The UK and the US have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the world. An increasing number of teenagers in both these countries are contracting a wide range of sexually transmitted diseases, and sex during school years is fast becoming the norm. Recent figures suggest that 29% of teens felt pressure to have sex, 24% had done something sexually they didn’t feel comfortable doing, and unsurprisingly, many of teens taking part in this survey admitted that alcohol or drugs had affected their sexual decisions in the past.

Seeing as I attend a high school myself at the moment, I know the facts of teenage sex that some adults may never be told about. Teens are much willing to open up to their peer group about ‘what they did last night’ than their parents or school teachers, and as a result the figures in these surveys could well be reflecting lower figures than the reality of the situation. And with an increasing amount of teenagers losing their virginity at an increasingly lower age, is it time to either take a step back and admit defeat, or clamp down on underage sex in what is meant to be one of the most developed countries in the world?

First option for the government – admitting defeat and scrapping the legal age of consent all together. Let’s face it; this is a very hard law to enforce. Many teenagers get away with having sex and it is incredibly difficult for the law enforcement authorities to find out about this in the first place. I am also reliably informed that even if they manage to create a case against the couple, if they both claim they gave consent then there is often little the police can do about it.

Would it not make more sense for the government to scrap the law and concentrate on reaching out to teens through education? After all, everybody knows that the more a teenager is told not to do something, the more likely they are to go out and do it anyway. This is certainly the case for a large number of teenage drinkers, smokers and drug users – they do it simply because they shouldn’t. Taking this stigma away from teenage sex could in fact help raise the age of the average virgin once again in the US and UK.

The other option is to raise the legal age of consent in the UK to 18, or maybe even 21. This would send out a message to sexually active teenagers, or those teens who would otherwise soon become sexually active, that the governments of their countries were serious about stamping down on underage sex. However, teenagers know as well as the next person that it is a very hard law to enforce, and as mentioned above: the more teenagers are told not to engage in sexual activity, the more likely many of them are to do so anyway.

So, maybe we’ve reached a dead end here. Raising the age of sexual consent could just make the prospect all the more attractive for teenagers, and lowering or scrapping it could send out the message that the country doesn’t care anymore. Maybe it’s best to just leave it how it stands at the moment? I’ll let you decide…