While some young people find it insufferable to read nostalgic articles by older people who complain that the youngsters aren’t fucking enough, this new article in The Guardian does highlight some hard data: the number of high school students who have had sex declined from 47% in 2013 to 32% in 2023, although this could be affected by COVID isolation. Even among young adults, 78% said one-night stands were common among their friends in 2004, whereas only 23% said the same in 2024. Despite (or perhaps because of) the widespread access to online pornography by young men and boys, nearly one-third of Gen Z men aged 18-24 said they have never experienced partnered sex (compared to one-fifth of women in that age range). The gender divide extends into 63% of men under 30 being single in 2023, compared to only 34% of females; the higher rate of young women identifying as LGBTQ and the growing political divide between young men and women may explain part of this, as well as the tendency of younger women to prefer older male partners. Social conservatives will be cheered by some, but not all of these datapoints.
Data on the Sex Recession
