Teen’s sexual health – the Teenager’s Libido

Libido – Controllable or not?

Okay, let me give you some fast facts about teen libido:

Fact number one:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is committed to providing programs that prevent out-of-wedlock teen pregnancies. To do this, they primarily encourage adolescents to remain abstinent with the aid of these programs. President Bush's budget in the year 2003 had an additional $33 million for abstinence education, which gives a sharp increase to the abstinence funding to about $135 million. The Abstinence Education Program provides grants to states for educational activities like mentoring and counseling to promote abstinence from sexual activity until the time of marriage.

Apart from that, religious groups have also actually come up with pledges for millions of teenagers to sign, signifying that they will refrain from sex until marriage.

Fact number two:

However, there are actually a lot of studies that can prove that these programs are not working. Nu-oh. On the contrary, recent studies only show that these pledges are utterly ineffective. Harvard researches report that a vast majority of the teenagers who happen to take these abstinence pledges ended up having sex just within a year from signing. In fact, many of them already surrendered to the pleasure of sex even way before they finish signing their names on those pledge forms. Apparently, the only benefit that an abstinence pledge could offer is what the government refers to as a “plausible deniability.” This psuedo-promisory note of keeping down the raging hormones of wide-eyed teens is a fairy tale that doesn’t have a happy ending.

Fact number three:

Just because there is an increase in the abstinence programs of the government doesn’t mean that there will be a decrease in the libido of teens. Watch the trend and you’ll know that the youth culture is more than infested with sexual innuendoes, enough to raise their hot sexual fantasies to the ceiling and straight out to the moon. How else can you explain why many of the most popular Google searches involve the keywords “teen” and “sex” and everything in between and why internet advertisers are scampering for these pages. Look at your everyday MTV and surely you won’t miss out on the bootylicious prances of the likes of Beyonce and Britney heating up the screens. See which among the magazines sell like hotcakes and I’m sure these glossy pages have almost always got to do with sex. Fact is, the society is forever putting our youth in a hot oven that is persistently taunting them with tempting pictures of sex and the taboos that come with, making it more ‘exciting’ and seemingly cool.

Clearly, abstinence is not a very effective tool for curbing teenage sex and ultimately, unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Personally, I don’t know how to solve this problem but as they say you must always go to the root of the problem than merely dangle on its branches. Clearly, it’s the libido.