Fewer young people say they're using condoms
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Fewer young people are using condoms, prompting public health experts to rethink their approach to promoting safe sex.
Why it matters: Teens and young adults may be turning away from condoms, but they're also having less sex in general, and contracting fewer sexually transmitted infections, than previous generations. Teen pregnancy is also down.
- The change in contraceptive habits overlaps with heightened politicization of access to reproductive health care, and comes as the number of women getting abortions increases.
By the numbers: 52% of sexually active high school students surveyed by the CDC in 2023 said they used a condom the last time they had sex — a seven percentage point drop over the past 10 years.
Between the lines: Young women have increasingly turned to birth control pills and IUDs to ensure they don't become pregnant, the Associated Press reports — longer-term options that they can control.
- New drugs that treat or prevent sexually transmitted infections have also contributed to the change in norms.
- Among men who have sex with men, the fear of HIV has declined significantly in recent years — and condom usage has fallen along with it, per AP.
And some states' sex ed curriculums discourage condoms. Mississippi, for example, bans schools from demonstrating how to use one.
State of play: Young people are having less sex than they used to, which researchers attribute partly in part to online distractions.
- Sexual inactivity increased among U.S. adults, predominantly younger men, from 2000 to 2018, one recent study found. Sexual activity of high schoolers dropped from 34% to 21% in the decade from 2013 to 2023.
- While rates of sexually transmitted infection increased overall in the U.S. from 2020 to 2023, they decreased among 18-24 year olds, according to Fair Health researchers.
- Teen birth rates in the U.S. also reached a record low last year, per the CDC, following a general decline since the '90s.
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