According to the latest data released from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s periodic National Survey of Family Growth, about 43 percent of teenagers between ages 15 to 19 have sexual intercourse at least once.

And about 80 percent of the teenage boys surveyed say they use condoms more often when they have sex, an increase of 9 percent from 2002.

The CDC Wednesday reported that though the use of condom is on rise, the overall teen sexual activity has remained unchanged.

Though the report did not explain why the use of condom has jumped, the authors of the report said that the other trends on rise are consistent in recent years which includes a decline in teen pregnancies.

However, teenage girls use hormonal contraception at the same rate that they did in 2002, but they are using new versions, including the birth control patch, emergency contraception and injectables at an increasing rate.

About six percent of teen females surveyed said that they used a non-pill hormonal method at their first sexual intercourse, an increase of 2 percent from 2002.

CDC researchers surveyed approximately 2,284 teen girls and 2,378 teen boys-- the largest number of teenagers undertaken as part of their ongoing National Survey of Family Growth.

Whether because of the use of condoms or some other factor, the teen birth rate had shown an upward trend from 2005 to 2007, which fell back once again to 39.1 births per 1,000 girls between the agesof 15 to 19 years in the year 2009.

The researchers found out that 16 percent of teen boys used a condom with a female partner's hormonal method, which has increased to 10 percent since 2002.

When CDC researchers asked teenagers who are still virgin as to why they were abstaining, the reason they gave was that against their morals and religion and not because they were concerned about any sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancies.

According to CDC, the overall sexual activity among U.S. teenagers seems to be steady.

The new data based on interviews with 4,662 teens aren’t necessarily worthy of appreciation, James Trussell, who directs Princeton University’s Office of Population Research and is an expert on family planning told MSNBC.

“There is a lack of education about sexuality and contraception,” he said in an interview. “We run a website at Princeton where I answer questions and we’ve had 12,000 or more since it began. The amount of ignorance is overwhelming.”

Researchers said that teen girls who had sex with older boys for the first time used contraception at a much lower rate than other girls who had sex with a boy of their own age.

It is extremely valuable to teach a girl how to say no when they do not want sex, Trussell said.

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