iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us

by Jean M. Twenge

The drop is the largest for 9th graders, where the number of sexually active teens has almost been cut in half since the 1990s. The average teen now has sex around the spring of 11th grade, while most GenX’ers in the 1990s got started a year earlier, by the spring of 10th grade. Fifteen percent fewer 12th graders in 2015 (vs. 1991) have had sex. Fewer teens having sex is one of the reasons behind what many see as one of the most positive youth trends in recent years: the teen birthrate hit an all-time low in 2015, cut by more than half since its modern peak in the early 1990s (see Figure 1.4). Only 2.4% of girls aged 15 to 19 had a baby in 2015, down from 6% in 1992. So with fewer teens having sex, fewer are getting pregnant and fewer are giving birth at a young age. Parenthood, one of the more irrevocable milestones of adulthood, is less likely to be reached by today’s teens.