A generation of ‘virgins’ is leading America’s next sexual revolution

When I started college, in 2012, I felt like a virginal freak. Rather than warn me off of sex, the pearl-clutching over hookup culture had left me desperate to have it.

Yet had I come of age in the late 2010s and 2020s, I would have fit right in. In 2021, only 30% of gen Z respondents told the CDC they’d had sexual intercourse – a 17% drop from when I was in high school. In a 2022 survey conducted in part by the Kinsey Institute, one in four gen Z adults also said they had never experienced partnered sex. Stunningly, even masturbation is somehow on the decline among adolescents.

“Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?” a headline in the Atlantic wailed in 2018. After the pandemic, a New York Times opinion essay linked young Americans’ poor mental health and stunning levels of loneliness to their lack of sex. “Have More Sex, Please!” the headline pleaded.