Study Targets Group Sex Among Teens
SPH study: exposure to pornography a factor
More than 7 percent of teenage girls participating in a study led by a School of Public Health researcher reported having engaged in group sex.
One in 13 girls, some as young as 14, taking part in a School of Public Health study reported having group sex, a trend that researchers say poses risks to their sexual and reproductive health.
Emily Rothman, an SPH associate professor of community health sciences, and her colleagues surveyed 328 females ages 14 to 20 who had visited a Boston-area community or school-based health clinic, to explore whether they had ever had sex with multiple partners—either consensual or forced. The authors call this sexual experience “multiperson sex,” or MPS, to underscore that it refers to any group sex experience, from gang rape to sex parties.
Of the 7.3 percent of girls who said they had had group sex, more than half reported being pressured to participate, and 45 percent said that no condoms were used during the most recent encounter. Participants also were more likely to report cigarette smoking, being the victim of dating violence, or being diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. The study was published in the Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine.
In addition, the authors note a “strong association between exposure to pornography, having been forced to do things that their sex partner saw in pornography, and MPS.” In the study, those who had seen pornography in the past month were approximately five times as likely as those who had not to report having had a group-sex experience.
Multiperson sex among youth is “an important public health topic that has received very little attention to date,” says Rothman, who led the study. “It’s time for parents, pediatricians, federal agencies, and community-based organizations to sit up, pay attention, and take notice. Group sex is happening, and we need to be prepared to address it.”
The study found that the average age of the first group-sex experience was 15.6 years old. The majority of those who reported such activity said they had participated only once, but 21 percent had multiple group-sex encounters. One-third said they had used alcohol or drugs prior to their most recent experience; half of those girls said that their alcohol or drug use was not voluntary, indicating that they were “liquored up” or drugged by their sexual partner.
Multiperson sex “appeared to pose a potential risk to sexual and reproductive health, as only 55 percent of participants reported that condoms were used consistently during their most recent MPS,” the study notes. “The majority of MPS-experienced girls in this sample reported being pressured, threatened, coerced, or forced to participate in MPS at least once.”
More than half (54 percent) of those teens were younger than 16 when they had a group-sex experience, which in Massachusetts would mean that their sexual partners were violating state law regarding the age of consent, the study found.
“Given the substantial proportion of girls who reported that their MPS was nonconsensual, additional research to understand more about the perpetrators, and how to prevent this particular form of sexual violence, is warranted,” the authors say. “Researchers and clinicians should pay particular attention to younger adolescents engaging in MPS. Given heightened concerns about potential consequences, information about how to address MPS with this subgroup is urgently needed.”
Even if participation among the adolescents had been voluntary, the study says, “it is crucial to know how this early experience shapes their sexual behavior trajectory and affects their lifetime risk for negative sexual, reproductive,” and other behaviors.
The authors say that while there has been considerable research on adult MPS and its association with HIV transmission and sexually transmitted diseases, relatively little attention has been paid to adolescent group-sex encounters. They cite a recent study of high school girls in the Northeast that found that “sex parties” are currently an “accepted activity” of a subset of teens. In another study, in Sweden, 7 percent of female high school seniors who were sexually active reported having had group sex.
In addition to Rothman, others involved in the study included researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, George Washington University, and the Division of Global Public Health, School of Medicine, University of California at San Diego.
The research was supported by grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the W. T. Grant Foundation.
The full study is available here.
Lisa Chedekel can be reached at chedekel@bu.edu.
Comments & Discussion
Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.