Weird Spin on Teen Sex Data

The Washington Post this morning, and every other newspaper in the country, had an article reporting on a re-analysis of some data, showing that teens who practice abstinence do not -- repeat, do not -- use oral sex a way to preserve their "technical virginity."

Interesting ...

Contrary to widespread belief, teenagers do not appear to commonly engage in oral sex as a way to preserve their virginity, according to the first study to examine the question nationally.

The analysis of a federal survey of more than 2,200 males and females aged 15 to 19, released yesterday, found that more than half reported having had oral sex. But those who described themselves as virgins were far less likely to say they had tried it than those who had had intercourse.

"There's a popular perception that teens are engaging in serial oral sex as a strategy to avoid vaginal intercourse," said Rachel Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, a private, nonprofit research organization based in New York, who helped do the study. "Our research suggests that's a misperception."

Instead, the study found that teens tend to become sexually active in many ways at about the same time. For example, although only one in four teenage virgins had engaged in oral sex, within six months after their first intercourse more than four out of five adolescents reported having oral sex. A Debunking on Teenagers and 'Technical Virginity'

This is weird. Let me rephrase part of what they just said:

One teenaged virgin in four has practiced oral sex.

The subtitle of this Post article is "Researchers Find That Oral Sex Isn't Commonplace Among Young People Who Avoid Intercourse."

It seems like there is a question about what "commonplace" means.

Here, let's look at the American Bible Society's population data, just to keep it interesting. Extrapolating from known data, they estimated that in 2006 there were 34.6 million teenagers in the US. Say half of them have had sex, we hear that number sometimes. That leaves 17.3 million virgins in the country. A fourth of them have practiced oral sex. That's a little more than 4.3 million virgin teenagers who have had oral sex.

Is a behavior practiced by 4.3 million teenagers "commonplace," or not? I guess I would say yes, that is commonplace. If 4.3 million teenagers bought the same CD it would be Number One. But the newspapers all agree that it's not.

Let me point out that we actually hear that half of teenagers have had sex by the time they graduate from high school. If you consider the number of teens who have not reached that age yet, you see that the 4.3 million actually underestimates the number of teenage virgins. I'm just figuring with ballpark estimates here, of course, and not going back to the original study. The fact is, a big bunch of teenage virgins practice oral sex, more than 4.3 million.

Now, if does appear to be a fact that once a teen has gone all the way they will try other things as well. That fact though is irrelevant to the question at hand, whether those who claim to be virgins are having oral sex in order to maintain their "technical virginity." And these data do show that millions of teens are doing that, having oral and not vaginal sex.

Here's how the spin works:

Proponents of sex-education programs that focus on abstinence said the findings debunked the criticism that the approach was inadvertently prompting more teens to have oral sex, which still carries the risk of sexually transmitted disease, in order to preserve their virginity.

"This study . . . invalidates the suggestion that 'technical virgins' account for the rise in oral and anal sex," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association. "Sexually experienced teens were almost four times more likely to engage in oral sex and 20 times more likely to engage in anal sex than their peers who were virgins."

If anything, the findings support the need to encourage more teens to delay sexual activity of all kinds, she said.

OK, I'll buy it, the "technical virgins" do not account for the rise in oral and anal (I suppose, no data given here) sex; more non-virgins do those things than virgins.

But that wasn't the question, the headlines aren't about what accounts for the rise in oral sex in teens. The headlines are saying that teens do not practice oral sex to remain virgins -- and millions of them do.