A new American survey suggests that teenage girls may be delaying having sex for the first time. — AFP-Relaxnews pic
NEW
YORK, July 20 — Young women in the US are having their first sexual
experience after – not before – they arrive on campus, according to a
survey released yesterday.
The “Ultimate College Girl Survey,” conducted by HerCampus.com, an
online community for college women, was conducted during the 2011-12
academic year and involved nearly 2,600 participants between the ages of
17 and 23.
Sixty-nine per cent of those surveyed said that they didn't lose
their virginity until they turned 18, while 43 per cent of respondents
were still virgins at the time of the survey. For those respondents who
had already had sex, 12.3 per cent lost their virginity at 17, while
9.5 per cent said that their first time was at age 16. Participants
hailed from 677 different US schools, with graduating classes 2012
through 2015 almost equally represented.
“The delay in first sex in the HerCampus.com survey seems high, which
may be due to selectivity in who is interviewed,” Laura Lindberg, a
senior research associate at Guttmacher, told Self Magazine. “However,
it's not surprising that girls attending college wait to have sex later
than other girls, for many reasons,” she says, citing race, income and
parents' education as potential factors.
Even still, she adds that being a virgin likely has less of a stigma
today than it has in recent years. “We hear over and over from readers
that they are waiting for the right guy to have sex for the first time,
rather than simply viewing it as an item to check off their high school
or college bucket list,” Kaplan says.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) in the US, young girls are waiting longer to have their first
sexual experience. The proportion of 15- to 19-year-old females who had
been sexually active at least once declined from 51 per cent in 1988 to
43 percent in 2006-2010.
For males, CDC data suggests the decline is even greater – the
proportion of 15- to 19-year-old males who had been sexually active at
least once dropped from 60 per cent in 1988 to 42 per cent in 2006-2010.
— AFP-Relaxnews
