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

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.
Wow, it's almost like the incredible stress of being alive now keeps people from opening up and being intimate. 🤔