“For my ‘first time’, I made love without a condom because my girlfriend told me it was ‘safe'”: in France, as elsewhere in Europe, adolescents are using condoms less, due to a lack of information, according to experts.
Lucas, 19, in audiovisual BTS, had his first sexual intercourse last year. Even though his ex-girlfriend had assured him that she could not get pregnant, he did not feel “very serene” the next day. “I started to look on the internet to see what potential risks I was running,” he tells AFP in front of his high school in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine).
His friend Yohann (names changed) also remembers his first time: “I was 15, I had put on a condom but it stopped me from having an erection, so I ended up taking it off”. According to the young man, sexuality remains a “taboo subject” among teenagers. “And if, at one time, we talked a lot about AIDS, today this is not really the case. Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are less scary, we don’t die from them”, he decrees.
Condom use among sexually active adolescents has declined significantly in Europe over the past decade, with “worrying” rates of unprotected sex, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report released last week. Between 2014 and 2022, the percentage of adolescents who reported using a condom during their last sexual intercourse fell from 70% to 61% among boys, and from 63% to 57% among girls.
Brakes
In France, among 15-year-old respondents who reported sexual activity in 2022, 30% of both girls and boys indicated that they did not use one during their last intercourse. “In the 80s and 90s, there were problems with access to condoms, which have been completely resolved today,” reacts Saphia Guereschi, school nurse and general secretary of the SNICS-FSU union.
Since January 2023, young people under 26 can get them, without a prescription and free of charge, in pharmacies. “But there are other obstacles,” according to the school nurse. “In reaction to a generally anxiety-provoking society, young people are taking more and more risks,” she notes.
“The fear of AIDS has subsided, there is clearly a relaxation; this does not mean that we should be fearful, but it is essential to talk again about the need to protect ourselves,” she judges. “There is a lack of a major national campaign on sexual and reproductive rights, we have been calling for it for ten years,” also deplores Sarah Durocher, the president of Family Planning.
Compulsory for over twenty years, education on emotional life and sexuality is in fact rarely taught. Promised in June 2023 by Pap Ndiaye, then Minister of Education, the first draft of a school curriculum dedicated to the subject was published in March. It was normally due to come into force at the start of the 2024 school year.
Bull market of IST
“It will probably remain in the drawers for a while longer,” regrets Sarah Durocher. “However, we have a real backlash with STIs that are increasing,” she recalls. Since the beginning of the 2000s, bacterial sexually transmitted infections have started to increase again in Western countries, after a decline over the previous 20 years in the wake of the AIDS epidemic. They have notably seen a marked increase between 2020 and 2022 in metropolitan France.
Since Monday, people under 26 can get free screening without a prescription for four STIs, in addition to HIV, the screening of which was already reimbursed. “Good news,” according to Florence Thune, the general director of Sidaction. “We had focused a lot of messages on HIV; the drop in condom use is linked to a lack of knowledge about other STIs,” she analyses.
According to the latest Ifop survey conducted by her association, only 36% of young people aged 15-25 say they systematically use condoms, only a third because they have had screening tests. “The tools to protect yourself are there,” acknowledges Florence Thune. “What is missing is broad information on all aspects of prevention.”
