It doesn’t take a genius to work out that American high school students are having sex – it’s actually a fairly obvious fact. When you look at the combination of statistics, MTV reality shows and simply talking to teenagers, it is becomes blatant that there are a substantial number of high school students engaging in some form or another of sexual activity. Those who like to claim otherwise are often either in denial don’t want to admit the truth or aren’t interested in the facts. Well, here are the facts:
Every year, U.S. teens go through as many as 850,000 pregnancies and young adults under 25 suffer about 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections (STIs) according to the Advocates for Youth website. The website also reports that by the time that young people have reached the age of 18, 70 per cent of the females and 62 percent of the males have had sexual intercourse.
It is absolutely vital that high schools that don’t currently run sex education classes initiate programs teaching students proper condom usage, birth-control methods and advice for the proper precautions to take against contracting STIs and pregnancy.
Regardless of how any individual feels about teenagers having sex, no one can any longer deny that it is happening and that we need to educate young people so that if they are going to make this choice, they at least do it safely and properly.
People who try to convince themselves otherwise need to face reality and understand that the best action is to educate teenagers on how to protect themselves and be safe about their sexual activity.
Schools that now implement abstinence-only programs are not being realistic about what current teenage lifestyles. Although there are certainly many teenagers out there who choose to not have sex during high school, there are also plenty who are going to experiment sexually regardless of how strongly their schools ban it.
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