Gen Z, Millennial couples are having less sex

First featured in the NEW YORK POST

By Asia Grace

—

Like skinny jeans and the “thumbs up” emoji — sex is so going out of style. 

Thankfully, the concept of bumping and grinding during a good old-fashion roll in the hay hasn’t officially received the hellacious “cheugy” epithet from snarky zillennials. 

However, recent research has found that folks between the ages of 19 to 34 just aren’t getting busy as often as the freaks of yesteryear. 

In fact, December 2023 statistics on the sex frequencies of Gen Zers and millennials via Women’s Health Interactive revealed that approximately 31% of Gen Z guys and 14% of millennial men reported no sexual activity in the past year.

The findings, too, noted that the ladies lacked in bedsheet shenanigans as well, seeing 19% of Gen Z gals and about 13% of millennial women admitting to going complete sexless in the 12 months before the annual calendar change.  

In other words, the generation that invented spending large amounts of their life in bed — a lifestyle known as “bedrotting” — isn’t doing much with their supine time. And that may have to do with the way they’ve been inundated with titillating imagery from an early age, the veteran sex columnist said.

“Kids are getting sex info from TV, from magazines, from TikTok, and I don’t recall seeing a lot of discourse around sex that is not necessarily horrible, maybe just slightly awkward, maybe sort of ‘meh,'” Yagoda recently told Vogue.com.

“When I talk to people, what I hear is that a lot of them have already ruled out the idea that their sex life might feel great for them, which, of course, is a choice anyone is welcome to make, but I do have questions about the kind of information we’re receiving.”

But there’s another culprit, the author said — COVID-19.

“[The] pandemic made things considerably worse across all populations,” Yagoda wrote. “Some researchers cite this [lack of pleasure] wave as one of the core phenomena fueling the sex recession, as it becomes harder to justify the work of coordinating sex when the experience doesn’t even feel pleasurable.”

A 2021 Match.com study probing the sex habits of single men found that 81% said sex was less of a priority than it had been pre-pandemic.

In the book, Yagoda interviews a series of younger people, asking them to pinpoint the moment their sex lives ran out of steam.

One tired 20-something describes her casual sex life as only existing on the “meh-to-bad” spectrum. She pulls no punches in calling out partners for “jabby fingering, lackluster oral and flipping me over every two seconds because they watch a lot of mainstream porn.”

Pew Research Center data released earlier this year found that 60% of men under 30 are opting to remain single — up from 51% in 2019; experts cited sustained porn viewing as a leading cause.

And even those trying to make that real-time connection can sometimes find their social anxieties getting in the way — leading to a most unhappy ending.

“Once sex is engaged, my ability to communicate through verbal means goes away almost immediately,” one man confesses. “I have no ability to say things without feeling stupid. Given that communication is so central to having good sexual experiences, that’s a huge handicap.”