Teenage Sex a Worrying Issue

The article ‘Fined $7k for having sex with girl, 15, he met online’ (The Straits Times, 4 March) concerns an incident where a twenty-two year old man paid 850 dollars to have sex with an underage girl after meeting her online. The incident was discovered when she mentioned it to her boyfriend, who later called the police.

This article brings to light one of the growing social problems in Singapore – Teenage Sex. As the country becomes more liberal and globalised, teenagers have become increasingly casual about sexual relationships, in part due to peer pressure and eroding moral values. One does not need to look far to find evidence of this: in my Secondary 3 class, there are already boys throwing around words like “sex” and discussing their love-lives, once tabooed subjects. Moreover, Ministry of Health statistics reveal that the number of teenage abortions increased by 258 between 1998 and 2001.

Some may argue that this is not necessarily detrimental to our society as teenagers, who are perfectly able to make their own choices, are now able to enjoy more freedom, but I beg to differ, due to traditional views instilled by my parents. I think that teenage sex and the possible teenage pregnancy pose a tremendous problem to society.

Teenage childbearing is expensive. Due to the demands of caring for the unplanned child, many teenage mothers are forced to drop out of school. They are hence deprived of the proper education they should have received, resulting in low education attainment and dealing a severe blow to their career prospects. In fact, a British survey found that 89-percent of teenage mothers were unemployed while majority of the rest held blue-collared jobs.

Also, most of teenage mothers are single parents and have to depend on social welfare, spending taxpayers’ money. Even then, they have insufficient life experience to raise a child, often subjecting their child to unintentional abuse or neglect. The journal Adolescence Medicine also reports that they are more likely to have repeat pregnancy as they had experienced sex before and being teenagers, would not hesitate to do it again, often with other partners, which exacerbates the problem.

Having multiple sex-partners greatly increases the risks of contracting Sexually-Transmitted-Diseases (STDs), especially since some can be transmitted though no symptoms are shown yet. STDs are transmitted easily through casual sex, and some like HIV can cause loss of life. I find it hard to justify allowing reckless teenagers to make their own choice whether or not to have sex, given their unconcerned attitude towards it. They ought to realise that their irresponsible behaviour not only endangers their own life, but also that of others.

Do we want to be settled by the burden of having to waste our hard-earned money to pay high taxes for the dire consequences of teenage sex? I think not, so let us treat sex-education as a serious subject, instil the right values in teenagers, and help them realise the gravity and consequences of their actions, through which I believe we can stop this worrying trend.

500 Words

Link to Scanned Newspaper Article:
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