(The Washington Post) – The sex life of the American teenager is apparently far less busy than it was in generations past.

Less than half of teens older than 14 said they’ve had intercourse, a sharp drop from rates in the ’80s, a new CDC study found. The majority of those who do choose to become sexually active are using some form of protection. And, in the last decade, the popularity of the so-called “morning-after pill” among girls has more than doubled.

Teen births, meanwhile, have plummeted about 57 percent over the last 30 years.

Researchers surveyed roughly 2,000 boys and girls, 15 to 19. (They also interviewed about 1,770 young adults, 20 to 24, about their high school encounters.)

The share of teen girls who reported they’ve had sex at least once dropped from 51 percent in 1988 to 44 percent in 2013, they found. Abstinence was more pronounced among the guys: 60 percent of teen boys in 1988 said they’d had sex, compared to 47 percent in 2013. Much of the decline for both boys and girls occurred between 1988 and the period of 2006-2010, and numbers have held steady since then.

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Weaker working memory can increase the risk of both early sexual activity and unprotected sexual involvement during adolescence, says a new study by an Indian American researcher. 

(Times of India) – Working memory, the system in the brain that allows individuals to draw on and use information to plan and make decisions, develops through childhood and adolescence.

Adolescents with weaker working memory have more difficulty controlling their impulsive urges and considering the consequences of their behaviours. Adolescents, who have difficulty with impulse control may be more prone to risky sexual behaviour.

“We extended previous findings by showing for the first time that individuals, who have pre-existing weakness in working memory are more likely to have difficulty controlling impulsive tendencies in early to mid-adolescence,” said lead author Atika Khurana, assistant professor of counselling psychology and human services at the University of Oregon.

(Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

(Chron.com) – A lot changed from 1972 to 2012: Bell bottoms were traded for skinny jeans, and Three Dog Night gave way to Snoop Dogg, just to name a few.

But what’s more interesting is what’s going on — or rather, what’s not going on — in the bedroom.

A 12-year study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior surveyed over 33,000 participants and found, in a nutshell, that while millennials are more tolerant of pre-marital sex, they have had less overall sex partners than previous generations.

Millennials, those born in the 1980s and 1990s, have slept with an average of eight partners, compared to the 10 partners that those born between the 1940s and 1970s have slept with, according to a Time Magazine article.

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(Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

(Chron.com) – A lot changed from 1972 to 2012: Bell bottoms were traded for skinny jeans, and Three Dog Night gave way to Snoop Dogg, just to name a few.

But what’s more interesting is what’s going on — or rather, what’s not going on — in the bedroom.

A 12-year study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior surveyed over 33,000 participants and found, in a nutshell, that while millennials are more tolerant of pre-marital sex, they have had less overall sex partners than previous generations.

Millennials, those born in the 1980s and 1990s, have slept with an average of eight partners, compared to the 10 partners that those born between the 1940s and 1970s have slept with, according to a Time Magazine article.

READ MORE