Danes’ sexual debut age the same as 50 years ago

A new study published in the doctors’ trade magazine Ugeskrift for Læger shows that half of all Danes will have had sex by the age of 16 – precisely as it was nearly half a century ago. 

 

“The study shows that the age at the first intercourse has been stabile since the 1960s and that is really interesting because we often hear that young people are wild and rush into sex,” Christian Graugaard, a sexology professor at Aalborg University and one of the authors behind the study, told Berlingske. 

 

According to the Danish Family Planning Association (Sex & Samfund), the results cast doubt on popular cultural narratives. 

 

“Many have argued that pornography and an increased focus on sex in advertising and music videos affect young people and causes them to have their sexual debuts earlier. This and other studies show however that young people have become neither more sexually active or get started earlier from those influences,” spokesman Morten Emmerik Wøldike told Berlingske. 

 

Although the average age is 16, there is still a wide variation in the age at which Danes lose their virginity. Some are as young as 13 when they have sex for the first time while others have reached their early 20s.