Why choose risky sex when safe sex is so easy??

It absolutely horrifies me how little most teenagers and young adults know about contraceptives and safe sex practices.  Every once in awhile I encounter someone who naively believes that basically everyone knows how to have safe sex, they just choose not to.  The people that believe this are very lucky - they clearly had someone in their life (possibly a parent, doctor, or health teacher) who was willing and able to educate them.  While I realize that many people do choose not to have safe sex, there are so many others that do it because they truly do not know how to have safe sex.  According to several studies almost 40% of the teenagers in our country have never been taught about the different types of contraceptives or how to properly use them.  Many teenagers are unaware of how to properly put on a condom.  There are both teenagers and adults that falsely believe that they should wear more than one condom at a time to avoid pregnancy and STIs.  Wearing more than one condom at a time is incredibly risky because the friction between them often results in the condoms ripping.  There are also a lot of people who are also unaware that they need to take their birth control at the same time daily.  Women often do not use a second form of contraceptive when they start taking the pill or switch to a different type of pill, which might result in pregnancy.  It is not uncommon for people to have never heard of alternate forms of contraceptives such as IUDs.  I recently learned that a number of students in my graduate health education class had never heard of birth control shots before taking our class.  Although I am familiar with them, I have never known of anyone (that I know of) using a female condom.  How is it possible that there are so many products out there and yet so many people are either unaware of their options, or actually choosing to have unprotected sex?

FYI: Don't ever use a condom with a staple stuck through it :)

I think the most disturbing fact is that a significant portion of sexually active teens and young adults admit that they will most likely be having unprotected sex in the near future.  What has happened in our society that makes us think that this is acceptable behavior?  How is it possible that the risk of pregnancy, STIs and STDs such as HIV does not scare the crap out of our generation?  Are the current teens and young adults in our country really so arrogant that they truly do not believe it can happen to them?  I find that hard to believe.  I know so many people that have had unplanned pregnancies, and I know the STI rates for my age group... clearly it is happening to us.  So why is there so little concern over these possibly life threatening consequences?  No matter how hard I try I simply cannot wrap my mind around the choices that people make...  When it is so easy to purchase contraceptives why do people still choose to engage in risky sexual activities?  I continue to hope that with a stronger emphasis on the importance of sex education in combination with great health educators, maybe the next generation will make better, safer choices than ours.