Parents can find plenty of dismaying news in the latest government reports on the risky behavior and attitudes of American youth. A recent finding that one of every five teenagers has taken prescription drugs without a doctor's order, for instance, drew appropriate attention.

But the trends in risky business on the younger side of 20 aren't all bleak. Take this one: In any given three months, the vast majority of younger teens refrain from having sex.

The school-based Youth Behavior Risk Survey found that 65 percent of high school students said they didn't engage in sexual intercourse over the previous three months. The National Survey of Family Growth, a more comprehensive study that includes 19-year-olds, put this "abstinent majority" at 70 percent.

If either number is higher than you expected, it's probably because misleading cultural messages persist about sex and teenagers. In the 1990s, Fox Entertainment did its best to persuade U.S. television viewers that all teens live at an address in the neighborhood of "Beverly Hills 90210" — and behave accordingly. MTV and VH1 contributed to the image of adolescence as a hive of continuous sexual experimentation.

There's media gold in those Hollywood Hills, and always will be. In fact, though, teen sexual activity declined significantly over the past two decades. Besides increased abstinence, reasons include a steady, statistically significant reduction in the percentage of teens with multiple sexual partners. More partners, of course, put them at greater risk of sexually transmitted infections as well as pregnancy.

Consider the percentage of never-married teenagers who say they haven't had sexual intercourse. For 2006-2008, the most recent period studied, the National Survey of Family Growth found that 58 percent of never-married females age 15-19 had not had sex even once. That represents a 20 percent increase since 1988 in premarital abstinence for girls. As for teen males: A higher percentage report sexual experience, but the boys show a 16 percent increase in abstinence.

Digging a little deeper uncovers other reasons to believe American teens have established a beachhead for sexual abstinence. Among never-married girls who are sexually experienced, more than 25 percent say they haven't had sex in three months. Among never-married boys, close to a third say the same. The circumstances are relevant too. The National Survey of Family Growth asked sexually experienced teens if they didn't want sex when it was initiated, had mixed feelings, or welcomed it. More than half of the girls said they either didn't want sex or had mixed feelings. So did more than 40 percent of the boys. As certain as night follows day, some teenagers resemble the comic characters in the movie "Superbad" in their obsession with ending a sexual drought. Just as clearly, others drank from this well of experience and awoke with serious hangovers.

Young people, who generally struggle with identity and "belonging" issues, are eager for meaningful human connections. It's not just hormones. Young men and women are more than the sum of molecular attractions. They're traveling the hazardous road between childhood comforts and adult expectations. The validation they think they could get from another person through sexual contact makes it a risk that seems worth taking.

But no "fake ID" can admit a teenage boy or girl to genuine adulthood.

That's why society's response to teen sexuality as merely a medical or public health phenomenon is incomplete. The abstinent alternative, in turn, must be about far more than temporarily saying "no" to sex. It must be about the transition into adult responsibilities, adult joys and, ultimately, adult character.

Earlier this year, University of Pennsylvania researchers released a model study showing that abstinence programs can be effective. The study randomly assigned some middle-school students to an eight-hour abstinence curriculum and others to sex-ed programs that included contraceptives and mixed messages. Penn researchers found that the abstinence-only offering reduced subsequent sexual activity by one-third more than other programs.

Personal relationships with teens can accomplish even more. Teen Talk, an abstinence program at Milwaukee's Family House founded by Cordelia Taylor, a registered nurse, has had great success in a city that once had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. Of 170 participating girls, only two became pregnant. And those two spoke with authority when they returned to counsel peers on avoiding similar mistakes.

The continuing task is to help the abstinent majority stay that way as long as possible, ideally until marriage. With four of every 10 babies being born to single mothers, primarily because of a surge among 20-somethings in births outside marriage, that task is more urgent than ever. We can press on with the knowledge that an abstinent majority is looking for more encouragement, and better examples, from the adults around them.

Charles A. Donovan is a senior research fellow in the DeVos Center on Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.