Nearly all survey reports, including those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, give the average age of sexual debut among males as between 16 and 18 years old, with no significant change during the past 30 years among Millennial and Generation Z young men. That three-year span is quite significant, especially when you consider it includes high school juniors and seniors and 1-year after graduation (college or work world).

From a research perspective, two factors are critical in assessing first sex:

With these two issues under consideration, I interviewed 130 straight young men from age 18 to 23 (mean age = 20.0) regarding, among other things, their sexual debut. It occurred at age 17, right at the national average.

Quite surprisingly, it is relatively rare for researchers to define sex—that is, what counts as sex. Most of the young men defined real sex as intercourse, putting his penis into her vagina. There were, however, exceptions. One noted that putting a penis into an anus also counted as real sex, though none of the straight young men volunteered they had ever done that. Another suggested real sex must have procreative possibilities—a view not articulated by anyone else. Ten men spontaneously added that some element of passionate love also needed to be included; just having “an........

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