Teens know little about sex
Do you think that teenagers nowadays know too much about the relationship of the sexes? Oddly enough, teenagers, especially boys, admit that this is not the case at all.
This unexpected fact is absolutely true for British teenagers, as the study that confirmed it took place in the UK. The data were collected as part of the Natsal-3 (National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles), the largest project to study British sexual behaviour and health.
The researchers compared data from 4,000 men and women aged 16 to 24 between 2010 and 2012 with similar information collected from other respondents in 1990-1991 and 1999-2001. This revealed how teenagers' awareness of sex has changed over the past 20 years.
It turned out that both boys and girls get the most information about sex in school. In 1990, the school gave 28% of information about gender relations, and in 2012 this proportion increased to 40%. Few parents are consulted: 7% of boys and 3% of girls. There are even fewer of those who turn to medical professionals for sex – 1% of men and 3% of women. All other answers to juicy questions teenagers receive from their first partners, friends or when watching porn movies.
Those who learned about sex mainly in school later lost their virginity, and were less likely to have unprotected sex and become infected with STDs. Despite this, 70% of respondents said that they did not know enough about sex at the time of the first sexual intercourse. Most of those who lacked knowledge were men.
We used to think that boys are almost obsessed with the topic of sex and try to learn about it as much as possible, and often from friends and from porn movies. It turns out that this is not so. In sex education classes at school (at least in the UK!) it is worth paying more attention to information for boys, and not just aspects of female physiology.