Sexual Issues Facing Teens

I think the top sexual issues affecting teens today are STD/STI\'s, abstinence only sex education and a lack of LGBTQ rights and protection.  1/4 teenagers has an STD or STI and the rates of contraction are on the rise. This is a disturbing trend and I think we as a society need to provide teenagers with access and information about having safe sex. This means lots of free condoms and demonstrations in sex ed, access and demonstrations of dental dams and access and information about testing. Also, along with this, teenagers are getting inaccurate and misleading information in abstinence only education, which is the current model funded by the federal government, and used in most states. 

         Teens are not learning about contraceptives, abortion, menstruation, abuse/violence, LGBTQ issues or sex for pleasure. Because of this, teens are uneducated about their bodies and sexuality. This means they are engaging in normal, healthy sexual activity without having  the proper knowledge on how to protect themselves from STD\'s/STI\'s or pregnancy. They are also not learning about healthy sexuality in any sense of the term and we are raising a generation that doesn\'t have accurate information about sex. 

              Also, this generation is one of the first to acknowledge LGBTQ rights, but is still very much lacking. There is a lot of hate speech, discrimination and harassment LGBTQ youth face and many schools have no policy to protect those individuals from bullying. This leaves a huge percentage of people without a safe space. This is obviously a problem, as LGBTQ youth are at higher risk of committing suicide or other self-harm behavior. These issues need to be talked about and addressed so that we as a society can fix these very real problems teens are facing.