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Sexually active older people have fewer health problems and generally lead a happier life, but often hesitate to talk about intimacy even with doctors. Instead, they find information and support on the Web.
Sexual activity among older people is not unusual – more than half of men and more than a third of women over 70, regardless of marital status, said they have sex at least twice a month. But everything is not so simple. All sorts of diseases that are not related to sex, the likelihood of which increases with age (for example, diabetes or heart problems), can also adversely affect your sex life. Widows and widowers who continue to be sexually active do not always know how to get a new partner and how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases. And of course, the stereotype that older people are too old for sex only makes it harder to find answers to these questions.
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A 2011 study showed that not only do older people rarely ask their doctors about sexual questions, but doctors, in turn, are hesitant to talk about it. Lisa Berdichevsky, a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says nursing home professionals often ignore the sexual side of their clients’ lives and don’t care about their sexual health.
In this regard, many older people go to the Internet for answers. Lisa Berdichevsky and her colleague from Ben-Gurion University in Israel, Galit Nimrod, set out to find out if older women are getting proper support in sexual matters online. After analyzing approximately 700 messages posted on older women’s community forums in a year, they found that approximately 000 posts were about sexual issues. Although this is a small percentage of all discussions (about 25%), they are among the most popular. These forum topics have thousands of views, which means that many read these topics, although they did not participate in the discussions. Studies have also shown that many forum participants found answers to their questions and began to feel more confident in their sex life.1.
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- All ages of female sexuality
“Communities invite their members to understand that they are not alone, that many other people are facing the same problems,” says Lisa Berdichevsky, “online forums provide an opportunity to talk about their problems, get advice and often find a solution.” Many researchers insist on the benefits of a personal conversation about sexual problems. This is especially helpful when it comes to health. And as more and more older people around the world get access to the Internet, the number of people who are satisfied with their sex life, and therefore their health in general, will also grow.
1 L. Berdychevsky, G. Nimrod «Let’s talk about sex: Discussions in seniors’ online communities», Journal of Leisure Research, 2015, № 47.
See more at Scientific American editions.