A new study has found that adolescents who use condoms the first time they have intercourse do not go on to have more sexual partners than others, and that they have lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases than those who do not use condoms the first time.

Beginning in 1994, the researchers studied a sample of 4,018 teenagers, all of whom completed three interviews about their sexual behavior over a period of six to eight years. All had had sexual intercourse by the second year of the study. Participants were tested for chlamydia and gonorrhea in 2001 or 2002.

Image Credit... Stuart Goldenberg

Almost 62 percent of the teenagers used a condom the first time they had sex. Despite concerns that encouraging condom use leads to promiscuity, those who used condoms and those who did not had an average of five partners. But those who used a condom at their sexual debut were only half as likely to have a sexually transmitted disease seven years later.