No sex, please...we’re Generation Sensible

Teen pregnancies fall ‘as kids focus on social media’

THE rise of social media has been credited for a new ‘generation sensible’ in Scotland as teenage pregnancies hit a record low.

The rate of teenage girls becoming pregnant has plummeted by more than 40 per cent in less than a decade, the latest figures show.

Experts say the fall comes from young people spending more time communicating on sites such as Facebook and Snapchat than actually seeing each other.

This ‘generation sensible’, tied to their smartphones and tablets, are also drinking less alcohol – believed to make them less likely to have underage sex.

Clare Murphy, spokesman for abortion service the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), said the Scottish fall in teenage pregnancies was ‘monumental’, crediting better education and contraception advice.

But she added: ‘It may be that younger people are spending less time socialising in person and more time on social media.

‘There is more of a world that they can access on social media, which perhaps gives them other things to be doing than going to the park, for example, with a bottle of cider.’

Miss Murphy said there had also been a large drop in alcohol consumption by youngsters, which made them less likely to engage in ‘risky behaviours’.

While the perception among many older people remained of ‘gymslip mothers’, Miss Murphy said: ‘There is very much a feeling that this is “generation sensible”. A lot of the behaviours older people expect, younger people are not engaging in to the same degree.’

The new statistics for 2014 show there were 5,122 pregnancies among girls under the age of 20.

That is the lowest number in two decades, according to the figures going back to 1994. This works out at 34.1 per 1,000 girls under 20 getting pregnant – a fall from a peak of 57.1 per 1,000 in 2007. While greater use of contraception may play a part, teenagers are also less likely to have sex at all while they are at school.

A Scottish Government report from last year reported findings that three-quarters of 15-year-olds had never had sex, which was ‘almost entirely due to a change in reported behaviours from young women’.

A 2014 study found that while boys were just as likely to have had sex by the age of 15, girls seemed to be saying no more often, with the proportion of sexually active 15year-olds dropping from 35 to 27 per cent in four years.

While there are not up-to-date figures on drinking, the 2013 Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey found the number of 13 and 15-year-olds who reported having drunk alcohol in the past week had hit its lowest point since the survey began in 1990, with fewer youngsters seeing it as socially acceptable.

Public Health Minister Aileen Campbell welcomed the figures, which she said reflected the ‘dedicated work of education, health and community services’.

She added that the Scottish Government would press ahead with its Pregnancy and Parenthood in Young People Strategy, which hopes to address the causes of teenage pregnancy and support young parents through education, training and job opportunities.

‘Engaging less in risky behaviour’