The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its Youth Risk Behavior Survey with comparisons between 2017 numbers and 2007 numbers. This is a wide-range survey of high-schoolers. Are teens have more or less sex? Doing more or less drugs.
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There is good news on a lot of it.
The percentage of high school students having sex went from 48 percent in 2007 to 40 percent in 2017, and those who had four or more partners went from 15 percent in 2007 to 10 percent in 2017.
What isn’t good when it comes to sex is condom use. Among those sexually active high-schoolers, condom use went from 62 percent in 2007 to 54 percent in 2017.
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When it comes to drug use, those numbers were also down if we’re talking about the illicit kinds: cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, inhalants, hallucinogens, or ecstasy. It went from 23 percent in 2007 to 14 percent in 2017. Here’s what’s not good: 1 in 7 high-schoolers reported misusing prescription opioids.
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Some of the other quality of life numbers aren’t as good.
- Nearly 1 in 5 students said they were bullied at school
- More than 1 in 10 female students and 1 in 28 male students report having been physically forced to have sex.
- 32 percent said they persistently felt sad or hopeless, which was up from 29 percent in 2007