Hey Dr Sue — Are There Many College Virgins? What Is The Average Age People Lose Their Virginity At?

There are a lot of questions here, and before I start answering them I have to say that I am not a fan of the term “losing your virginity” for many reasons, reasons that I won’t get into now. If you really want to know I dislike that phrase, feel free to ask that as a question at https://milsteinhealthconsulting.com/heydrsue

I’m going to answer this question by focusing on the age when people report first having vaginal intercourse, because historically that’s what we look at when we talking about “virginity.” It’s important to point out that some people engage in lots of other sexual behaviors before they have vaginal sex, and other people engage only in sexual behaviors that aren’t vaginal sex.

To answer the first question, about a third of the students in my human sexuality classes report that they have never engaged in vaginal intercourse, and that’s been pretty consistent over the last 15 years, and also pretty consistent regardless if I was teaching in the Washington DC area, California or Texas.

While I can’t really give you an idea of data from the 1940s what I can tell you is that today we are seeing people wait longer before they start having vaginal intercourse. Yup, they’re waiting longer. Surprised? Most people…