Friends with benefits: No one gets hurt?

If you're in college then you've heard this before: Friends are friends, pals are pals and buddies sleep together. I'm not quite sure what it means, but I think this adage is used to describe friendships that are, shall we say, more than platonic. I'm talking about sex buddies- also known as "friends with benefits."

I've discovered that people who are friends with benefits usually have an unspoken agreement to have casual sex without ever pursuing a romantic relationship outside the bedroom. Though this term is a fairly new one to my ears, it seems to be a very popular term used throughout college campuses. If a guy and a girl are single and just friends, sometimes they decide to take their relationship to the next level- just for fun- without all the trappings of an actual relationship. Friends with benefits seems to be easier at first, but are the negatives that come along with this type of relationship worth the promise of casual sex?