January 4, 2018

CDC Says Teens of Color Are Having a Lot Less Sex

Teenagers are having less sex. Actually, strike that. White teenagers are having about as much sex as ever. But among black and Hispanic teenagers, there’s been a sudden and steep dropoff among the number of high school seniors who say they have ever had intercourse:

I’m a little skeptical about how reliable these numbers are. Among Hispanic kids, for example, it’s a little hard to believe that the number with sexual experience was 70 percent in 2007, then down to 60 percent in 2011, back up to 70 percent in 2013, and down again to 60 percent in 2015. And do we really think that in the space of two years, the number of black kids with sexual experience plummeted from 77 percent to 63 percent? What could possibly have caused such a huge drop in such a short time?

So take this with a grain of salt. It’s good news, I suppose, but I wonder if it’s fake news?

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