Ain’t misbehavin’: FAU prof studies love lives
BOCARATON— While their parents made Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” a huge hit, more of today’s young adults actually are.
That’s the finding of a study coauthored by a Florida Atlantic University psychology professor and published in this month’s Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Professor Ryne Sherman and his research partners found that while the internet has made it easy to hook up, about15 percent of young adults ages 20 to 24 reported having no sexual partners since age18.
Just 5 to 6 percent of baby boomers
reported saying “no thanks” at the same age, he said.
The only generation with a rate this virginal, according to the study, is the generation born in1920, who spent their young adulthood dealing with World War II.
“We found the data is contrary to the popular notions that millennials are sex-crazed,” said Sherman, an associate professor on FAU’s Boca Raton campus.
The findings are no surprise to Pastor Russell Silverglate, who leads Hammock Street Church in Boca Raton. He has also observed this generation approaching other adult milestones— like getting drivers licenses and moving out of their childhood homes—with less speed and more deliberation than generations before.
Stars like Tim Tebow, University of Florida’s football great, are validating the slow-going choice in the sexual arena, he said.
“It’s like a pendulum swing,” he said. “They see Tim Tebow saying, ‘Yes, I’m a virgin. What’s it to you?’ ”
But Noah Lewis, 19, an FAU biology major from Boynton Beach, is not so sure. He described the number of sexual partners he’s had as “not too much, but definitely more than my parents had.”
Geology major Angie Tetu, 19, of Boca Raton, and graphic arts major Yasmin Pessoa, 19, from Brazil, were puzzled by the results of the study.
“I think we know, like one person,” who is a virgin, Tetu said. “Two,” said Pessoa. But there’s definitely a difference between her and her mother, Pessoa said.
“My mom got pregnant with her first kid when she was 17,” she said. “If I did that, shewould kill me.”
Sherman, who conducted the research with Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, and Professor Brooke E. Wells of Widener University, said there’s still plenty of sex going on among the millennials. And the rate of sexual activity is similar across the decades when you consider only college students, he said.
The study’s findings are based on the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, a representative sample of 26,707 American adults that has been conducted since 1989, most recently in 2014. It focused on the sexual habits of millennials (born between 1980 and1994) and iGeners (born between1995 and 2012), compared with previous generations.
Sherman said there could be several reasons for the greater rate of abstainers. Internet pornography “could be turning people off from sex,” or satisfying a curiosity without partaking, he said. The prevalence of social media could be fulfilling the need for social activity without face-toface contact. And the Great Recession has delayed young adults’ move from their parents’ home, which may deter the question about coming back tomy place.
And then there’s the widespread knowledge of AIDS and unwanted pregnancy. Movements like “purity pledges” might have also had an influence, Sherman said.
For their part, colleges are offering students guidance and protection. At FAU, that means dispensing80,000 to 90,000 condoms a year at the health clinic.
There’s also more frankness. Beginning with the 2013-14 school year, all FAU students had to take an online class about sexual assault prevention, said Raquel Cabral, director of the student health clinic.
“They are armed with as much information as possible,” Cabral said.
“We found the data is contrary to the popular notions that millennials are sex-crazed.” Ryne Sherman, FAU associate professor