Family, Sex

5 Surprising Facts About Sex In College

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College movies always make college girls look so debauched.

You know what I mean — casual sex, chicks kissing chicks, and, of course, that whole Girls Gone Wild thing. Typically we take these fictional portrayals of young adult women with grains of salt; sure, some may use college as a chance to explore, but not everyone thinks of college as one huge sex romp, right?

Right. HerCampus.com, an online community for college women, recently conducted a massive survey of more than 2,500 collegiate females between ages 17 and 23. They found that although these women are curious about their sexuality, they're not exactly going out and getting laid every weekend. Here are some interesting stats:

The V-Card. Surprisingly, 69 percent of the women surveyed didn't lose their virginity until after they turned 18; 43 percent were still virgins at the time of the survey. In a hyper-sexual culture, this is great news; young women aren't in any rush to make their relationships physical.

Frequency. As far as the non-virgins of the collegiate world, the majority of them are keeping their numbers low. About 70 percent said they had slept with fewer than three people.

Hook-ups. The term "hooking up" can mean many things to many people; for the purposes of the HerCampus.com survey, it was defined as "making out or more." With that definition in mind, about half of the respondents had hooked up with 10 or fewer guys.

Girl-on-Girl? Of those surveyed, about 41 percent had swapped spit with another female. Reasons for the smooch included genuine curiosity, a dare, a just-because "joke," and, of course, because "guys think it's hot."

Birth Control. 76.3% of women surveyed said they thought guys should always carry condoms, but 70.4% of women said they don’t carry condoms themselves. Compare this to 44.7% (almost half!) of women who said when they had used Plan B, it was because they hadn’t used a condom. For single women condoms were shown to be the favored method of birth control, so why are so many college women going without? In a separate survey of women 18-29, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that even though they said it was important to them not to get pregnant right now, 34% of women are likely to have sex without using birth control in the next 3 months. One of Bedsider.org’s main goals is to help young women take an active role in their own reproductive health by allowing them to find the method of birth control that’s right for them and learn how to use it consistently and effectively. Bedsider has tons of resources for finding the right birth control method (so young women don’t have to rely on the guy to carry condoms) and can even set up reminders to help them take birth control consistently.

Ladies, sound off — do these numbers reflect your college experience?

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