Survey shows drop in Japanese high schoolers who’ve kissed someone; girls still more experienced

Every six years, the Japanese Association for Sex Education carries out the National Survey of Youth Sexual Behavior, collecting data from middle school, high school, and university students. The preliminary results of the study’s latest iteration are now being released and show that high school students have had a drop in physical intimacy, with kisses in particular sliding back to the level from nearly three decades ago.

For this round of the survey, the ninth since its inception in 1974, the association collected responses from a total of 12,562 participants (4,627 middle schoolers from 17 different schools, 4,321 high schoolers from 17 schools, and 3,614 university students from 56 schools) between August of 2023 and March of 2024.

When asked if they’d ever kissed someone, 22.8 percent of high school boys said yes. That’s a significant drop of 11.1 percent compared to the last survey conducted six years ago, when 33.9 percent of high school boys had kissing experience on their romantic resumes. Among high school girls, the drop was even larger, with 25.7 percent saying they’ve kissed someone, down 13.6 percent from the 39.3 percent who’d locked lips in the last survey.

▼ It’s unclear if the higher kissing percentage among girls than boys is because more boys have kissed multiple girls than vice versa, or if it’s because high school girls are more likely to have kissed someone who’s not in high school.

The high school kissing rates of 22.8 percent for boys and 25.7 percent for girls are almost identical to the levels in the 1987 survey (23.1 percent and 25.5 percent), and have dropped far below their peaks in 2005 of approximately 45 percent of boys and 50 percent of girls. In other words, between 2005 and now, the situation has shifted from roughly half of high schoolers having kissed to only about 1 in 4.

The percentage of high schoolers who have had sex also dropped compared to six years ago, though not quite as sharply as for kissing, with 12 percent of boys (down 3.5 percent) and 14.8 percent of girls (down 5.3 percent) having done the deed. As with kissing, those figures are roughly half of what they were in 2005, when around 25 percent of high school boys and 30 percent of high school girls said they’d had sex.

The association’s researchers theorize that the decreases might be related to coronavirus pandemic protocols discouraging physical contact coinciding with the ordinary awakening/intensifying of physical urges during high school. However, the kissing and sexual intercourse rates among university and middle school students were largely unchanged compared to six years ago. It’s also likely that disruptions to daily life during the pandemic meant that logistic difficulties played a part in keeping high schoolers from getting to first base and beyond. After all, it’s significantly harder to make out behind the gym if nobody’s attending classes on campus. And it’s really hard to sneak your boyfriend or girlfriend into your bedroom if your parents are always home because they’re telecommuting.

The survey’s full results are scheduled to be released later this fall.

Source: Asahi Shimbun via Livedoor News via Jin, Japanese Association for Sex Education

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