Brits think young people are having far more sex than they actually are

Young people are having a lot less sex than you think, according to research on misperceptions.

People in both Britain and the US were asked to guess how often 18 to 29-year-olds are having sex – with the results suggesting that they think they’re much more sexually active than they really are.

The results are part of studies by Ipsos MORI on misperceptions, which are being released in a new book, ‘The Perils of Perception’.

According to the surveys, the average guess by people in Britain was that young men have had sex 14 times in the last four weeks – when the reality was five.

And when it comes to women’s sexual activity, the average guess in Britain was 17 times a month, compared to a reality of five.

Men and women had similar misperceptions about the sexual activity of men in Great Britain, with men guessing 15 times in the last four weeks, and women saying 14.

But when it came to guessing about other women’s sex lives, women were much closer to reality, guessing that women were having sex 12 times in the last four weeks, while men were much higher, guessing 22. The reality was five.

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The surveys also revealed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that people aren’t honest about their number of sexual partners.

The research asked people to guess how many sexual partners people in their country had had by the time they get to 45-54 years old, this time across Britain, the US and Australia.

The actual figure in Australia and Britain was an average of 17 partners by the time men reach 45-54, and 19 in the US- with average guesses almost spot-on.

But when it came to comparing men and women, Ipsos MORI said there is the number of partners claimed by women in surveys of sexual behaviour was much, much lower than the number claimed by men with women claiming to have had almost half the number of sexual partners as men.