There may never be good data on this topic, because all you can do is to survey people, and people are simply not reliably truthful about matters related to sex, so all you get is a survey of the thoughts they find convenient.

So to get into anecdotes, the scourge of the professional class, I always cite the case of a good gay friend who had a long relationship with another boy when he was 9 and the boy was 10 (with the sex often occurring in a field, so that the smell of those field plants still gives him a hard-on to this day) but then also, when still 10 or so, had a mini-affair with a 17-year-old that he remarks was "fabulous." I guess it was just too scary to continue with, but was much appreciated. Well, now he's married to a boy more or less his own age (40's; I had to explain to godspell that gays use 'boy' that way sometimes) but he was often the younger one in his prior relationships.

My first good messaging friend on a social networking site was a 15 year old who was very smitten with a 31 year old online friend from several states away, and had promised to meet him for a grand consummation the instant he turned 17 (New York State). The relationship didn't last that long since the 31 year old had oodles of other teenbois hot for him as well, but it was certainly a major emotional and horny passion in its time.

I thought I knew three people online who were 17 or older and who claimed to have circa 8 -year-old YFs who had to be resisted as they were trying to work the older ones up to ever more sexual levels of contact. One of these three later confessed, though, that he'd made the whole thing up (but did he really, or was he just panicking that he'd said too much? oh, the internet, more reversals than a Russian drama), and this made me wonder if I should doubt one of the other ones, whose YF life just seemed to be too perfect. Anyways, I am collecting anecdotes along those lines if anyone has one they can truthfully attest to.

There are many more such tales, some of which may not be true -- but anyone who observes the social networking sites can see as many young gay teen boys as they want developing serious and heartfelt crushes on older teens or young adults. Extending the same phenomenon up one rank of ages on either side, there is [edit] ... and obviously, people like the younger 'admirers' on that site don't just abruptly start craving older men when they turn 18.

[Everyone on that site is 18 or over but some of the pictures are essentially gay porn and not the kind of sites that should be linked here-Webmaster]