Now Is the Best Time Ever to Lose Your Virginity, According to Science

Did you lose your virginity a while ago? Late 90s, maybe? Early 2000s? Late Aughts?

Stupid you. You should have lost your virginity now. Because apparently, nowadays, virgins are having the most fun ever losing their virginities.

In a study that covered the past 23 years, researchers at Illinois State University found both men’s and women’s experiences the first time they fucked were the best ever.

“Anxiety decreased over the three decades for men; pleasure increased and guilt decreased for women.”

So, guys are less worried about coming early (thanks, American Pie) and women are less worried about being consider harpies (feminism FTW). At least, that’s my reasoning. Here’s what the actual scientists had to say.

There may be many reasons for this decrease in anxiety to first intercourse, including that perhaps more recent cohorts of men are less likely than cohorts from the 1980s and 1990s to have first sexual intercourse as a rite of passage and therefore as a stigma to shed, motives that likely would have been associated with performance anxiety. As first sexual intercourse has become associated with being in the context of a relationship, it is likely to be preceded by a progression of sexual intimacy. This might also explain why women’s pleasure was found to increase over time and their guilt to decrease. Women’s guilt may have decreased also because of a reduction, in general, of social regulation of female sexuality and in the double standard and the increase of role models for sexuality in the media for females.

Sure. But how does this help all of us who did it back in the day? I want a do over.

[H/T Esquire; Image via Shutterstock]