Do High School Students Ask for Consent? Findings from the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey

Asking for consent is a necessary foundation for any sexual activity, and how young people communicate about it matters for sexual health and for preventing sexual violence. Yet most research on consent has studied college students, not teenagers. In 2023, for the first time, CDC's national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) asked high school students: "The last time you had sexual contact, did you ask for consent verbally?" A team from CDC and Indiana University analyzed the answers, producing the first national estimates of verbal consent-seeking among U.S. high school students.

Why it matters

In 2021, 30% of U.S. high school students said they had ever had sexual intercourse, and nearly one in four had had sex in the previous 3 months. Studies of college students find that they generally approve of affirmative consent, meaning consent communicated explicitly in words or actions, but in practice more often rely on implicit and nonverbal cues. College men report using verbal and explicit cues more often than college women, who frequently report signaling consent by not resisting. Students often read their partners correctly, but implicit cues are ambiguous and harder to interpret after alcohol or drugs. The little research on adolescents suggests they also favor explicit, affirmative consent, but how they actually communicate it had not been measured.

The survey

The YRBS is a school-based survey conducted every two years since 1991 with a nationally representative sample of public and private school students in grades 9–12 across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The 2023 survey had 20,103 respondents, of whom 5,492 reported ever having had sexual contact; they formed the study group. The researchers compared students by sex, age, race and ethnicity, sexual identity, the sex of their sexual contacts and gender identity, and looked at three experiences of sexual violence and eight sexual behaviors. Group estimates based on fewer than 30 students were suppressed as unreliable, and too few students identified as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander to analyze.

Who asked

Of students who had ever had sexual contact, 79.8% said they had asked for consent verbally the last time, about eight in 10. Female students were less likely to have asked than male students: 74.5% compared with 84.6%.

Among female students:

• By age, those 18 or older asked less often (66.4%) than those aged 17 (78.0%) or 16 (76.5%).
• Asian students asked more often (92.3%) than Hispanic (75.1%), multiracial (75.0%), White (74.0%), Black (73.2%) and American Indian or Alaska Native (72.1%) students.
• Students whose sexual contacts were only with the same sex asked more often (85.9%) than those with only opposite-sex contacts (73.4%) or contacts of both sexes (76.0%).

Among male students:

• Black students asked less often (76.0%) than Hispanic (87.6%) and White (85.3%) students.
• Bisexual students asked more often (94.2%) than heterosexual (85.2%) or questioning (65.8%) students, and gay students asked more often than questioning students (86.6% versus 65.8%).
• Students with contacts of both sexes asked more often than those with same-sex contacts only (89.1% versus 77.8%).

Consent, sexual violence and sexual behavior

Asking for consent was not linked to any of the three experiences of sexual violence measured: sexual violence by anyone, sexual dating violence or forced sex. The authors caution that because so many students reported asking, there was little variation to detect a link, and that the survey records being a victim of sexual violence but not committing it.

Several sexual behaviors did differ:

Among male students, those who named condoms as their or their partner's main birth control method at last intercourse asked for consent more often than those who did not (90.4% versus 83.2%).

After adjusting for age, race and ethnicity, and sexual identity, female students who asked for consent were more likely to have ever had intercourse and to have used condoms, and less likely to have used alcohol or drugs at last intercourse. Male students who asked were more likely to have ever had intercourse, to be currently sexually active, to have used a condom, and to have relied on condoms as the main birth control method with an opposite-sex partner. Among female students, asking for consent was not associated with using a moderately or highly effective contraceptive method.

What the findings may mean

The share of high school students reporting verbal consent was much higher than in most studies of college students. The authors offer possible reasons: young people may be more attuned to consent after years of public discussion and prevention programs; people of all ages may overreport behavior they know is expected; and college studies typically ask students to describe or choose among many kinds of cues rather than answer a single yes-or-no question.

The gap between female and male students may reflect that boys more often initiate sexual activity, and traditional gender roles that make males responsible for initiating and seeking consent. The differences by age among girls suggest looking at individual and relationship factors across early and later adolescence. The higher rates among sexual minority students fit qualitative studies in which such young people describe confidence and comfort in talking about consent. Because most consent research has studied White, heterosexual, cisgender college students, the authors see this nationally representative sample as a start on understanding consent across many identities.

The link with condom use may mean that boys often raise consent while talking about condoms, a common consent cue among young people. With condom use declining and sexually transmitted infections common among adolescents and young adults, the authors call the association promising, and suggest verbal consent may itself be one of a cluster of protective behaviors. The link with less alcohol and drug use among girls is important because substance use is closely tied to nonconsensual sex among college women.

Limitations

• A single question captures only one side of consent. It says nothing about other cues, withdrawing or negotiating consent, or consent to specific acts.
• "Sexual contact" was not defined, so students may have understood it differently from other survey questions.
• Different questions covered different periods (last sexual contact, last intercourse, the past 12 months).
• Sexual violence was measured with only three questions.
• The survey cannot separate condom use for pregnancy prevention from condom use to prevent infections.
• Some group estimates were suppressed because they rested on too few students.

What can be done

The authors call for fuller, multidimensional measures of consent in future surveys, and for prevention efforts that build young people's communication skills and norms that support consent. Schools and youth organizations can teach consent through skills-based programs. CDC's Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool can help identify suitable curricula for grades K–12, and CDC's Dating Matters model, which teaches middle school students healthy relationship skills including consent, has been found to reduce sexual violence, sexual harassment and dating violence. Health care providers can talk with adolescents about consent and recognize nonconsensual sexual activity, and public health professionals can help parents talk with their teenagers about consent, sexual behavior, condom negotiation and preventing violence.

Sources

• Szucs LE, Pampati S, Jozkowski KN, et al. "Asking for Verbal Sexual Consent and Experiences of Sexual Violence and Sexual Behaviors Among High School Students — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2023." MMWR Supplements 73(4). https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a7.htm
• YRBS data and questionnaire: https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/index.html; Youth Online: https://nccd.cdc.gov/Youthonline/App/Default.aspx; Dating Matters: https://vetoviolence.cdc.gov/apps/dating-matters-toolkit/
• The report conflicts with itself on first intercourse before age 13: its abstract says students who asked for consent were more likely to report it, while its results, discussion and conclusion say less likely. This page states neither. Its discussion also describes the 80.5% and 90.4% figures as condom use among students who asked; its results give them as the share who asked among students who used condoms, as shown above.