That study looks interesting, but I find the article and the graph raise more questions in my mind than they answer. First, I could not for the life of me tease out whether 'romantic relations' specifically referred to sexual relations or whether it just meant dating (er, um, presuming that those are still separate concepts in high school these days). Second, I am surprised by the guy who had romantic relations with 8 girls *and* a guy...can I presume that this is the school quarterback and that the male-male 'romantic relations' was actually either two 3-ways or a 4-way? Finally, I'm pretty flabbergasted that there aren't any smaller rings than that big one. Is that really possible? It almost makes me doubt the veracity of the data.

I think it would be fascinating to link this kind of data with perceptions data for high school students--I wonder how far away reputations are from reality.

I just cut and pasted the big ring, there are a bunch of smaller chains (and 63 "free radical" / monogamous couples) on the diagram. Also, the actual report is here. Warning: numbers.

Of course, there were also the "free nerds" represented by a single, isolated dot!

Seriously, I saw a PBS NOVA special about sexual relations in a high school in Conyers, Georgia. An STD epidemic prompted CDC researchers to come in and figure out what was going on. It seemed that there was a core group sleeping with everyone, including mass orgies, etc., etc. They showed a chart maping all the sexual relations, and it was astonishing. I'd love to find a link to the CDC report...

I found the PBS report on the Conyers high school. Here is the graphic showing the sexual relations network. Tufte would not be pleased.

Arg, I thought I had the HTML down. Here is the chart.

Or here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/georgia/outbreak/matrix.html

I want to know why the PBS story is entitled "The Lost Children of Rockland County." Seems like they're getting too much action to be all that lost.

Interesting question. Lost to bourgeois conventions, perhaps. And the documentary makes clear that the real lost ones are the parents, who don't seem to notice that their 14 yr-olds are regularly attending mass orgies. Reminds me of the parents of the COlumbine shooters. How could they not have any clue?

SPeaking of, did anyone ever do an interview with the Columbine parents? They must have an interesting story. I imagine them on a cruise, and a woman at the table starts showing pictures of her children and then asks about theirs.

Thanks for the direct source link, Mike. Actually, it confirms what I was wondering about--the major point of the study is that there was a remarkable absence of short chains. That is, there is no 'Alice breaks up with Ted then gets with Bob who recently broke up with Carol; meanwhile Ted gets with Carol."

A big takeaway from the study is that a social rule prohibiting such links is likely what causes that big-ass 'spanning tree' to arise. The implications for STD prevention in high schools is that widespread education is more likely to have an impact than education targeting 'high risk' groups (the opposite of what is true among adult populations).

Also, the contrast between the Jefferson and the Conyers network pictures seems to go beyond visual design principles. The Conyers network looks like a mess because it is a 'core infection' model rather than a 'spanning tree' model. There's a dense group of highly sexually active teens who are involved in very short cycles with each other. The difference would seem to stem from a lack of the same social taboos in Conyers that exist at Jefferson.

Which brings up my first question in a non-snarky mode. Are dating and sex decoupling for high school students? If so, then it looks like disease prevention programs need to adapt, too.

Lord, I don't want Gideon to become a teenager.