooms in the first place often made it sound like the message was “abstinence is best, but….”
The thing is abstinence might not be best.
I’ve never argued that teens need to get laid because the sex itself would make them happier (though sex has been known to do that). I argued that the lack of sex also meant a lack of afternoons spent searching local hotspots for the crush, a lack of paying extra attention to the hair or outfit or makeup in the hopes of getting extra attention from a certain someone, a lack of shameless flirting, and a lack of first kisses. (Remember first kisses? They’re awkward and awesome.)
In truth, there are a lot of awkward and awesome sexual behaviors out there, and teen relationships—when both partners are learning—can be a great time to try out new things. Recent reports on twenty-somethings who are sexless and miserable suggest that the longer young people wait for this experimentation, the more vulnerable and scared they feel. Even before the pandemic made social isolation a household phrase, we were raising a generation of young people who were unprepared for sexual and romantic relationships.
Now we find that rates of teen sex are at their lowest levels since I was in high school with only 30% of teens saying they’ve ever done it. (Note: while the YRBS does now ask about sexual orientation, many of the question are still limited to penis-in-vagina intercourse so it doesn’t capture everything.) Obviously, the pandemic which literally locked high schoolers in their houses with their parents put a damper on any plans to canoodle with peers but given that the trend started a long time ago, we can’t blame the pandemic alone.
Similarly, the pandemic exacerbated mental health issues that were becoming clear in young people but did not start the trend. The YRBS found that 42% of teens experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2021 compared to 37% in pre-pandemic 2019 and 28% in 2011. In addition, 22% seriously considered suicide (up from 19% in 2019 and 16% in 2011) and 10% attempted suicide (up from 9% in 2021 and 8% in 2011).
There are many theories of who/what we can blame for all of these changes (in addition to the massive disruption to their childhood that was/still is Covid-19): helicopter parents, overscheduled afternoons, the pressure-cooker environment of modern high school (writes the lady whose junior is taking an AP Chem test as I type), too much screen time, not enough outdoor time, school shootings, code red drills that simulate school shootings, the environmental crisis that they’re inheriting, social media, social media, and/or social media.
Whatever the cause, the results are not good. Kids are suffering and the lack of sex is starting to be seen as a symptom of this problem. The CDC still gives a green light to the fact that teen sex is trending downward (the YRBS is color-coded so we can see at a glance what’s getting better, worse, or staying the same). However, Kathleen Ethier, the director of CDC’s Division of Adolescence and School Health (CDC-DASH), added a caveat. She told the AP that this might be a reflection of kids making healthy decisions to delay sex and have fewer partners, “but what concerns me is this is potentially a reflection of social isolation.”
Laura Lindberg, a professor at Rutgers School of Public Health (and a friend and colleague for many years) told the AP, “I think these together paint a picture of high school students building fewer strong interpersonal connections that can be protective of good mental health. This is an opportunity to say maybe teens are having too little sex.”
Not all teenagers are emotionally mature enough to safely and consensually share their body with another person, but it’s time that adults (a lot of whom had sexual relationships as teens) acknowledged that many teens are and that it’s healthy for them to do so.
Our job should never have been to tell them not to have sex. Our job is to help teens recognize what makes a relationship healthy (consent and condoms are a good start); reassure them there are a wide array of sexual orientations, gender identities, and behaviors none of which are bad or shameful; remind them that they are in charge of choosing what works best for them; help them access whatever prevention methods they need to protect themselves; and promise to be there for them without judgment if they do experience a negative consequence (emotional or physical).
I’m not suggesting that parents start pimping out their kids or that Teen Tinder is the next million-dollar idea, but I am suggesting that we adults need to remind young people that sex is a natural and healthy part of life and maybe ask them if they’ve ever heard of the time-honored teenage tradition called making out.
Other Interesting Stats from the 2021 YRBS
The CDC trends report says that the only good news in the survey is that substance abuse and bullying have gone down. The authors follow that up with a pull quote that will send shivers down the spine of most parents, “Unfortunately, almost all other indicators of health and well-being in this report including protective sexual behaviors (i.e., condom use, sexually transmitted disease (STD) testing, and HIV testing), experiences of violence, mental health, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors worsened significantly.”
Some of the specific statistics from 2021 include:
Among currently sexually active students, 48% did not use a condom the last time they had sexual intercourse
Among currently sexually active students, 13% did not use any form of pregnancy prevention the last time they had sexual intercourse.
The number of kids identifying as LGBQ+ has risen from 8% to 15% since the YRBS began including a question on sexual identity in 2015. (We do not know how many kids identify as transgender because the CDC has not asked that question yet, though the agency says it plans to do so in future versions.)
11% of high school students were forced by someone to do sexual things (including kissing, touching, or being physically forced to have sexual intercourse) when they did not want to during the past year. Females were more likely than males to report this (18% v. 5%) and LGBQ+ students were more likely than students who identified as heterosexual (22% v. 8%).
15% of high school students said they’d experienced bullying in school in the past year. Females were more likely than males to report this (17% v. 13%) and LGBQ+ students were more likely than students who identified as heterosexual (12% v. 23%).
17% of high school students said they’d experienced electronic bullying in the past year. Females were more likely than males to report this (20% v. 11%) and LGBQ+ students were more likely than students who identified as heterosexual (27% v. 13%).
9% of high school students said they’d not attended school at least one day in the last month because they did not feel safe. Females were more likely than males to report this (10% v. 7%) and LGBQ+ students were more likely than students who identified as heterosexual (14% v. 7%).
Anyone else seeing a pattern here? Things are very rough for high school girls and students who identify as LGBQ+. Anyone else think it’s not a coincidence that this is happening at a time when everything LGBTQ is being banned from school, lawmakers have a launched a war against trans kids, and the Supreme Court made it clear that women are less important than fetuses?
I’d like to think this survey would be a wake-up call to motivate all adults (and especially politicians) to start helping our kids instead of picking on them, but I’m having trouble staying optimistic, and I have to go hug my kids right now.
Old and F**king; Talk to Your Grandmother About Sex
Friends Whitney Geller and Yasemin Emory owned a design studio together focused on branding and communications for 11 years before becoming condom entrepreneurs. As the story goes, while looking for contraception options between pregnancies, Whitney noticed that the condom category had not evolved in the same ways that so many other wellness products had. The packaging still spoke to specific gender and sexual stereotypes and there was no transparency about the ingredients. The two founded Jems condoms with the hope that redesigning the packaging and rethinking how we speak about condoms could bring about meaningful change.
This month the Canadian company is launching a campaign aptly titled F*cking Old that suggests Gen-Zers call their grandparents and talk about sex. Sex On Wednesday sat down with Whitney and Yasemin (over Zoom because they’re in Toronto) to discuss their new company and why it’s time to get the grandparents involved.
SOW: Tell me about Jems?
Our background is focused on branding and communications. We've done all kinds of identities and branding systems for startups and also bigger corporations. We know that design and communication means a lot in how you can impact behavior. So we sought to disrupt this idea that condoms are the most embarrassing product in the most embarrassing packaging and the most embarrassing aisle.
SOW: I understand that your condoms are found outside the regular condom aisle?
We are absolutely found in the condom aisle but we’re also working with retailers to move on from there. We’re thinking about the travel and to-go sections, and also the beauty and wellness sections. We really believe condoms should own a space in wellness. Condoms should be seen as wellness instead of it being seen as more clinical or medicine. We’ve also created silicone cases for our condoms and these are really more about lifestyle. They protect the product, but they also allow retailers to merchandise condoms a bit differently.
SOW: What’s the idea behind the campaign?
STIs are at the highest level they've ever been in history. They predominantly impact those ages 15 to 25 and the elderly community, and nobody was really speaking directly to older adults. We wanted to get Gen Z, who tend to be very open about their sex and sexuality, to be the bridge that speaks to the older demographic today especially those who might be coming out of long-term monogamous relationships. Older adults didn't have sex ed when they were young, and they don't feel the impact of AIDS anymore, which is the only thing they associate with condoms. So we’re trying to shake up how they get information in a way that also inadvertently teaches Gen Z to be aware of the STI problem.
SOW: The campaign incudes boxes of candy and characters based on fruit?
You know, we wanted to bring a playfulness to it and a lightness to it and we didn’t want to come off as fearmongering. We think adding humor and playfulness offsets the idea of just sort of scaring each other into safety.
My favorite part of the campaign is probably the slogan: “If you’re f#cking old, make sure your f#cking safe.”
I am no Gen-Zer, and I lost my grandmother over 20 years ago, but I did in fact have a safe sex conversation with her once. It was a number of years after my grandfather died when she was dating a man at work to whom she introduced me as “a close friend of the family” (so as not to admit to having a 24-year-old granddaughter). I told her she really should use condoms and despite the fact that she’d spent her whole career in healthcare and was still working in a hospital, she poo-pooed me with something like “Oh please, I’m too old, I’ll be dead before that’s a problem.”
Here's wishing Gen Z more luck than I had peddling a safer-sex message to their seniors.