Students who often use cell phone e-mail more likely to have sex: survey

Students who frequently use cell phones to send e-mail are more likely to have sex, a survey by the Japanese Association for Sex Education has found.

The survey on youth sex trends also found that girls outnumbered boys at junior high schools and high schools when it came to those with sexual experience.

The results showed that 63 percent of male university students and 62.2 percent of female university students had had a sexual experience. The corresponding figures at high schools were 26.6 percent of male students and 30.3 percent of female students. A total of 3.6 percent of boys at junior high schools and 4.2 percent of junior high school girls were found to have had sex.

Compared to the previous survey in 1999, cell phone use had risen sharply. In the previous survey, only about half of all male first-year high school students had cell phones, but in the latest survey the figure rose to over 90 percent. About 30 percent of first-year junior high school boys and 50 percent of first-year junior high school girls had cell phones.

The association split students into an “e-mail group” — students whose cell phone e-mail usage reached at least 20 e-mails a day — and “a computer group” of students who spent at least two hours using the Internet on computers on their days off.

An analysis of the e-mail and computer group users found that 58 percent of high school students in the e-mail group had had sex, compared with only 15 percent in the computer group. The figures for university students were 86 percent in the e-mail group and 61 percent in the computer group. Of these, 21 percent of high school students in the e-mail group said they had had sex with at least three partners, compared with only 5 percent in the computer group. For university students the figures were 47 percent in the e-mail group and 25 percent in the computer group.

The survey also found that high school students with cell phones were more likely to have kissed a partner the more they used cell phone e-mail, with only 20 percent of students who hardly ever used e-mail having kissed someone, compared with 80 percent of students whose cell phone e-mail usage reached at least 20 e-mails a day.

“E-mail leads to a strengthening and expansion of communication, which is probably why users are more sexually active,” said Masahito Takahashi, a professor at Yamaguchi University who analyzed the results. “On the other hand, it appears that using the Internet on computers often does not lead to sexual activity.”

Results from the love section revealed that a total of 39 percent of high school boys said love was necessary for sex, an increase from 26 percent in the previous survey. For high school girls the figure rose from 55 percent to 64 percent.

Only 13 percent of high school boys and 4 percent of high school girls said it was ok to have sex without love.

“A trend toward pure love is advancing among young people,” an association official commented.

The survey was conducted on 5,510 students at junior high schools, high schools, universities and technical colleges in 12 prefectures across Japan between November last year and March this year. (Mainichi)

http://www.junkinside.com/studytext-messaging-linked-to-a-better-sexual-life