Young people’s biggest regret about losing their virginity is that it happened too soon, a new survey of British sexual behaviour has found.
More than a third of women and a quarter of men in their teens and early twenties now admit that when they first had sex, it was not the “right time”.
The legal age of consent for any sexual activity in the UK is 16 but nearly a third of people have sex before this age and half of those surveyed had lost their virginity by the age of 17.
Despite these large numbers of sexually active teenagers, the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) suggests many people may not have been ready as early as they acted.
Founder of the survey Prof Kaye Wellings said the age of consent should not be used as a marker of young people’s readiness. “Every young person is different – some 15-year-olds may be ready while some 18-year-olds are not.”
The latest poll – NATSAL conducts one every 10 years with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine – surveyed 3,000 young people between 2010 and 2012 about their first sexual experience.
Respondents were asked about their general health and lifestyle choices (whether they smoked and drank) as well as their family structure and where they learned about sex.
But the questionnaire did not focus heavily on the LGBT and queer experience of sexuality or give the option of identifying as non-binary on the form.
Responses found 40% of women and 26% of men did not feel that their first sexual experience had happened at the “right time” – with most saying they wished it had been later and very few wishing it had been sooner.
The survey also looked at sexual competence or readiness – whether a person could reasonably make an informed decision about whether to have sex for the first time. Were they sober enough to have consented, for example, and were they acting on any kind of peer pressure? Around half of the young women and 40% of young men who responded failing this measure.
Almost one in five women and one in 10 men said they and their partner had not been equally willing to have sex at the time of the interaction, suggesting some felt pressured to have intercourse.
“Our findings seem to support the idea that young women are more likely than young men to be under pressure from their partners to have sex,” said co-researcher Dr Melissa Palmer.
Palmer said sex education in schools should help to better equip young people with the right skills to enable them a safe and positive first sexual experiences.