Are We Headed Toward a Sexless Society?

Are We Headed Toward a Sexless Society? It sounds dramatic, like somewhere in the near future we all wake up in matching beige sleepwear, drink mushroom coffee, track our cortisol and never touch another person again unless it has been scheduled, consent-checked, mood-boarded and approved by the group chat.

There is a weird little truth nobody wants to say out loud at dinner, unless dinner has already become unusually honest: we have never talked more about sex, and we may be having less of it.

But beneath the clicky headline, there is a real question. We have never talked more about sex. We see it in our feeds, ads, jokes, podcasts, dating apps, healing journeys, gym routines, hormone panels, trauma language and Notes app confessions. Desire has become content. The body has become a project. Dating has become admin. And flirting, poor gorgeous flirting, has been asked to perform under fluorescent lighting while holding a risk assessment form in one hand and a ring light in the other.

So, Are We Headed Toward a Sexless Society? Not exactly. Humans are famously difficult to fully de-hornify. But we are living through a real shift: less spontaneous intimacy, less partnered sex among many young people, more anxiety around bodies and approach, and a growing sense that desire has been buried under too much information.

The sexless society numbers are not imaginary

The numbers do not say that everyone has stopped having sex. They do suggest that something has shifted, especially for teenagers and young adults. And the shift becomes more interesting when we place it next to screen time, dating app exhaustion, body image pressure and the strange feeling of being watched all the time.

In the United States, teen sexual activity has been falling for decades. The CDC's 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 32% of high school students had ever had sexual intercourse, down sharply from earlier generations. In 2009, that figure was about 46%.

Among adults, the picture is more complicated, but the direction is still interesting. A 2020 study in JAMA Network Open found that sexual inactivity rose between 2000 and 2018, especially among young men. Among men aged 18 to 24, the share reporting no sexual activity in the past year rose from 18.9% in 2000-2002 to 30.9% in 2016-2018.

At the same time, Pew Research Center reported that in 2024, 46% of U.S. teens said they were online "almost constantly," roughly double the share in 2014-15. Nearly half of teenagers are not just using the internet. They are living inside an always-on social aquarium.

And dating apps, which were supposed to make sex and romance easier, have also made many people feel like they are shopping for a sofa while being judged by the sofa. Pew found that 38% of online dating users have received unwanted sexually explicit messages, and among women under 50 who have used dating apps, that number rises to 56%.

These statistics do not prove one simple cause. They point toward a more human question: what conditions make intimacy easier, and what conditions make it feel like another task, threat or performance review?

So yes, something is happening. But it is not as simple as "Gen Z is prudish" or "feminism ruined dating" or "porn ate everyone's libido." Those are lazy explanations, and frankly, they smell like a comments section. The real story is messier, kinder and more interesting.

Previous generations had more sex, but not always better sex

When older generations hear that young people are having less sex, some react with horror, as if the youth have misplaced the national genitals. But let's not romanticise the past too hard.

Previous generations often had more social pressure to marry, fewer options to live independently, less language for consent, less acceptance of queer identity, less access to contraception, and far fewer ways to opt out of bad sex without consequences. A lot of "people used to have more sex" also means people, especially women, had fewer socially acceptable ways to say no.

Boomers had the sexual revolution, but not always the emotional tools to go with it. Gen X had irony, cigarettes and answering machines. Millennials had online dating before it became a slot machine. Gen Z has consent language, body politics, mental health awareness, infinite porn, economic anxiety, algorithmic beauty standards and the ability to know what every person they fancy has liked since 2016.

That is a lot to bring into bed. A very full bed, actually. Crowded. No wonder nobody can roll over.

Dopamine did not make us sexless, but it changed the appetite

Let us be careful with the dopamine chat, because the internet has turned dopamine into a tiny villain in a lab coat. Dopamine is not simply "the pleasure chemical." It is more about wanting, motivation, learning and reward prediction. It helps the brain notice: that was interesting, do that again.

Modern platforms are built like little dopamine casinos. Refresh. Swipe. Scroll. New image. New outrage. New face. New notification. New possible self. New thing to improve. New person to compare yourself to. New panic, served hot. Sex, by contrast, is slow. It asks for presence. It involves another person with needs, history, boundaries, smells, moods, timing and possibly a nervous little silence that nobody can optimize.

Digital intensity is not the same as intimacy

Digital stimulation gives us novelty without vulnerability. Porn can give arousal without negotiation. Social media gives attention without touch. Dating apps give possibility without commitment. Doomscrolling gives intensity without closeness. The nervous system can start to prefer what is frictionless, not because real sex is worse, but because real sex asks us to be there.

Doomscrolling is anti-erotic

Doomscrolling is anti-erotic because it keeps the body in a low-grade state of vigilance. Desire can survive stress, of course. People have had excellent sex in recessions, shared flats, terrible hotels and worse lighting. But chronic threat is different. An alarmed body is not usually a playful body.

Reuters Institute's 2024 Digital News Report found that the share of people who feel worn out by the news rose from 26% in 2019 to 44% in 2024. Many people now live in a state of ambient emergency: climate dread, war updates, political panic, economic pressure, health information, moral arguments, beauty standards, productivity advice, dating discourse, all arriving between someone's lunch photo and a video of a stranger explaining narcissism incorrectly.

Vigilance is not the same as aliveness. The erotic nervous system is not a machine you can command with "be sexy now." It comes closer when there is safety, privacy, warmth, play, time and curiosity. It retreats when it feels watched, judged or hunted. Which brings us to the least horny phrase in the English language: personal brand.

Consent, body positivity and the self-surveillance problem

Some people blame consent culture for the decline in sex. I do not buy it. Consent has not made sex worse. It has made certain kinds of sex less available: coerced sex, entitled sex, drunk-by-default sex, "come on, don't be boring" sex, sex people survive rather than enjoy. Good.

If sex declines because fewer people feel pressured into it, that is not a tragedy. That is progress wearing an awkward outfit. The problem is that many of us were never taught how to make consent sexy, mutual and alive. We were taught either silence or bureaucracy. But consent can be flirtatious. It can be a hand paused at a waist and a murmured, "Can I?" It can be "Tell me what you like." It can be "Do you want to keep going?" said with heat, not fear.

Body positivity helped, but the body is still under inspection

The body positivity movement challenged the old, cruel idea that only certain bodies deserve desire. But online culture created a new trap: now we are told to love our bodies while looking at thousands of edited, filtered, surgically enhanced, gym-optimized, professionally lit bodies every week.

Permanent surveillance has made everyone self-conscious

Permanent surveillance also matters. Every awkward flirtation might become a screenshot. Every bad date can be reviewed by committee. Every desire can be searched, labelled, pathologised, optimized or publicly misunderstood. Desire needs privacy, not secrecy in the shame-soaked sense, but privacy as room to be clumsy, to misread and repair, to say "I'm nervous" and still be met with tenderness.

We have gained important language around consent, trauma, boundaries and body positivity. Good. Beautiful. Necessary. Many people, especially women, queer people, disabled people and survivors, needed those languages desperately. But sometimes the culture turns useful language into surveillance. Consent becomes not an embodied conversation, but a legalistic mood-killer. Body positivity becomes another impossible standard: love yourself at all times, preferably on camera. Self-improvement becomes a moral duty. Healing becomes a second job.

No wonder people are exhausted. It is hard to feel wild when you are busy being correct.

The American Psychological Association reported in 2023 that teens and young adults who reduced social media use by 50% for just a few weeks saw significant improvements in how they felt about their weight and appearance. That is not small. That is the body exhaling.

Desire is difficult when the body feels like a product listing. Too soft. Too hairy. Too old. Too masculine. Too feminine. Too much. Not enough. Needs work. Needs angles. Needs a better morning routine. But the erotic body is not performing wellness. It is actually experiencing life.

Questions to ask if the sexless society conversation hits a nerve

Instead of using the idea of a sexless society to panic or compare, use it as a doorway. The most useful questions are usually not "how much sex should I be having?" but "what is happening inside my body, my relationship, my nervous system and my life?"

• When I think about sex, do I feel curiosity, pressure, shame, playfulness, grief, boredom or excitement?
• Do I genuinely want less sex, or do I want less complicated sex?
• Where do I go when I want to feel something quickly: a person, a fantasy, a screen, food, work, shopping, porn, drama or self-improvement?
• Do I know what my real yes feels like in my body, before I start performing what I think I should want?
• Do I know what my no feels like before it becomes resentment?
• Where am I waiting to be "better" before I let myself be desired?

So what do we do? Ideas and impulses for a more touchable life

We probably cannot fix modern intimacy by telling everyone to delete their phones and take up pottery, though honestly, not the worst start. The better idea is to rebuild the conditions where desire becomes easier to notice, express and share.

• Rebuild low-stakes social life. Not every interaction should be a date, a pitch, a networking opportunity or a potential humiliation. Desire often grows sideways.
• Learn erotic literacy, not just sex education. We need language for desire, rejection, repair, fantasy, awkwardness, flirting, pleasure, pacing, attachment and shame.
• Bring privacy back. Not secrecy. Privacy. A culture where every imperfect intimate moment does not instantly become content.
• Stop treating the body as a lifelong renovation project. Health matters. Strength matters. But nobody has ever been kissed better because they tracked their macros with punitive accuracy.
• Make consent warm. Clear, yes. But also human, tender, playful and alive.

The part nobody says out loud is this: sex is not just about sex. It is about trust. Risk. Imagination. Nervous systems. Bodies that feel safe enough to want. A society that gives people enough time, privacy, confidence and softness to meet each other as more than profiles, threats or improvement projects.

The libido is not gone. It is waiting for us to make life feel touchable again.

Keep reading on pleasepinchmehard

If this stirred something in you, explore more writing around desire, intimacy and the parts nobody says out loud.

For another angle on bodies, needs and closeness, you might also like From Touched Out to Touch Hungry.

FAQ: Are We Headed Toward a Sexless Society?