The first “map” of teen sexual behavior gives new meaning to the old warning that you don’t just have sex with a person, but with everyone that person ever had sex with, researchers said on Monday.
They found a chain of 288 one-to-one sexual relationships at a high school in the U.S. Midwest, meaning the teenager at the end of the chain may have had direct sexual contact with only one person, but indirect contact with 286 others.
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The students in this network are not unusual. They are just average students, and not extremely active sexually. So social policies that could help some of them protect themselves from STDs could break a lot of these chains that can lead to the spread of disease,” [sociologist James Moody, who led the study] said.
“Anything that limits that and restricts the flow of body fluids between people would help.” That includes education about condom use, abstinence and other policies, he said.
[ME:] Breaking news: behavior change would help, too.