More young girls are deciding to hold out for that special guy when it comes to loosing their virginity. A new study has revealed that 69 percent of college girls last year waited until they were 18 to have sex for the first time.
Meanwhile, 12.3 percent lost their virginity at 17, and 9.5 percent said that their first time was at age 16.
It has been suggested that this study, which focuses on college students, reflects a national trend of teenage girls delaying having sex after researchers found a consistent decrease in the amount of sexually active young woman since 1988.
In the ‘Ultimate College Girl Survey,’ conducted during the 2011-2012 academic year by HerCampus.com, an online community for college women, nearly 2,600 participants between the ages of 17 and 23 were surveyed.
Participants came from 677 different U.S. schools, with graduating classes 2012 through 2015 almost equally represented.
At the time of the survey, 43 percent of respondents said they were still virgins.
This survey mirrors data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S., which found young girls are waiting longer to have their first sexual experience.
The proportion of young females, aged 15-19, who had been sexually active at least once decreased from 51per cent in 1988 to 43per cent in 2006-2010.
Some researchers believe, however, that the relatively high age shown for girls losing their virginity is only indicative of college girls, rather than across the board.
Laura Lindberg, a senior research associate at Guttmacher, told Self magazine: ‘The delay in first sex in the HerCampus.com survey seems high, which may be due to selectivity in who is interviewed.’
‘However, it’s not surprising that girls attending college wait to have sex later than other girls, for many reasons,’ she says, citing race, income and parents’ education as potential factors.
Stephanie Kaplan, editor-in-chief of HerCampus.com, added that being a virgin has less of a stigma today than it has in recent years.
‘We hear over and over from readers that they are waiting for the right guy to have sex for the first time, rather than simply viewing it as an item to check off their high school or college bucket list,’ she said.
‘What we’ve learned from our readers is that they are putting their ambitions and their academics first; they care more about being the one among their friends to score the coveted internship than they do about being the one to brag about having had sex.’
Despite this decrease however, nationwide data from the CDC’s 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, showed that two-thirds of girls in their final year of high school had already had sex.
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