Stephen Wallace: In the early 2000s, we started to hear about middle school sex parties which took many people by surprise. Often, those involved oral sex and group oral sex, certainly frightening and startling for parents of middle school students. We also know that young people are developing more quickly. We see puberty starting now in girls and boys as young as 9, 10 years old. So as you might expect, sexual behavior may start earlier. Many people feel pressured to engage in a sexual behavior. Many people have gone from what we used to call Relational Sex whereas intimate sexual behavior took place within the context of a relationship, which is what many parents grew up with in that type of environment, to what we call Recreational Sex where kids are hooking up with friends, with strangers, simply for self-gratification. With all that sexual activity taking place, one quarter of middle school students and two-thirds of high school students, we have reason for concern, the rates of illness and disease are rampant. The Center for Disease Control for example indicates that 1 in 4 teenage girls, not 1 in 4 sexually active teenage girls, but 1 in 4 teenage girls has an STD or an STI. We’re also concerned about the mental health effects of early intimate sexual behavior. With the majority of kids who engaged in those behaviors reporting later that they wish they hadn’t been that they wish they had waited. Through the teens today, researched at S. A. D. D., we also linked intimate sexual behavior with stress and depression among young people. Part of what’s driving this early intimate sexual behavior is the internet, social networking sites, and books, movies, all kinds of content video games, that young people are exposed to; I call them Weapons of Mass Persuasion, that entice young people into sexual behavior far earlier than we hoped they would be engaged in those types of things.