Rise in the popularity of a sex and booze culture is a worrying trend in Singapore. It is becoming gradually acceptable that clubbing, binge drinking and casual sex is an acceptable way of life for a small but growing number of youth. This lifestyle fuelled in part by the growing financial means with sources of income from dual-income families, as well as their personal earnings from part time work, the Singapore youth is has relatively high expendable income. Couple this with the rising influence of the western culture of liberal expression, courtesy of MTV and the Internet; attitudes towards sex and booze are becoming lax.

While there have been various campaigns initiated by the government to educate these young people about the consequence of casual sex, i.e. risk of Sexually transmitted Diseases (STD) and Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the care-free attitude of a particular group of youth is a major source of worry. Some of the sexually active youth interviewed claimed to have multiple sex partners even at the young age of 15 and most of the young girls claim to be pressured into committing sexual acts by their peers or boyfriends. A series of scandals also arose due to the widespread usage of camera phones, with the most widely known incident being one that involves a particular polytechnic student, “Tammy” from Nanyang Polytechnic whose sexual act with her boyfriend was circulated via handphones and across the internet after she lost her handphone which contained the self-recorded footage.

Majority of the youth have indicated that they would prefer education on the practices of safe sex instead of having teachers and parents tell them to abstain from it totally, which will in turn cause more curiosity and desire to experience the “forbidden” fruit. While sex education has been introduced for a while in secondary schools for upper secondary school students, the result has been mixed, as teachers still tend to be shy about answering queries and might be caught in a situation where they might feel uncomfortable advocating that it is alright to have safe sex.

This is a worrying trend for a unique group of Singapore youth and the government is taking proactive measures to address it. It is heartening to note that such lax attitude towards casual sex is also being balanced out by youth of the same age group who are against the engaging of casual sex as a matter of principles and are educated about sexual practices and the risks of such casual behavior.