An Intel survey has led to widespread media coverage about how today’s women apparently prefer using the Internet to having sex. What the headlines don’t tell you is that this view is still a minority, and that it only applies to a particular circumstance.

With headlines such as “New Survey Claims Women Like Blogging Better than Sex” and “Survey: Women Prefer the Internet over Sex?”, you’d easily be misled into thinking the females of America have en masse abandoned canoodling for Googling.

That’s not the case, however. The response to the survey which is grabbing all the attention only found 46 percent of women opting for the internet over sex. It’s certainly notable that the figure is higher than that for men (30 percent), but it’s not even most, let alone all women.

The specific question also appears likely to have drastically changed the results. Those taking part were asked, if forced to decide, which activity they would be less willing to give up for a fortnight. That’s a very different proposition to which you would be prepared to do without forever (let’s face it, chances are more people regularly go without sex for a fortnight than spend the same period offline), and it’s certainly not the same as asking which is more enjoyable.

It’s also worth noting that the survey was carried out online. By definition, anyone responding to an online survey is more likely to be interested in using the Internet than the population as a whole. If the researchers posed the question to people in the middle of nookie, they’d no doubt get a very different response.

Interestingly the survey showed a range of other activities which people would give up before Internet access, most of them expensive, which backs Intel’s promotional message that people turn to the Internet during tough financial times (preferably using machines powered by Intel chips…)

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Entry was posted on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 at 2:56 pm under Adult content, Internet.

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