Sex recession: Why Gen Z is saying no intercourse

Gen Z has a problem with sex.

Specifically that they can’t get any – in what has been dubbed the ‘sex recession’.

This, according to  Carter Sherman, author of The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future.

Sherman, who is a reporter at The Guardian, interviewed over 100 Gen Z-ers under the age of 30 for her book.

She previously worked for Vice News.

But what do we know? What does it mean? Why is this happening?

Let’s take a closer look:

A brief look at Gen Z

First, let’s take a brief look at Gen Z.

Gen Z are those born in the 1990s and early 2000s.

They come after the millennials, also known as Gen Y.

Gen Y came after Gen X – the original alphabet generation.

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The data shows that over 60 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds lean to the Left.

Gen Z women are said to be the most left-wing bloc in history – particularly on issues such as the environment, gun control and abortion.

What do we know?

Sherman in her book said the data reflects the scope of the sex recession.

She quoted a 2022 study as showing that o ne in four Gen Z adults have had zero sexual partners.

She said in 2023, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that a third of high schoolers had sex.

That number was nearly 50 per cent in 2013.

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Sherman says Gen Z is even masturbating less than before.

She said what she discovered was contrary to the media narratives that they are disinterested in sex or simply prudes.

“Many of them are very horny. They would like to be having sex, and in fact they feel a lot of shame over the fact that they haven’t had sex yet or that they’re not having sex enough”, Sherman told Wired.

Sherman in her book writes that young people feel “stranded before the maw of a vast and dehumanising internet.”

She described the internet as a “TikTokian carousel of porn” and also a “mass social experiment with no antecedent and whose results we are just now beginning to see”.

Sherman said many Gen Z-ers had learned about sex from porn – which had impacted their ideas about sexual preferences.

“A lot of young people told me that they felt like porn had normalised “rough sex” and in particular had normalized choking. If you’re under 40, you are almost twice as likely to have been choked during sex. And I talked to one young woman who was telling me, you know, when she was first having sex in high school, and all of her friends were having sex, all of them were getting choked, and she was like, “Some of us liked it, but not all of us liked it”, Sherman told Wired.

The ubiquity of porn in the lives of Gen Z cannot be taken for granted.

While some data show that nearly half of adult Gen Z-ers think porn is harmful, three-fourths of young Americans have done so by the time they turn 18,

Worse, 15 per cent have watched it at age 10 or below.

Why is this happening?

Sherman has claimed that Gen Z is worried about being punished for having sex.

Sherman has said that these attitudes are a result of sexual conservatism – which seeks to eliminate abortion and access to birth control – being on the upswing in America.

This has become more far more acute in the aftermath the fall of Roe vs Wade.

Sherman in her NPR interviewed described Gen Z as ‘petrified’ of the consequences of sex.

“…I think that feeling that people are now going to face a kind of punishment for sex, because they’ll be forced to have kids that they don’t want — I think that is really rife within Gen Z. And that contributes to this overall miasma of anxiety and fear around sex that really doesn’t lead people to want to have it,” Sherman said.

She also pointed to the MeToo movement having unintended consequences of having created concern around sex but not providing women with ways to improve the system.

“So for the young women I talked to, that makes the whole world just seem so much more dangerous because it just makes it seem like now you know that something bad happened, but no one else cares,” Sherman added.

She also blamed Covid-19 for depriving this generation of real life experiences when it comes to sex.

“…I think that they are very interested in sex, but they’re not necessarily able to put it into practice as much. I mean, this is a generation that grew up during COVID, and so they missed a lot of key milestones — they just missed out on having that really critical IRL experience to know what it’s like to try and get with somebody else,” Sherman said.

With inputs from agencies