What A Rise In Teen Condom Use Means for the East Population

While the actual activity of teens in the bedroom may not be drastically changing, change has come to the way that sexually active teens are using protection.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported in a survey early last month that teen condom use is on the rise. Eight in 10 teen males ages 15-19 surveyed as part of the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth reported that they’d used condoms during their first sexual experience—that’s a 9 percent rise in condom use since the survey was last conducted in 2002. Along with this, 6 percent of teen females said that they used a non-pill hormonal method at their first sexual experience, up from a mere 2 percent.

Of the sexually active teens surveyed, 78 percent of females and 85 percent of males said they employed some form of contraception during their first sexual experience—numbers almost completely unchanged from the previous poll.

This is good news.

An incline in condom use with similar numbers of sexually active teens means that these teens are finding out that the “withdrawal method” isn’t a reliable option—and are reevaluating their definition of what contraceptives really are.

With 32 percent of a sampling of 320 East students answering that they have had a sexual encounter in the past 30 days, these safe stats from a national standpoint are a breath of fresh air for our teen population.

A report done by the Guttmacher Institute in April released that “among all women who have had sex, 99 percent have used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning.” Though the use of non-pill birth prevention techniques is nothing new to the teen scene, the trend of implementing a two-pronged approach to pregnancy control, or “doubling up” has seen an incline, according to the CDC.

Additionally, the survey found that 16 percent of teen males used a condom in combination with a female partner’s hormonal method, which is also up from the percent ranking in 2002, which stood at a meager 10 percent.

The number of teens sampled is the highest the national survey has polled before: 2,284 teen girls and 2,378 teen boys.