Study shows teen girls are more likely to engage in unprotected sex their first time

By Staff Writer

New research indicates that teenage girls are 30 percent more likely than boys to have unprotected sex the first time they have sexual intercourse, regardless of any previous sex education instruction, WebMD reports.

Researcher Nicole Weller, a doctoral student at Arizona State University, examined data on 5,012 young people between ages 11 and 19 from the National Survey of Family Growth, an ongoing study that started in 1973.

She told the news source that teens between the ages of 15 and 19 are delaying their first sexual encounters to about age 17.5, compared to age 15 a decade ago, but that young people in that age group have the highest percentage of sexually transmitted diseases.

Weller added that 13 percent of the total sample said that they used no protection the first time they had heterosexual sex, specifically intercourse.

The findings suggest that "females are starting to engage in risky behaviors" and may not worry about using protection if "they love and trust their partner," which outweighs what they may have learned in sex education classes or from parental lectures, according to the news source.

The Guttmacher Institute reports that the U.S. has the highest levels of teen pregnancy among developed nations.