Study: Condom Use Does Not Lead To Promiscuity
By Tom Miller. Posted on .
From The Salt Lake Tribune
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A new study has found that adolescents who use condoms the first time they have intercourse do not go on to have more sexual partners than others, and that they have lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases than those who do not use condoms the first time.
Beginning in 1994, the researchers studied a sample of 4,018 teenagers. All had had sexual intercourse by the second year of the study. Participants were tested for chlamydia and gonorrhea in 2001 or 2002, according to the study, which will appear in the June issue of The American Journal of Public Health.
Tango’s Take
A little safe-sex education can go a long way, it looks like. People who use condoms in their first encounter have just as many partners seven years later but are half as likely to have a STI at that point. 62% of the participants used a prophylactic their first time. Maybe the 38% who didn’t (and were twice as likely to catch a bug) feel that going from bareback to protected is like eating hamburger after steak (lovely image, yeah?). Maybe they were woefully undereducated about the risks. Maybe they were ten feet tall and bulletproof. Whatever the case, it looks like teens who use condoms are actually the ones least likely to take a risk. To borrow from the Boy Scouts, it looks like ‘Be Prepared’ is a pretty good policy.
