National Survey of Teens: Teens Talk About Dating, Intimacy, and Their Sexual Experiences

Where And How Teens Get Advice On Talking About Sex

Most teens (85%) have gotten advice about discussing sexual topics from at least one of a list of nine possible sources, but about one in seven (15%) say they have never gotten advice from any source about how to talk to members of the opposite sex about sex. Younger teens, and those with less sexual experience, are especially unlikely to have gotten any advice or information. A third (32%) of those who have never been involved in an intimate situation have never gotten this type of guidance. One in five (21%) teens under age 15 have also never gotten any advice or information on this topic.

Advice on How to Talk About Sexual Issues

Have you ever gotten any good ideas about talking about sexual issues from . .	Total	Boys	Girls
A friend or sibling	61	60	63
A sex education or health class	44	39	48
A TV show or movie	40	42	38
A magazine	35	12	59
One of your parents	32	25	38
A book or brochure	24	18	30
A religious leader	15	15	15
MTV	14	13	16
A counselor or therapist	11	9	13
Any other source	5	4	6
Never turned to any source	15	17	12

Both teen boys and girls rely most often on friends and siblings for advice of this sort; about six in ten have gotten advice from friends or siblings. Teen girls tend to turn to a wider array of sources. The majority of teen girls have turned to magazines for advice, but very few teen boys name magazines as a source. Teen girls are also more likely than teen boys to say they acquired advice in a health or sex education class or from a book or brochure. Similarly, almost four in ten teen girls, but only a quarter of teen boys say they have gotten advice on talking about sex from a parent.

Do Mom And Dad Know What's Appening?

Though only a third of teens have turned to their parents for advice on talking about sexual issues, suggesting they might not discuss such subjects with their parents, teens feel their parents know what goes on sexually. Two-thirds (66%) say their parents have a pretty good idea what goes on sexually among teens their age. Only two in ten (22%) say their parents are in the dark about what goes on, and half that number (10%) say their parents think more happens than really does. Teen girls are more likely than teen boys to turn to their parents for advice about sexual negotiations, but they are not more likely than teen boys to feel their parents are well-informed about what happens sexually among teens their age.

Are Teens Concerned About Pregnancy And STDs?

Teens say their friends, especially their female friends, are concerned about the risks associated with sexual intercourse. The majority say the girls they know are very con-cerned about AIDS/HIV and unplanned pregnancy, and half say girls are very con-cerned about other STDs. Boys and girls have similar assessments of how concerned girls are about these dangers.

Teen boys and girls also agree that teen boys are somewhat less concerned about these dangers than teen girls. Half say the teen boys they know are very concerned about AIDS, and less than half report that teen boys are very concerned about other STDs and unplanned pregnancy. While teen boys seem as attuned to teen girls' concerns as teen girls are themselves, teen girls are much more skeptical about teen boys' level of concern. The teen boys surveyed said their male peers are just as concerned as their female friends about AIDS and almost as concerned about other STDs and pregnancy. As the table illustrates, teen girls view their male friends as significantly less con-cerned about these dangers.

Concerns about STDs and pregnancy

	Percent Very Concerned
	Total	Boys	Girls
How concerned are the girls you know about . . .
HIV/AIDS	61	61	61
Other STDs	53	54	52
Getting pregnant	58	58	57
How concerned are the boys you know about . . .
HIV/AIDS	51	60	42
Other STDs	45	51	35
Getting a girl pregnant	39	48	31

Concerns about HIV, other STDs and pregnancy do not increase with age, nor do they grow much as the level of sexual activity that a teen and his or her friends engage in increases.

Are They Protecting Themselves?

Many teens are concerned about sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned preg-nancies. Unfortunately, this concern does not necessarily mean sexually experienced teens are always protecting themselves. In fact, many are taking risks. Less than half of sexually experienced teen boys interviewed (45%) and even fewer of the teen girls (38%) say they have used birth control every time they have had intercourse. One in five sexually experienced teens (19%) say they have never used birth control. Sexually experienced teens who have had more than one partner are even less likely to say they have used birth control consistently (36%) than those who have had only one partner (51%). Surprisingly, teens who have had conversations about birth control, HIV and other STDs with their sexual partners are not significantly more likely than those who have not had such conversations to report using birth control consistently.

There is some evidence that the level of concern among a teen's social group affects that teen's sexual behavior. For example, although peer concern is not related to whether or not a teen has had intercourse, it does appear to be related to individual teens' reasons for abstaining. Those virgins whose friends, both male and female, are very concerned about pregnancy, AIDS, and STDs are twice as likely as teens whose friends are less concerned to cite these fears as a reason they personally have not had sex (19% vs. 10% on average). Similarly, the collective fear of contracting HIV/AIDS affects teens' decision about birth control use. Over half (53%) of those sexually expe-rienced teens who say the teens in their social circle are very concerned about HIV/AIDS use birth control, often condoms, consistently, compared with only a third (30%) of those whose friends exhibit less concern. Peer concerns about other STDs and about pregnancy do not appear to impact individual teens' behavior.

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Methodology

The Kaiser Family Foundation/YM 1998 National Survey of Teens: Teens Talk about Dating, Intimacy, and Their Sexual Experiences is a random-sample national survey of 650 teens, ages 13-18 years old. The survey was designed by staff at the Founda-tion, YM, and Princeton Survey Research Associates (PSRA). It was conducted by telephone by PSRA between October 9 and November 3, 1997. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus four percent-age points. The sampling error for the sub-sample of teen girls is plus or minus six percentage points and the sampling error for the sub-sample of teen boys is also plus or minus six percentage points. The sampling error for the sub-sample of sexually ex-perienced teens is plus or minus eight percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting telephone surveys can intro-duce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls. Parental permission was granted prior to interviewing the teens.