Genuis suggests that young people have risky sex because they are trapped in miserable lives.1 I’m not sure how long it is since Genuis was a young person, but I would suggest that most young people have sex for the same reasons most old people do: because it is lots of fun. As others have pointed out, sex often goes hand in hand with other things that are fun, like going out dancing with your mates, taking drugs, and getting plastered.
I don’t wish to lower the tone of this debate; it is certainly useful to have all the evidence of condom efficacy and effectiveness brought together so clearly. But so long as we expect rational responses to the most irrational area of human experience, we will be disappointed.
Competing interests: None declared.
References
- 1.Genuis SJ. Are condoms the answer to rising rates of non-HIV sexually transmitted infection? No. BMJ 2008;336:185 (26 January.) [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
