Fewer U.S. teens report being sexually active

By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The percentage of U.S. teens having sex showed a "dramatic" drop between 1992 and 2002, while there was a similarly striking rise in the use of contraception by those who were sexually active, a new analysis of national US data shows.

However, very recent increases in teen pregnancy -- after a decline lasting more than a decade -- show that more work needs to be done to help improve teens' reproductive health, according to Dr. Jennifer Manlove and colleagues from Child Trends in Washington, D.C.

"We need to continue to focus on this issue into the future to help reduce high rates of teen childbirth in the US, especially since things are trending in the opposite direction right now," Manlove told Reuters Health.

She and her colleagues looked at data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth for 1992, 1997 and 2002 to investigate the role of family environment, individual characteristics, and relationship types in teen sexual behavior. They report their findings in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The positive trends Manlove and her team saw -- for example, about 56 percent of girls and 61 percent of boys 15 to 19 years old had had sex in 1992, compared to 47 percent of girls and 46 percent of boys in 2002 -- were directly linked to increasing levels of education among parents and a reduction in the percentage of teens who had been born to teen mothers, according to their analysis.

In 1992, 62 percent of girls and 65 percent of boys reported using contraceptives the first time they had sex, while that percentage rose to 72 percent for girls and 78 percent for boys in 2002.

Shifts in the nature of teen sexual relationships also were linked to these positive trends, including an increasing age at first sex.

Manlove and her colleagues found no evidence to back up media stories claiming that "hooking up" among teens is on the rise. "Based on these data we did not see any increases in casual sex," the researcher said.