Teen Sex is Harmful

Janice Shaw Crouse's latest column "Teen Sex Leads to Depression and Drug Use" highlights why abstinence education is so important, and why the Integrity Ball and Purity Ball events can help protect our young people.

Now there is solid evidence that teen girls who experiment with risky behaviors (i.e., sex and drugs) are more vulnerable to depression and that teen boys who engage in binge drinking and heavy marijuana use are prone to depression.

So that we're clear, this evidence doesn't come from drooling Bible-thumpers like me, but from what secularists so glorify: science.

In an article published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, five authors from different departments (Psychology, Pediatrics, Maternal and Child Health, Research and Evaluation, and Internal Medicine) at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) explored whether “gender-specific patterns of substance use and sexual behavior precede and predict depression or vice versa.” The data for the UNC-CH study came from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health — well-known for the large sample size and longitudinal design that allows temporal ordering among a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents. Further, aspects of the UNC-CH findings were replicated in five other studies. The UNC-CH study, though, moved beyond previous ones by considering typical patterns found during adolescence and by examining gender differences.

So what did they find?

The message is clear: teens engaging in risky behavior are at risk for depression. No wonder teen depression is so widespread when almost half (47 percent) of high school students reported in 2003 (the number has dropped since then) that during the past month they had had intercourse, 45 percent reporting drinking alcohol and 22 percent reported that they had used marijuana. Almost one-third of the students said that their feelings of sadness and hopelessness had kept them from doing normal activities over the past year.

It is important to also note that only four percent of students who abstained from drugs and sex had a problem with either depression or suicide.

The sexual anarchists who love to pooh-pooh wonder why there is often more attention paid to the girls in abstinence efforts:

Not surprisingly, this is another study to report that girls are far more negatively affected by early sexual activity than are boys.

It may seem like a lot of fun, having sex before marriage, but there is a heavy price to be paid, and liberals are lying to kids about that cost.

Better to delay satisfaction and preserve your well being than to risk the misery of depression, STDs and unwed pregnancy.