Well if you are a high school age boy you probably already know what Cathy Young has written.

Are some kids having sex too soon, and with too many partners, for their own emotional and physical well-being? Almost certainly. But the majority do not inhabit the sexual jungle of worried adults’ imaginations. The teenage fellatio craze exists mainly among adults.

She notes that most of the “evidence” of this new craze seems to be anecdotal with sloppy verification of various claims. She notes that most of the “evidence” seems to come from things like episodes of Oprah where the guest has supposedly talked to 50 girls. What isn’t asked is “Are the experiences they are reporting on something they did or rumors?” Seems like an important question to ask when surveying young girls about anything, let alone things like Rainbow Parties.

The case when there was a survey done by people who know how to do surveys the evidence is typically disregarded.

A study by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released in September 2005, that found 25 percent of 15-year-old girls and half of 17-year-olds had engaged in oral sex. While the survey did not include children under 15, the report noted that in a survey several months earlier, only 4 percent of adolescents 13 to 14 years old said they’d had oral sex. (Did any of this represent an increase from the past? Probably not: A Child Trends analysis of data from surveys of unmarried males ages 15 to 19 in 1995 and 2002 found no significant changes in reported rates of oral sex experience.)

[…]

The study did say something about one aspect of the alleged oral sex craze, something that contradicts conventional wisdom. Girls and boys, it turns out, are about equally likely to give and to receive. Actually, at least among younger adolescents, boys overall reported more oral sex experience than girls, but both boys and girls were more likely to report receiving oral sex than giving it—which suggests a lot of respondents are fibbing.

In other words, like most people, when asked about sexual encounters the respondent is likely to lie about how much they get vs. how much they give, and that there appears to be no change in the data.

So, if you aren’t a high school age boy and thinking, “Dang how come all the fun stuff happens after I finish high school?!?!” don’t worry you aren’t missing a thing. High school is probably much like you remembered it, and you really don’t want to go back.