More older adults are online to talk about sex

Older adults are using online communities to find out the joys of sex and swap advice about keeping their mojos working, a new study has found.

"Websites geared toward older adults are providing this population with new opportunities to discuss and explore its sexuality," said Galit Nimrod from the Ben-Gurion University in Israel and Liza Berdychevsky of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (U of I).

Many older people preserve both a high interest in sex and a high involvement in sexual activities.

"The popularity of sex-related discussions in seniors' online communities suggests that they are finding channels to satisfy their needs for information and support," Berdychevsky added.

To reach this conclusion, the team examined discussions of sexual topics in 14 online communities geared to adults with a mean age of 64.5.

The researchers found that sex-related discussion threads were quite popular, with some posts viewed as many as 5,000 times.

The anonymity of cyberspace enabled some seniors to overcome shyness or embarrassment and share their uncensored thoughts about sex for the first time.

For people who received little or no sex education during their youth, online consultations with peers enabled them to expand their sexual knowledge and overcome obstacles to sexual fulfilment.

Seniors' discussions of sexual subjects were lively and wide-ranging, the researchers found.

"Participants swapped opinions and information about topics such as age differences between sexual partners, taboos, same-sex marriage, pornography, prostitution, and the use of sexual aids, toys and sex-enhancing drugs," the authors noted.

Some members wrote about how much they relished opportunities to engage in intellectual discussions about sex.

Other seniors reported that their sex lives and relationships offline were enriched as a result of their online activity.

"The most significant changes from these online sex-related communications were cognitive and emotional, including a greater sense of entitlement for sexual pleasure and fulfilment," the team concluded.

The paper was published online in the Journal of Leisure Research.