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Hooking up, losing out? The new culture of teen sex ... and how to talk to your campers about it: healthy teens--third in a series of three articles.

Article Excerpt
Reports of a fourteen-year-old middle school girl performing oral sex on a sixteen-year-old high school boy differed only slightly from scores of similar tales making headlines across the country. The setting (a school bus) and the audience (classmates) made it especially unappealing, but really not that surprising. After all, it was not long before that news broke of a senior class scavenger hunt proffering points for proof (videos and such) of masturbation and public intercourse, and not long after that a widely publicized episode of group oral sex rocked a storied New England prep school.

Such incidents in a diverse set of institutions and communities nationwide raise important questions about early intimacy among teens and the physical, social, emotional, and legal toll it can take on young lives.

Just as important, it points to a "reality gap" between increasingly normative sexual behavior among youth and commonly held perceptions of adults. Perhaps the public nature of heretofore private tales may at last awaken the sleeping giant of awareness and communication needed to keep teens safe.

Teen Sex

During adolescence, psychology (eagerness for independence, control, and acceptance) joins with biology (hormones) in a fuse that may lead quickly to intimacy. Still-developing adolescent brains wrestling with judgment can then provide the spark. Understandably, many teens lack the foresight, and probably the cognitive makeup, to accurately anticipate all of the possible, even predictable, results of sexual behavior. This developmental disconnect accounts for all types of destructive decisions, from driving drunk to having unprotected sex.

But all of that can explain the motivation behind teen sexual behavior for generations, so why the dramatic shift in adolescent attitudes lately? At least part of the answer rests with the social "norming" of teen sex and adult indifference or inattention.

Social Norming

While each of us is influenced by what we view as common and acceptable behavior, this is especially true during adolescence, when an almost innate drive to "go along to get along" can weight decision-making. After all, who doesn't want to be "normal?" Fifteen-year-old Kevin had oral sex with a girl he hardly knew because, "I thought everyone else had done it." And fourteen-year-old Jake rates feeling pressured to have sex as the single biggest source of stress in his life.

That pressure affects both sexes but seems particularly common among boys, leading to early sexual activity less because they want it and more because they believe it's time they did. Blair says, "I must be the only eighteen-year-old on the planet who hasn't had sex."...

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