For what researchers say is an array of reasons — including technology, heavy academic schedules and an overall slower-motion process of growing up — millennials and now Gen Zers are having less sex, with fewer partners, than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations did. The social isolation and transmission scares of the COVID-19 pandemic have no doubt played a role in the shift. But researchers say that’s not the whole story: The “no rush for sex” trend predates the pandemic, according to a solid body of research.
UCLA has been tracking behavioral trends for years through its annual California Health Interview Survey, the largest state health survey in the nation. It includes questions about sexual activity. In 2021, the survey found, the number of young Californians ages 18 to 30 who reported having no sexual partners in the prior year reached a decade high of 38%. In 2011, 22% of young people reported having no sexual partners during the prior year, and the percentage climbed fairly steadily as the decade progressed.
California adults ages 35 to 50 who participated in UCLA’s 2021 survey also registered an increase in abstinence from 2011 to 2021. But with the percentage of “no sex” respondents rising from 9% to 14% during that time frame, the increase was not as pronounced.
The broader trend of young adults forgoing sex holds true nationally.
The University of Chicago’s General Social Survey — which has been following shifts in Americans’ behavioral trends for decades — found that 3 in 10 Generation Z males, ages 18 to 25, surveyed in 2021 reported having gone without sex the prior year. One in four Gen Z women also reported having had no sex the prior year, according to Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor who reviewed the data for her book “Generations.”
In an age where hook-ups might seem as unlimited as a right swipe on a dating app, it’s easy to assume that Gen Z “should be having the time of their lives sexually,” Twenge said.
But that’s not how it’s playing out. Twenge said the decline has been underway for roughly two decades.
She attributed the slowdown in sexual relations most significantly to what she calls the “slow-life factor.” Young people just aren’t growing up as fast as they once did. They’re delaying big milestones such as getting their driver’s licenses and going to college. And they’re living at home with their parents a lot longer.
“In times and places where people live longer and education takes longer, the whole developmental trajectory slows down,” she said. “And so for teens and young adults, one place that you’re going to notice that is in terms of dating and romantic relationships and sexuality.”
A slight majority of 18- to 30-year-olds — about 52% — reported having one sexual partner in 2021, a decrease from 2020, according to the UCLA survey. The proportion of young adults who reported having two or more sexual partners also declined, from 23% in 2011 to 10% in 2021.
I really dislike the phrase “failure to launch”. They’re not failures, they’re not defective machines. They’re people who, at least in part, are choosing not to have sex or be in a relationship. And if they aren’t doing it by choice, then it most definitely isn’t their responsibility for not “launching” into the roles they are expected to conform to.
Strange but true: Being in a romantic relationship is not a requirement to be a valid or great human being.
This was a phrase mostly used for shaming men who didn’t measure up to some princess’s standards, just shy of ‘incel.’ Maybe the unintelligentsia has decided to use it more broadly now for anyone they want to mock.
I only first heard it 20 years ago, I heard the phrase started in the 80’s though. I heard it mostly used by older generations discussing why their children hadn’t moved out after high school. Discussions which seemed to always ignore the increased generational cost of living gap and extreme rents at the time, while expecting young adults to be in full-time education. It was not used in a gender-specific way, probably because where I lived there had been changing expectations about women’s independence and educations.
I can imagine that for other communities, which still expected that women would get married off young, stop working, and start having children, that there would have been additional expectations for the men they married to be able to provide for them.
I have women in my family who worked in organisations with rules which said that women had to resign when they got married. They were common rules for the time, along with no-divorce marriages. Were I a young woman back then, I would have been very selective about my long-term survival prospects too, faced with the choice of who I needed to rely on. If i were a young man back then, I also would have hated struggling to afford an extra group of people when being at the bottom of the pay/experience ladder.
tl;dr ‘Incels’ has a vastly different connotation to me and strict gender roles hurt everyone in different ways
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maybe their nerds :)
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there nerds! ^
There castle!
Nay, there be Dragons
Where would you have sex if you couldn’t afford your own flat/house and had to live with your parents?
I mean… My girlfriends and I had sex when my parents weren’t home when I was in high school…
But yeah, it’s more difficult.
Being Gen X, I’m not surprised that less sex is going on than my generation. We were left unsupervised, and we didn’t have cellphones so we could disappear with our partners pretty easily. Today that isn’t the case anymore.
Im genX and some of us only had a few sexual partners and were darn appreciative it was not 0
Idk, the bulk of the argument here is about 18-30 year olds, not kids
Even if you aren’t a kid, if you live at home, which has also risen in the same time period, then you aren’t having sex either
I’m genx and lived at home while paying for college and working full time. it wasn’t the most ideal situation for socializing but I did have sex regularly inside and outside of the house
It’s okay, people, sex really isn’t all that important. Do what’s best for you and your future, and ignore social media nonsense.
Doesn’t surprise me at all. I am sure it has been analyzed to death, but I always assumed it was due to most people getting their dopamine hits from the “inner world” of the internet instead of the “outer world” we all live in. I spent years playing video games and masterbating to pornhub videos. It’s not that I didn’t want to find a girlfriend. I just never left the house or had the drive to do so until I stopped focusing so much on the inner world.
ITT people who are dying to tell you about all the sexy sex they are having/had thinking that their experience invalidates years of research the article is commenting on
I’m not seeing that in this thread.
I only see one: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/289108/-/comment/1345019
I just kind find nice women without pets that I’m deathly allergic to.
I find it absolutely hilarious that the generation that can’t stop talking about its sexuality is also the same generation which is having the least amount of sex.
If you think this is the first generation to be obsessed with sexuality you’ve probably got some reading to do.
There is no generation that has pushed sexuality more than these zoomers to where it is literally the only defining part of their personalities. They have pushed something - that they aren’t even doing - to an obnoxious level. Every generation goes through it’s phase where it comically think its “invented” sex, but boy oh boy are these zoomers going past that. And the fact that they aren’t even doing these things is what makes this generation an even more of a joke than it already is.
It’s like we get it - you like to pretend to suck dick, but you’ve never actually sucked dick. It’s fine. We aren’t judging, but we just don’t give a flying fuck what you (don’t) do behind closed doors. You can find a hobby. (Not) sucking dick doesn’t have to be the defining trait of your entire personality. It is insufferable.
Old men have made this same rant for literally millennia. Just because you’ve forgotten what it is to be young doesn’t make young people any different than how they’ve have always been.
You know what’s really insufferable? People who make their entire personality “kids these days” and “back in my day.”
Oh no, kids are having fun and talking to each other! Better put a stop to that lmao!
kids are having fun
But they AREN’T having fun. That’s the whole point of the article. That’s what makes zoomers such complete and utter jokes. We’d call them posers in my day, but I’m sure if a zoomer was called that now, they’d go crying into their room and need their emotional support ferret to coax them out again.
Yeah, they should probably be internet trolls instead.
You’re probably not the one to be telling people how to handle their shit if this is how you react to kids having perfectly normal conversations amongst themselves. It’s adorable that you think they’ll care about what some old fart thinks about them though, haha! The self-importance of old men can never be exaggerated.
Please teach us all how you regulate your emotions so well LMAO!
You’re upset that your ferret ran away, huh?
Sounds like I was spot on, then; your emotional maturity is showing.
And sad, impotant little men wonder why the world is passing them by.
Sexuality isn’t sex. Why are you unaware of a basic fact like that? Do you think you have to have gay sex to be gay? Are all virgins lacking a sexuality?
In California, not the rest of America
Sure, until you get past the first few paragraphs and they provide other examples lol
