Orange, red, blue, black — they're just thin bracelets that come in a rainbow of colours, but they're causing quite a fuss.

First made popular by Madonna and other pop stars in the 1980s, the "jelly bracelet" is making a comeback with teenagers and schoolchildren in the US.

This time, there's a twist: In some parts of the country, they're calling them "sex bracelets" — with various colours supposedly representing promises to perform sex acts in a game called "Snap".

As the story goes, break someone's orange bracelet (or purple, in some cases) and you get a kiss. Red, a lap dance. Blue, oral sex. Black, intercourse.

"They've been selling like crazy," says Andy Ball, a shop assistant at The Alley, a fashion store in Chicago. He says he learned about their secret meaning from a group of teens who came into the store about a month ago.

Still, it's unclear whether young people are really following through with the sex acts. And some experts think most youth are hearing about the game from recent news reports, not each other.

However, some young people are outraged that adults think they would do this. To them, they say, the bracelets are just a fashion statement.

A few schools in states such as Illinois, Ohio and Florida have banned the bracelets.

But in other parts of the country, teens say no one they know calls them "sex bracelets".

"It's outrageous and ridiculous. I think the media is making an issue out of nothing," says Kelly Egarian, a 17-year-old from New Jersey, who works part-time for Teenage Research Unlimited, a company that tracks youth trends.

In fact, when the staff at Teenage Research asked its 300-some young consultants nationwide about sex bracelets, they found little evidence that young people used the bracelets in this way. No one knew anyone who was actually doing it.

A few doctors who treat children and teens said they had never heard of "sex bracelets".

Meanwhile, Cynthia Mears, a teenage health specialist in Chicago, says some of her young patients do call the bracelets by that name. But the most they might give another teen who broke one would be a hug or a kiss — not sex.

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