For years, studies have shown that people around the world – including the U.S. – seem to be losing interest in sex. A new book describes the situation as a “sextinction” driven in part by social media.
“As a former sex scientist who spent more than a decade talking to people about their issues in the bedroom, I think the same anxieties about sex have always existed, but now there are a million more ways to avoid having to deal with them,” wrote Dr. Debra Soh, a neuroscientist and author of Sextinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy, released this Tuesday.
Simon & Schuster shared an excerpt of the book.
Research shows that both millennials and Gen Z report having less sex than previous generations at the same age. Video games, online dating, social media, pornography and changing socioeconomic conditions have all played a role in the decline of sex, Soh argues.
News outlets have covered the phenomenon in the past. Soh mentions The Atlantic coining the term “sex recession” in 2018, even before the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up social isolation. The Washington Post also wrote about it the following year. Data from the General Social Survey, the Institute for Family Studies and the American Sexual Health Association has also demonstrated the trend.
“A recent study evaluating what is happening in the U.S. has added to the pile of evidence, showing declines from 2009 to 2018 in all forms of partnered sexual activity, including penile-vaginal intercourse, anal sex and partnered masturbation. The findings show that adolescents report less solo masturbation as well,” Scientific American reported in 2022.
Still, “nobody seems to know why or what to do about it,” per the description of Sexticntion.
Experts cited by the ASHA expressed concerns that mental health issues (anxiety is common among Gen Z, Soh notes) and social isolation were interfering with adolescents reaching sexual development milestones. Soh said that sexual inactivity among 18 to 24-year-olds nearly doubled since the 2000s (that cohort referred to millennials), with sharper increases of sexless-ness among men.
“Although data do suggest that we’re all experiencing a decline in sex, Millennial and Gen Z men have been hit the hardest,” Soh said.
She argues that “social media – typically accessed through smartphones – has accelerated our current sexless predicament by creating an illusion of connection and community while actually isolating us and pitting men and women against one another.” Soh also posits that our evolutionary roots and expectations in dating clash with the realities of modern life, where women now often have more successful careers than men and many men choose not to work, often choosing screen time instead.
“Although rates of sexlessness are less pronounced in young women, I do think the shift away from marriage and kids has influenced this trend,” said Soh. “When a woman can’t find a suitable partner due to her career success, it disincentivizes her from dating and incentivizes her to focus on her career. But the more successful she becomes, the more difficult it will be for her to couple off with a man. And so the cycle continues; if an individual is more focused on her career than on starting a family, she has fewer practical reasons to be sexually active.”
Soh also discusses the trends of polyamory (having multiple partners) and inceldom (an online subculture of men who experience “involuntary celibacy” and harbor intense hostility and rage towards women and want to replace them with robots). She argues that neither are healthy approaches to the sexual challenges present in modern life.
For men, “demographics associated with less sexlessness include being employed full-time, having a higher income, and being married,” Soh notes. “Men with fewer sexual opportunities are turning to outlets like pornography, artificial-intelligence girlfriends, and prostitution.”
She said that online dating has also changed the culture of dating in ways that often leave people feeling alienated. There, they can face an overwhelming flood of people, choice paralysis, ghosting, scams, catfishing, people with no intention of dating who match only for an ego boost and a general flattening of prospective partners to simple images to swipe through.
“Many in my audience say that dating today is harder than ever before,” Soh wrote. “Dating apps have become a race to the bottom, a soul-destroying process that leaves most feeling antagonized and demoralized. Although there has been a movement away from relying on apps for dates, the social ubiquity of internet courtship has left a lingering malaise.”
In real life, the impact of #MeToo has also left people, especially men, anxious about approaching strangers in public, Soh said. People are also worried about being filmed and turned into an embarrassing viral moment online.
“I’ve heard from sensible young women who say their female peers think that it is, by default, sexual harassment if a man approaches a woman he doesn’t know,” Soh said. “Sadly, I’d bet these same women find the online dating process disappointing and tedious. But a dynamic that prohibits human-to-human interaction leaves both sexes boxed in, dependent on virtual connections to avoid ending up alone.”
If people manage to partner up, Soh said they still aren’t free from technology getting involved in their sex lives. For example, “phubbing,” or snubbing human interaction for being on the phone, a trend explored in a study conducted by Lloyds Pharmacy in the U.K. that surveyed more than 2,000 British adults over the age of 18 who were in a relationship.
“One of the key takeaways from the survey is that ignoring your partner while on your phone is associated with lower rates of sexual activity,” Soh said. “Only 13% of people who had sex seven times a week or more said they ignored their partner while on their phone. For those who had sex once a week, the percentage of ‘phubbers’ increased to 20%, and for those who had sex every three to six months, 33% were ‘phubbers.’”
That survey also found that one in eight women said that using social media makes her feel less sexually desirable and that one in eleven men reported feeling less interested in having sex with his partner after looking at social media influencers. Almost 60% admitted to choosing technology, like streaming shows and movies, over sex on multiple occasions.
“Let’s be real: Making time for sex takes energy and effort,” said Soh. “In the context of a relationship, sex involves prioritizing someone else’s needs instead of simply taking care of your own (a frame of mind that may become foreign if a person regularly consumes porn). This reluctance reflects a larger malady in society, a school of thought that encourages young people to be selfish and to look out only for themselves.”