The Opinionator on... Sex and Boys

BOYS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN-- THOUGH THEY DON'T NECESSARILY WANNA TALK ABOUT IT

Ask teenage guys about their sexual behavior and they'll tell you one thing on a paper questionnaire. To a computer, though, they'll tell... more. In a recent study by Washington's Research Triangle Institute, 1600 guys between the ages of 15 and 19 were asked a bunch of questions about sex-- sex and drug use, sex and alcohol, and sex with another guy. Some filled out a paper questionnaire, while others responded by way of a computer and headphones. According to the New York Times, the computer group "were almost four times as likely as the pen-and-paper group to report some type of male-male sex (5.5% vs. 1.5%), 14 times as likely to report sex with an intravenous drug user (2.8% vs. 0.2%), and 5.5 times as likely to report that they were 'always' or 'often' drunk or high when they had heterosexual sex (10.8% vs. 2.2%)." Nice guys were the worst. The largest gap between computer reponses and paper-and-pencil responses occurred among top-student types, who may feel that they would have the most to lose if they came clean. Forget face-to-face sex questions. Researchers have known for a long time that actually sitting opposite a teenage guy can produce some major dishonesty. If you really want a sense of what guys are up to, just check out the chat rooms. The truth is out there, in some form-- a fact well known to America Online, which gets 55 cents of every dollar it earns through chat.