Teens are having less sex, but are using more protection: report

Fifty years ago, the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) began surveying the sexual activity of the American public, ultimately studying tens of thousands of people. The research is conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and periodically the NSFG releases reports focusing on their agency’s most recent results.

Now the NSFG has released a pair of reports suggesting that more people are using contraceptives. One study looked at data collected between 2015 and 2019 (the latest year data is available) from more than 10,000 women between age 15 to 49 who had ever had vaginal intercourse with a male partner. It found that virtually all women in this cohort reported using at least one contraceptive method at some point in their life (99.2%). This included 94.5% who had used a male condom and 79.8% who had used the pill.

In the other report, the CDC surveyed 21,441 people between 2015 and 2019, including 3,812 teenagers. This study found that for female teenagers who had never been married, only 40.5% had ever engaged in opposite sex intercourse; the number was even lower (38.7%) among never-married male teenagers. Indeed, the NSFG noted that this is part of a larger downward trend among reported sex among never-married male teenagers. “For females this percentage was stable across the four time points, but for males this percentage decreased from the 2002 (45.7%) and 2011–2015 (44.2%) time points,” the authors explained.