Why young people aren’t having sex
In the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most high-school students have experienced to something most haven’t.
The good news is young people are having sex later and less frequently than previous generations.
The bad news is young people are having sex later and less frequently than previous generations.
A fascinating new Atlantic article takes a deep dive into what author Kate Julian dubs ‘‘the sex recession’’.
‘‘To the relief of many parents, educators, and clergy members who care about the health and wellbeing of young people, teens are launching their sex lives later,’’ Julian writes.
‘‘From 1991 to 2017, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behaviour Survey finds the percentage of high-school students who’d had intercourse dropped from 54 to 40 per cent. In the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most highschool students have experienced to something most haven’t.’’
The statistics cut across race, gender and educational level. This, despite the fact that sex has arguably never been easier to find or regarded with less shame.
The share of Americans who say sex between unmarried adults is
‘‘not wrong at all’’ is at an alltime high, Julian notes, birth control is easy to access and we toss around terms like polyamory, kink and BDSM with abandon. ‘‘These should be boom times for sex,’’ Julian writes.
The fact that they’re not is, in many ways, good news. The US teen pregnancy rate has been declining since the 90s and is at a third of its modern high.
Julian notes some experts say the statistics indicate that young people feel less pressured into sex they don’t want to have, thanks to shifting gender expectations, a better understanding of consent and growing awareness of diverse sexual orientations, including asexuality. Then again...
‘‘Signs are gathering that the delay in teen sex may have been
the first indication of a broader withdrawal from physical intimacy that extends well into adulthood,’’ Julian writes.
Particularly when you consider data that indicates people in their 20s and beyond are also having sex less frequently than previous generations were having at their age.
A healthy, happy sex life is an important indicator in a person’s overall wellbeing. If forces are swirling together into a storm that sabotages our ability to achieve that, we should recognise the red flags: an increase in the number of adults under-35 living with their parents, helicopter parents, lower rates of marriage and cohabitation, Netflix and other ondemand entertainment options serving as a no-fuss substitute, easy access to porn for sexual release, dating apps that are ubiquitous but inefficient, an over-reliance on screens for so much of people’s relating, communicating, connecting.
Taken all together, that feels like a lot of red flags. ‘‘When people in their 20s shared with me their hopes and fears and inhibitions, I was taken aback by what seemed like heartbreaking changes in the way many people were relating – or not relating – to one another,’’ Julian says.
‘‘In time, maybe, we will rethink some things,’’ she continues.
‘‘The abysmal state of sex education, which was once a joke but is now, in the age of porn, a disgrace; the dysfunctional relationships so many of us have with our phones and social media, to the detriment of our relationships with humans; efforts to ‘protect’ teenagers from almost everything, including romance, leaving them illequipped for the miseries and the joys of adulthood.’’