I've always felt a bit disconnected from published survey results drawn from my age range. No one ever asked me, I always think. So when I saw Dazed was orchestrating a large-scale reader survey a few months back about everyone's favorite thing (sex), I was really excited. Dazed reports that 10,500 men and women from 114 countries participated in "the largest anonymous survey of what digital youth do in the bedroom and on the screen, ever." The results are definitely worth reading in their entirety, but here are the five that surprised us most.
1. Most people think love really matters.
"Love and sex are intimately, inextricably linked for the vast majority of people – 68% say that love is "everything", while 32% said that it meant nothing. Funnily enough, the primacy of love was constant among all ages, demographics and locations. How important you saw emotional attachment to a sexual partner changed nothing about your views on sex while high, nor your app use, nor your consumption of pornography. The only thing that it changes is how many people you've had sex with: if you see love as everything, the idea of multiple partners in one day is more disgusting to you than if you believe it means nothing."
2. Teens care less about sex than people in their 30's.
"In hopeful news for us all, over time, our interest in sex seems to rise – respondents in their 30s were significantly less likely to see sex as unimportant than teenage respondents."
3. Nearly half of us have filmed our own "home movies."
"While over half of all respondents have never had sex on camera, 34% have: about two thirds of this group regarded it as positive experience which they'd like to repeat, and a third – or 9% of all respondents – said they would never do it again. Three per cent – a small but significant number –answered "Yes, if I got paid" to the sex-on-camera question."
4. Straight women watch more lesbian porn than straight men.
"Straight women's consumption of lesbian porn outstrips men's: only gay or bisexual women watch more girl-on-girl. The fact that twice as many girls chose "other" as their favourite porn type than guys, for example, suggests that mainstream porn does not cater for women's needs as well as it does their male equivalents."
5. 16-year-olds are more likely to wrap it up than a 30-something.
"When we look at age ranges, an interesting trend emerges: the younger you are, the safer you are. The percentage of people answering "never" actually increases with age, with people in the 16-20-year-old age bracket most likely to always play safe. While this could be attributed to the fact that older people are more likely to be in secure relationships, it certainly bucks the popular idea that the youth of today is less concerned about using protection."
6. If you watch porn more than once a day, that porn is probably kinkier than normal.
"What sort of porn you like changes the more or less you consume, too. Several shock-horror studies link rates of porn watching and consumption of "extreme" pornography, often characterised under the BDSM banner. Our survey bears this out: while we're aware of the, ahem, shades of grey between abhorrent or violent imagery and the power play of BDSM, if you watch porn more than once a day, you're more likely to want to watch bondage, or sado-masochist pornography."
Lead image: Carl De Souza / Getty Images