What Teens Really Say About Sex, Drugs And Sadness

Want to know what the teenagers in your life really think about sex and drugs?

Are you sure?

Well, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a pretty good idea, thanks to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Every other year, thousands of teens in public and private high schools across the country take this nationally representative survey. The CDC just released results for 2017, and here are a few of the highlights:

Sex

Teens' experiences with sex are changing, and the news is almost all good, says Kathleen Ethier, director of CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health.

"Fewer are initiating sex," Ethier says, "fewer are currently sexually active, they're having fewer partners, and they're using more effective hormonal birth control methods."

In 2007, nearly 48 percent of teens said they'd had sex at least once. A decade later, it's 39.5 percent. One change in the data that Ethier's not happy about is a recent decline in condom use.

In 2007, 61.5 percent of teens said they'd used a condom during their last sexual encounter. By last year, that rate had dropped to 53.8 percent. Ethier says this is due, at least in part, to "a decrease over time in requirements that school cover HIV and [sexually transmitted diseases] in health education programs."

According to the report, young people aged 15-24 account for half of the roughly 20 million new STDs reported each year.

One more red flag, Ethier says: More than one in 10 young women (11.3 percent) reported being forced to have sex.

Drugs

When it comes to illicit drugs — like cocaine and heroin — teen use is way down, from 22.6 percent in 2007 to 14 percent in 2017.

For the first time, though, the survey also asked teens if they have ever misused prescription opioids. Fourteen percent said they had.

"We don't know what this 14 percent number means, but we were quite surprised by it," Ethier says, adding that CDC has more work to do to understand what these new data say about the opioid crisis and teens' role in it.

Violence

The survey also asked high-schoolers about bullying and violence at school. One in 5 said they'd been bullied at school. Fifteen percent said they'd been bullied electronically.

The rate of students who said they'd been threatened or injured with a weapon at school has dropped significantly in the past decade. But students of color are still far more likely than white students to say they missed school because of safety concerns at school or in their communities.

Mental Health

Perhaps the biggest red flags were in the section devoted to mental health.
Roughly a third of teens surveyed said they'd experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.

"I think that's really significant," says CDC's Ethier, "and certainly not what we want to see if we're trying to send our kids into adulthood in the most healthy way."

The news is even worse for students who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
Nearly two-thirds reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.
In fact, in every category, LGB teens were at higher risk than their heterosexual classmates. They were twice as likely to report being bullied in school or electronically, three times as likely to seriously consider suicide and four times as likely to attempt suicide.

"It's shocking and alarming and tells us that things are terribly wrong," says Ellen Kahn, director of the Children, Youth & Families program at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. "We seriously need to address this."

Kahn says these data are a stark reminder of the lack of protections at the federal, state, district and school level for LGB teens and of why, she says, these protections are so sorely needed.

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