According to Pollster Ipsos-Reid, 24% of sexually active teens at age 14 to 17 did not use condoms or any other kind of protection against sexually transmitted infections the last time they had sex.
"One in four did not," said an adolescent health specialist at Children's Hospital, Dr. Margo Lane. "That translates into 100,000 teenagers not using a condom."
The survey was completed last October for the Canadian Association for Adolescent Health. It also records that a half-million sexually active youths have had three partners on average. The 38% of them have sex accidentally.
The problem reveals to be more complicated with the survey's findings that far too few teenagers look for the sex information to choose lifestyle that is more healthy.
A 17-year-old Winnipeg student, Valerie Cobb-Friesen, recalls what she has seen and heard in high school and neighbourhood in her Fort Richmond.
"There are very abstinent people and there are people who just go - who are reckless, who are promiscuous. They have multiple partners or they have casual sex, or maybe unprotected sex. It's not the sex we should worry about, it's the irresponsible behaviour."
Need to do a bigger effort
About 62% of teenagers confessed they had difficulties to get answers on issue of safe sex. They also felt discomfort in talking about it. The 43% teens pointed to their parents as their best source of information.
Valerie's mother, Margaret Friesen claims that schools and parents have to make a bigger effort to educate teenagers about the risks related to sex, but so does television.
She thinks that such series as "Friends and Sex and the City" should have done more.
"When was the last time your heard the words chlamydia used, or gonorrhea or syphilis? Genital herpes? If you watch Friends, when do they ever talk about anyone getting an STI?"
-Friesen wonders. "They never talk about the consequences of it, and some of these are life-altering consequences."
The study revealed an alarming lack of knowledge about consequences of unprotected sex. However, Lane and other experts claim that despite the fact that one-quarter of teens do not use protection, the survey of 150,000 randomly selected families brings signs of hope.
"Three out of four is a better statistic than people in my age group would have had when we were teens," claims one of the mothers, Connie Smith. Her teenage children have participated in a non-religious sex education program of Unitarian Church. The popularity of the program increases.
"It's just that the risk of the actual behaviour itself has gone up." - Smith states.
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Paul Douglas
This article was reprinted from PharmacyCenter.org health blog.