Sex and Self Esteem in Teens

CH's 11 & 12 Sex& Self Esteem

Sexual behavior in adolescence can be directly related to the way a person views himself or herself. The way a girl or boy thinks of themselves will result in whether or not they decide to become sexually active, who or how many people they will be active with and also how the sexually activities will then make them feel about themselves. High self esteem can help a person clear their head and make solid-sound decisions on how they will approach this topic, but in current day society, many adolescence aged kids have severe self esteem problems, even if they may appear to be kids with a lot of positive things going for them. Society, and the media and entertainment have lead to a severe damaging problem that is contributing to the rise in low self-esteem in adolescence. A person with low self-esteem will not be able to clearly decipher the decisions that they should be making when it comes to sexual promiscuity.

A girl hears her friends at school talking about hooking up with a guy, and how fun it was to have sex with him, she knows she has never had sex, but wants to be able to associate with these girls better, and actually feels like they may not want to be friends with someone like her if she isn't like them. So what does she do? If this girl has a high self esteem and high self worth, none of this should bother her at all, but typically, this age she is in is an age of confusion and wanting to fit in, so she goes to a party where there are a group of boys she knows, makes a bad decision, and ends up having sex with one of them, even though she really didn't even want to. This is just the start to what a damaging cycle these actions can lead to for this girl and her personal development, and more importantly, her self-esteem. Now she is associating growing up and fitting in with having sex and using her body, which is a very damaging thing for a young girl, the cycle is vicious, and it only gets worse when feelings get involved.

Now this girl who had sex for the first time last week, is walking down the hallway at school, and see's the boy she slept with, she's known him for awhile and they are friends, but he pulls his buddy aside and whispers something to him, and they both start laughing and turn around and walk away. This is a very realistic situation and now the girl is very confused and doesn't know what to think. Her self-esteem has taken a very large hit negatively, and she is confused as to what she should be doing, but has already associated sex with feeling good and being popular so this might be what she does again when she feels so lost. These are direct examples of how self-esteem is so important to what types of decisions young teens are making and the way they feel about themselves after their decisions.

A positive support group is essential for a young person in their