The idea that casual sex is bad for you isn't new.  It's actually quite popular, and one that might qualify as "common sense."  Except there's no basis for it outside of morality tales and usually when you scratch the surface of a "casual" sex story you find that it wasn't so casual after all.

Nonetheless a research paper published in the Journal of Sex Research begins with precisely this premise, stringing together a few weak papers together to suggest that there's a body of evidence already in place to prove this.


 

Only the authors know such research doesn't exist.  They know this because they know (or should know) the difference between an association (two things that seem to be happening together) and causation (one thing directly producing the other).

They know that none of the research they are citing can prove that one thing (like casual sex) causes another (unspecified emotional/psychological badness).  I wish they would stop thinking that casual sex is even one thing that could be isolated numerically, but that's too much to ask.

Undaunted by the limitations of quantitative social science research, and eager to prove their point, they decided to scoop up a bunch of data that was previously gathered as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a robust longitudinal data set that began surveying young people about their social, economic, psychological and physical well-being in 1994, and most recently returned to the same young people in 2008.

The researchers, compared responses to questions about casual sex, depressive symptoms, and suicide ideation asked in 1994-1995 with responses to the same questions asked in 2008.

  The question they want to answer was is there a link between depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts and casual sex, and which comes first.  Mostly people like to jump right to the numbers. But these numbers represent individual people answering actual questions.  And what those questions were matters.  Here's what we know from the study about the questions that were asked:

The one casual sex question was this:

Which of the following best describes your relationship with [partner] at the present time?

• Dating partner exclusively
• Dating partner frequently but not exclusively
• Dating partner once in a while
• Only having sex with partner

Those who said they were only having sex with a partner were counted as having causal sex.  Each partner they gave that answer for counted as a casual sexual relationship.

Neither the researchers of the original survey nor the authors of this present study using this data seem to have addressed whether using the term "partner" and the word "relationship" would complicate the meaning of casual sex to the people answering the question.  It's really about the numbers anyway, so does it matter what the people responding meant?  Is it a problem that we extrapolate to the general public by not paying very close attention to those individuals we say they represent?  I'm not sure, this wasn't addressed.

To determine depressive symptoms they pulled data from a series of questions (not provided in the paper) about emotions the individual experienced in the past seven days.  Is being depressed in the past seven days related to whether or not you had a casual sexual relationship last week, last year, or five years ago?  Who knows. 

That question isn't addressed by this research, it's assumed that they are related and that relationship is significant.  It's worth thinking about how depressed you've been in the past seven days, and how closely would you relate that to a relationship you had three years ago.  Actually never mind what you think, this is about the numbers.

Lastly, for suicide ideation people were asked if they thought seriously about committing suicide in the past 12 months.  The options were yes or no.  As far as I could tell from the paper, the presence or absence of other major life events were not considered, why they thought about committing suicide - or what constitutes "serious thought" - was not considered.

The fact that someone had or didn't have a casual sexual relationship and that someone thought or didn't think about committing suicide is assumed to be not only connected, but that the connection is significant enough to infer meaning from.

The researchers grabbed the data, and went to work.    This might seem like splitting hairs or insignificant, but I want to point out that the researchers didn't talk to anyone.  They didn't ask any questions.  They relied on pulling numbers from a much larger data set that were collected in a much larger context.

I think it's worth splitting hairs because after taking these numbers and arranging them in a particular order (of their choosing) and in a particular way, the researchers haven't just turned to us the public to say "hey, look at the interesting way we can organize these numbers!" they decided to say much much more.

For example, they begin their discussion with this paragraph:

Prior research has speculated that individuals with poor mental health may be more inclined to enter into casual sexual relationships (Owen et al., 2010). Indeed, in support of our first hypothesis, we found that both suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms in adolescence were associated with reporting any casual sexual relationship in emerging adulthood.

If you read carefully (something I never did when I actually studied psychology and had to slog through these journal articles by the hundreds) you'll notice that they are trying their best to hint that evidence, support, for a theory has been found.  But it hasn't. They recorded two numbers and they placed them on a piece of paper in relation to each other.  Then they say very loudly Indeed!  Look at the numbers.  They're connected!  Yes they are.  You're the ones who connected them.

In a particularly problematic quote, from a prepared release, one of the authors claims that their numbers provide evidence not only that "poor mental health can lead to casual sex, but also that casual sex leads to additional declines in mental health."

She didn't say "causes" but here's where I return to my original complaint.  A doctoral candidate should know enough about language to know that "leads to" and "causes" are likely to be read as the same thing by lots of us.  Even those of us who know they aren't the same thing will read it quickly online, or only be half listening to the radio when we hear the double entendre filled  two and a half minute piece about the study, and take it in.  It's a lack of responsible communication from a scientists piled on top of weak research.  It's the reason why people only use this kind of research to argue a point they already believe in.

The authors don't just conflate correlation with causation, they extrapolate from their data (which I would argue only bares the faintest mark of human experience after having been rung through so many statistical calculations and manipulations).  Here's something else from the discussion section of their paper:

...these emerging adults with a history of poorer mental health may not be able to successfully enter into, or maintain, romantic relationships and instead engage in casual sexual relationships. These casual sexual relationships may be an unsuccessful attempt to fulfill a key developmental task of forming an intimate relationship, and the unsuccessful fulfillment of this developmental task could lead to poorer mental health."

I'm tempted to go on at greater length at the problems with their reference to developmental tasks in this quote, but I'll restrain myself.  I wish I could say the same for the authors of this paper.  What's so frustrating to me about all of this is that I don't think the people doing this research are setting out to mislead or confuse us.  I think they genuinely want to learn something about human experience.  I just wish they would start by asking some humans about their experience and show a little restraint in their enthusiasm to prove to all of us that they've, well, proven something to us.

Read More:
Blisstree: Lock Up Your Teens: Casual Sex Is Linked To Depression

Journal of Sex Research: Casual Sexual Relationships and Mental Health in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood