The usual perception of today's youth as being more sexually sophisticated and starting their intimate life at a younger age is absolutely wrong, the study says.
The beginning of sex life
According to the latest research conducted by Sexual Health in Canada sexual lives of teenagers remained basically the same with the decades. In spite of the fact that adolescent now have a wide access to Internet adult material, they do not start their sex lives earlier and do not have more partners than their parents or grandparents did.
The average age when teenagers engage in their first intercourse is 16,5 years, with 65 percent beginning their sex life at age 18-19 and only 28 percent at 15 to 17. These figures mainly correspond with those being several decades ago.
The reason for postponing the first sexual experience also remained unchanged over years: most of the girls reported they felt not ready and most boys said that they had no opportunity. The other common reason not to engage in sexual activity was not finding "Mr./Ms. Right".
Even more, most of those teens who already started their sex lives had one sexual partner.
Sexual health
However, the downside of today's reality of adolescent sex lives is that the number of youngsters having sexually transmitted infections like gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia, genital herpes is rising.
It was reported that less than one out of five teenagers were using condoms with many of them discontinuing using condom after settling down for monogamous relationships.
Linda Capperauld, executive director of the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health, said that findings suggest that youngsters lack "consistent quality education" to improve knowledge on sexual health. She also puts an emphasis on better interaction between sex educators and youngsters who can be quite responsible under favorable circumstances.
Most adolescents choose oral contraceptives to prevent pregnancy over condom use to avoid STD's.
The unwanted pregnancy rate has also declined in the past decades as well as number of abortions which however outweigh the number of teenagers giving births.
