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SAN FRANCISCO -- Situationships. "Sneaky links." The "talking stage," the flirtatious getting-to-know-you phase -- typically done via text -- that can lead to a hookup.
High school students are having less sexual intercourse. That's what the studies say. But that doesn't mean they're having less sex.
The language of young love and lust, and the actions behind it, are evolving. And the shift is not being adequately captured in national studies, experts say.
For years, studies have shown a decline in the rates of American high school students having sex. That trend continued, not surprisingly, in the first years of the pandemic, according to a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study found that 30% of teens in 2021 said they had ever had sex, down from 38% in 2019 and a huge drop from three decades ago, when more than half of teens reported having sex.
The Associated Press took the findings to teenagers and experts around the country to ask for their interpretation. Parents: Some of the answers may surprise you.
The meaning of sex: depends who you ask
For starters, what is the definition of sex?
"Hmm. That's a good question," says Rose, 17, a junior at a New England high school.
She thought about it for 20 seconds, then listed a range of possibilities for heterosexual sex, oral sex and relations between same-sex or LGBTQ partners. On her campus, short-term hookups -- known as "situationships" -- are typically low commitment and high risk from both health and emotional perspectives.
There are also "sneaky links" -- when you hook up in secret and don't tell your friends. "I have a feeling a lot more people are quote unquote having sex -- just not necessarily between a man and a woman."
For teens today, the conversation about sexuality is moving from a binary situation to a spectrum and so are the kinds of sex people are having. And while the vocabulary around sex is shifting, the main question on the CDC survey has been worded the same way since the government agency began its biannual study in 1991: Have you "ever had sexual intercourse?"
"Honestly, that question is a little laughable," says Kay, 18, who identifies as queer and attends a public high school near Lansing, Michigan. "There's probably a lot of teenagers who are like, 'No, I've never had sexual intercourse, but I've had other kinds of sex.'"
The AP agreed to use teenagers' first or middle names for this article because of a common concern they expressed about backlash at school, at home and on social media for speaking about their peers' sex lives and LGBTQ+ relations.
Sexual identity is evolving
Several experts say the CDC findings could signal a shift in how teen sexuality is evolving, with gender fluidity becoming more common along with a decrease in stigma about identifying as not heterosexual.
They point to another finding in this year's study that found the proportion of high school kids who identify as heterosexual dropped to about 75%, down from about 89% in 2015, when the CDC began asking about sexual orientation. Meanwhile, the share who identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual rose to 15%, up from 8% in 2015.