Do You Have Enough Sex in Your Life ?

One economist [New York Times, January 25, 2015] looked at various sources in attempt to answer the question “How much sex are we having?” He looked at information from The General Social Survey, and Google searches. He believes that we are lacking reliable data as people tend to lie about sex. For example, this young man calculated the number of sex acts per year of both heterosexual men and heterosexual women that indicated they used a condom. According to his calculations, over 2.6 billion condoms were used. Then he went to the manufacturers and found that about 600 million condoms were sold each year. These numbers puzzled him.

Then, he looked at data from Google searches. The top complaint about marriage was related to not having sex. Googling “sexless marriage” had three and half times as many more searches    than searching for “unhappy marriage.” He also found there were 16 times more complaints about a spouse, not wanting sex than about a married partner, not willing to talk. In addition there were 5 ½ times more complaints about an unmarried partner, not wanting sex, compared to an unmarried partner refusing to text back.

This economist, then looked at fears related to sex. The data showed that men make more searches and have more questions about their sexual organs than any other body part. And, one of the most common questions that men Google pertained to penis size.  Women rarely Googled penis size. In fact, for every search a woman makes about the man’s organ, men make roughly 170 searches more. When a woman does go to the Internet, the data showed that more than 40% of the female’s complaint was about their partner’s penis size being too big and pain was most commonly googled word.

Another major concern for men was how to make their sexual encounters longer. Interestingly women most common concerns were related to their boyfriend’s orgasm and wonder why it wasn’t happening at all. Employing an anonymous, aggregate web activity, interest in beauty and fitness were 42% male; weight loss 33% male and cosmetic surgeries 39% male. There were more than 7 million searches looking into breast implants and about 300,000 women go through it annually. Beginning in 2010 bigger butts were on the minds of women. Women like men have questions about their genitals, but their concerns were more health-related. For example, women want to know how to shave it, tighten it and make it taste better.

One major problem in looking at Google searches is the attempt to generalize the findings. Clearly, this information is not gathered from a valid sample of men and women. In the universe, in order to take a random sample, one has to do just that. Google information is not just a random sample nor is it a representative universe. So if you’re reading this information, you probably have a certain motive. You are not chosen at random to take part in the study. However, the data is interesting to say the least. And maybe the economist is correct in that he can’t get reliable and valid information regarding sexual encounters.

Are you getting enough sex? If not, maybe, you need to keep moving, laughing, smiling, bonding, loving and appreciating.