Thirty percent of women who use online
dating services have had sex on a first date, according
to a study by Sexuality Research & Social Policy,
a journal of the National Sexuality Research Center.
The research was conducted by Paige M. Padgett, Ph.D.,
and published in the June 2007 issue of the journal.
The name of the study is Personal Safety and Sexual
Safety for Women Using Online Personal Ads.
While
the 30% of women having sex on the first date may
surprise people, even more shocking is that out of
that number, 77% of them didn't use any protection
during the sexual encounters. Some
online dating services make it easy for people to
meet up for sexual encounters by offering "Intimate"
or "Erotic" services to members.
"Risky
behaviour like this, from both males and females,
is contributing to the dramatic rise of sexually
trasmitted diseases," says Joe
Tracy, Publisher of Online Dating Magazine. Online
Dating Magazine, a consumer watchdog publication for
online daters, also contains an STD
Info Center with
educational information about sexually transmitted
diseases. "When you have unprotected sex with people
you are meeting online, you are playing russian roullette
with your health. It's not a matter of 'if' you'll
get a sexually transmitted disease, but rather 'when'
and 'how many'."
Safety measures some women use before
meeting a man, according to the study, are:
1) Googling him.
2) Running a background check.
3) Not giving any personal information
(like address, phone number, etc.).
4) Revisit subjects already discussed
to see if the man is lying.
5) Gut instinct.
The study shows a strong popularity of
online daters using email to communicate with each
other. Some women set sex boundaries via email, others
made it clear there would be no sex on the first date,
and others didn't discuss the subject at all.
The
study showed that neary 3/4ths of those who had sexual
encounters never discussed STDs or AIDS. And email
apparently played a major role in how far intimacy
went so quick. From the abstract:
"The high frequency and intensity of
email communication prior to meeting in person cultivated
acceleration of intimacy for the individuals involved
and may have affected somen's decisions to engage in
risky sexual behaviours."
The study used a survey placed on various
online dating services and targetting women. The survey
was completed by 740 women of which 568 said they had
met someone in person. While 30% had sex on the first
date, some were specifically looking for that.
