I am absolutely apalled that 25% of girls between the ages of 14 and 19 have an STD. First and foremost, teenage girls and boys need to start taking responsiblity for their actions. I am neither condoning nor condemning teenage sex. Teens, if they decide to have sex, need to start using SAFE sex practices. There is NO reason that teens should not use a condom every time they have sex. Teen pregnancy is also an epidemic in our country, 53 out of every 1000 babies are born to teenage mothers. I doubt there are any teenagers who plan on having a baby.
You can blame the schools if you want, sex education doesn't seem to be very effective. It seems to be on par with alcohol and drug awareness education-it entices students to experiment more than it steers them away. You can blame the parents too, maybe parents these days aren't teaching their children about the dangers associated with sex. Maybe they're not instilling children with good morals and or encouraging them to wait to have sex so that they can pursue their dreams. Perhaps parents aren't spending enough time with their children, and allowing them to be unsupervised with others too often. (My boyfriend and I were not permitted to be alone together in either of our houses until I was 18.) Maybe its the ever diminishing presence of religion, especially since most religions "demand" that its members wait until marriage to have sex.
What about the math teachers? Maybe they aren't really making sure that their students know percentages. The pill is 99% effective. And it doesn't protect against STDs. Condoms alone are only about 85% effective. This leaves a TON of room for "mistakes" to happen.
Maybe teens are too busy with school work, athletics, extracurricular activities, their friends, their families, their iPods, myspace, or searching for colleges to take the time to learn about safe sex, buy birth control, and put on the actual condom. But teens, next time you choose to have sex, PLEASE wrap it up.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/11/teen.std.ap/index.html?i...
its weird to think about that. i am in high school and most of my friends have had sex and none of them have an STD. I also do not know anyone with one. Another thing that is weird about all of these stats is that I have only seen a pregnaut girl on campus once and i have a school of 4000 people and last time i saw one was my frosh year four years ago. sometimes it makes me think is all these stats are correct
~ <3 Breanne <3 ~
The article also says that 50% of African American teenage girls have an STD, while 20% of white teens do. Perhaps you haven't seen these things because of the socio-economic area you live in.
those stats are just the averages for the United States in general. The stats also change from place to place, school to school. As far as not knowing anyone who has an STD, they may not know if they have an STD or not because many STDs have no symptoms. Chances are, most of your female friends may have HPV because men carry it. The second that they have sex, the female is at risk.
I am in a class called Medical Terminology. We watched a video of a woman speaker talking about teenage sex. She talked about many different STDs and mentioned a few really valuable points.........
*You should be a lot more worried about contracting an STD than getting pregnant.
*Many STDs that women contract have no symptoms, mainly because it affects the uterus.
*Everyone acts like AIDS is the only STD, but there's actually far more worse STDs
As long as you encourage your friends to always use condomns, it should be ok. But they're still at risk. If you really care about your friends, suggest taking them to get tested for STDs, especially if they have had unprotected sex.
I don't think teen girls 18 or 19 years old should be included in many of these statistics, because this is often the time you move out of your parent's house for the first time, and make choices completely on your own. I'm sure there's a number of 19 year old girls who want to have a child, and those cases aren't cases of 'mistakes'.
Additionally, the condom is more effective than that, if it's used correctly. Just, most people don't know how to use it correctly, so the efficiency drops somewhat.
~C
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18 and 19 years old included in those stats because they are still teenagers. It doesn't matter if you live with your parents or not. All that matters is that if you have unprotected sex, you are very likely to contract an STD, women especially are at risk of contracting HPV since men carry it.
Plus you should be a lot more worried about getting an STD than getting pregnant. If you get pregnant, there are options. If you get an STD, there are no options. There are treatments to ease the pain, but that's about it.
As far as condoms. Most of them are made of latex. Gloves are made of latex. The same exact material. If you look closely at a glove, you will see many little holes in it. They're so tiny that its hard to see, but there are holes in gloves, in latex. It only takes one little hole for sprem to get through that condom. not very effective.
There is a whole lot of difference between a MINOR getting STDs and getting pregnant, and an ADULT getting STDs and being pregnant. There are 18 and 19 year olds that get married, and yet when they have kids willingly, they get looks for being a 'teen parent', even though they're in a completely different situation than those who are still in high school, living with their parents and being supported completely (or almost completely) by their parents.
Condoms are something like 95% effective against pregnancy, when used properly. That's pretty darn effective, far more effective than no protection at all. Besides, one sperm getting through does not necessarily equal pregnancy... they still have a heck of a journey up through the uterus and fallopian tube to where the egg is. And even if the egg is fertilized, it doesn't necessarily mean that it will implant in the uterine wall, and thus result in pregnancy.
As far as the STDs... there are a large number of them (called STIs, actually) that can be completely cured. Gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia... all can be cured by a round of antibiotics. The Herpes virus? Same virus that causes cold sores, and can be transmitted by simply kissing when an outbreak occurs, so it's much easier to catch than a normal STD. HPV is probably the worst, causing both genital warts and probably cervical cancer in women, and maybe some cancers in men. So saying that you can't do anything about an STD is flat out wrong in many cases.
Of course, if you truly practice safe sex, both you and your partner would go in for STD testing before your first time. But most people (not just teens, of course) don't do that.
~C
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I have 16 STDs. Not really, unless you're into that kind of thing. But seriously, I do.
I think the problem lies in the curiousity about what sex is all about. What's the hype? That's what caused me to go out and have rather promiscuous sex with any female that would take the go. I was, on the other hand, aware that plastic wrap, food gloves, garbage bags, and pulling out would probably lead to children. Thank god for my paranoia; else there'd be an army of little Nick's running around.
But once the "wooohooo!!!!!!! This is so much fun! Let's do it again because it's like I'm a rebel!" effect wore off, I stopped having sex for a full year. I consider that an improvement. 8-}
But if we were to teach safer-sex and not no-sex, we'd remove the novelty and less kiddies would be doin' the horizontal tengo.
Nicholas Aden
Self-Promotion
My Creative Writing
I just HAD to post a comment on this entry because of that phrase right there. It was so hilarious that I had to repeat it, haha.
Okay, but moving on to more serious matters, I agree with what Nick said. Kids need to learn how to practice safer sex, instead of always having abstinence as the main point of sex ed. Teachers and authority figures (parents/guardians) in general just don't want to deal with the awkward conversation of "the birds and the bees". Most parents and teachers would just like to say "Don't have sex. End of story." and that's that. But then you've got uneducated kids, and of course they're going to do something that they're told not to do.
In my opinion, there should be a nice intermixed balance between educating younger kids between the two -- since safer sex would teach the technical aspects of sex while abstinence ("waiting till your married or find someone you really care about") teaches the more emotional side of having sex. But either way, kids need to be informed and realize that just because they're young and almost "invincible", doesn't mean that they are immune to STD's or getting pregnant. I actually think the statistics of teen pregnancy is way more appalling and shocking than statistics of STD's among teens, since it's not so hard to contract one (all it takes is ANY kind of physical contact between the female's or male's respective body parts).
Anyway, a lot of things need to be taken account for those stats -- which I think the most notable problem is the irresponsibility on the teen's and parent/guardian/teacher's part.
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"No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it." -- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
I really couldn't talk about sex and not insert my 5th favorite phrase for the Dirty Deed.
Nicholas Aden
Self-Promotion
My Creative Writing
if you had a kid, of course you would want them not to be told about the bad things in this world out of love for them. and to really talk on this issue, i think that you have to have been in or currently in this situation.
if you had a kid, of course you would want them not to be told about the bad things in this world out of love for them. and to really talk on this issue, i think that you have to have been in or currently in this situation.
I don't entirely agree. If I had a kid, of course I'd want to protect them from the bad things in the world -- but I would never choose to withhold information or not tell them that the "bad things" in this world really do exist. I would tell my child everything they would need to know about sex, safe sex, STDs, and pregnancy out of "my love" for them. And parents who really care and love their children need to realize that completely ignoring the "sex" conversation entirely means leaving uneducated kids in the dark, curious, and most likely having sex without any protection because they don't any better. Those parents are avoiding talking about sex to their kids not out love, but mostly out of fear.
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"No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it." -- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
It figures that a music major would blame the math teachers... what happened to music being about math and using fractions? What, percentages aren't fractions anymore?
: p
On a more serious note, I agree with you entirely. I think our society has strayed too far from the idea of "personal responsibility" and now it's everyone else's fault if someone screws up. I find this notion to be severely debilitating to the youth, as they are unaware or choose to be ignorant about the consequences of sex.
And... my little advice for the day, for those of you who were not already aware:
SEX = BABIES
SEX = THE NEED TO PROTECT YOURSELF
Therefore, use TWO FORMS OF BIRTH CONTROL, including CONDOMS!
I was just scrolling down to make the same joke about math teachers! Poo.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
I was just talking to a friend about this earlier today. Does ayone know the statistic for guys?
Finding info about teen guys with STD's is a bit trickier. I'll continue to search, but I have found several sites that say that 1 in 4 teens (age 14-19) have an STD. I'm not sure if its higher or lower in males than females, but chances are they're probably about the same.
*Edit* Women are 2 times likelier to contract STD's than men.
http://www.teenhotlinecentral.com/Hotline_Facts.htm
the most shocking part is the kids that do have STD's and pass it on, might not even know that they have them.
this i feel is the biggest problem.
sex education needs to become an open communication.
whether you do it or not should not be something that you should be ashamed of, it is human nature, but what you should be ashamed of is not being educated.
it is a shame, for our country and our generation..
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." -Albert Einstein