US teens more sexually active than parents think - poll

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Young American teenagers are becoming intimate and having sex at an earlier age than their parents suspect, according to a new survey.

The survey of 1,000 teenagers aged 13 to 16 showed 27 percent said they had “been with somebody in an intimate or sexual way,” while 83 percent of 1,000 parents surveyed said they did not think their teenager had gone beyond kissing.

Sexual intercourse was as common as oral sex among the teens in the survey released on Wednesday by NBC News and People magazine. Twelve percent said they had engaged in oral sex. Thirteen percent said they had sexual intercourse.

The poll had a margin of error of 3.4 percent.

Of those who said they had engaged in either sexual intercourse or oral sex, about half had first done so by the age of 14.

Eighty-seven percent of teens said they did not think it was OK for 13-and 14-year-olds to be having oral sex.

“It just shows parents that you need to be talking to your kids,” Dr. Mark Schuster of the UCLA Rand Adolescent Center and an author of a book on the subject told the NBC “Today” show in an interview about the survey findings on Wednesday.

“You need to be aware that kids are engaging in sex, and if they’re not, some of their friends are. They’re hearing about it. They’re learning about it. They need to hear about it from their parents too.”

Eighty-five percent of teens who said they know what oral sex is said they considered it somewhat or very important to be in love before doing it.

Even more said it was important to be in love before having sexual intercourse - 68 percent said it was very important, 23 percent said it was quite important.

Peer pressure on teenagers appeared to be more of a concern to parents than their children. Eighty-five percent of parents agreed with the statement there is a lot of pressure on teenagers to have sex by a certain age, while only 66 percent of teens agreed with that statement.

While the survey showed some teenagers were sexually active at a young age, 41 percent of those polled said they were still waiting for their first romantic kiss.

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