Young adults in the United States and other wealthy nations are having less sex than their predecessors did at the same age, and the shift is steep enough that researchers, journalists, and public health experts have started calling it a sexuality crisis. Between the early 2000s and the late 2010s, the share of American men aged 18 to 24 who reported no sexual activity in the past year jumped from about 19 percent to 31 percent.1JAMA Network Open. Trends in Frequency of Sexual Activity and Number of Sexual Partners Among Adults Aged 18 to 44 Years in the US, 2000-2018 The trend is not limited to one gender, one country, or one narrow age band, and the causes run deeper than any single explanation. What makes this a genuine crisis, rather than a quirky demographic footnote, is how tightly it connects to loneliness, mental health, falling birth rates, and shifts in how people form relationships.
How Much Has Sexual Activity Actually Declined
The numbers are not subtle. Using nationally representative survey data from 2000 through 2018, researchers found that sexual inactivity rose among young men and, to a lesser degree, young women. Among men aged 25 to 34, the proportion reporting no sex in the past year doubled, going from about 7 percent to 14 percent. Among women in that same age bracket, the figure climbed from 7 percent to roughly 13 percent. Weekly-or-more sexual frequency also dropped sharply: for men aged 25 to 34, it fell from about 65 percent to 50 percent over the same period.2JAMA Network Open. Trends in Frequency of Sexual Activity and Number of Sexual Partners Among Adults Aged 18 to 44 Years in the US, 2000-2018 The decline was concentrated among unmarried individuals, with unmarried men aged 18 to 44 seeing sexual inactivity jump from about 16 percent to 24 percent.
A separate analysis of the General Social Survey stretching back further found that people born in the 1990s were more than twice as likely to have had no sexual partners since turning 18 compared to those born in the 1960s. About 15 percent of 20-to-24-year-olds born in the 1990s reported zero partners, versus 6 percent of their 1960s-born counterparts.3PubMed. Sexual Inactivity During Young Adulthood Is More Common Among U.S. Millennials and iGen: Age, Period, and Cohort Effects on Having No Sexual Partners After Age 18 That finding directly contradicts the popular image of younger generations as a “hookup generation” that has more casual sex. The data show the opposite.
Adults over 35 have not seen the same steep drops. Whatever is driving this seems to hit hardest during the years when people typically form their first serious relationships and establish sexual habits.
What Is Driving the Decline
No single explanation accounts for the whole trend. When researchers tried to decompose the decline statistically, a few factors stood out: fewer young adults were forming romantic relationships, alcohol consumption was falling, earnings were declining, and more time was going to computer games. Together, these measured factors explained about three-quarters of the overall decrease in young adult sexual activity.4Journal of Marriage and Family. Explaining the Decline in Young Adult Sexual Activity in the United States
The relationship formation piece deserves emphasis. If fewer people are pairing off, fewer people are having sex, because most sexual activity happens within relationships. This is not just about people choosing to be single. Economic pressures play a role. More young adults are living with their parents than at any point in recent memory, and that living arrangement is tied to lower rates of casual sex among young men.5Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. Why Are Fewer Young Adults Having Casual Sex? It is difficult to initiate or sustain a sexual relationship when your bedroom shares a wall with your mother’s.
The decline in drinking is an underappreciated factor. Among young women, falling alcohol consumption explained about a quarter of the drop in casual sex. Among young men, declines in drinking, increased computer gaming, and more parental co-residence all contributed.6Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. Why Are Fewer Young Adults Having Casual Sex? Alcohol has long served as a social lubricant in settings where sexual encounters begin, and with younger cohorts drinking less, one traditional pathway to sex has narrowed.
Living With Parents and What It Does to Mental Health
The parental co-residence factor connects to something bigger than just privacy. Research on young adults living with their parents has found a meaningful negative association with mental health, with co-residing young adults scoring about 4 points lower on a 100-point mental health scale compared to those living independently. The gap was worse for women, who showed roughly a 6-point difference, compared to about 2 points for men.7PubMed Central. Parental co-residence and young adults’ mental health Among older co-residing adults, the association grew worse with each passing year.
This matters for the sexuality crisis because poor mental health is itself a drag on sexual desire. Social anxiety, for instance, is linked to spending less time thinking about sex, feeling less motivated to pursue it, and having weaker feelings of sexual autonomy.8PubMed Central. Psychological aspects of sexuality in adults with social anxiety disorder Depression follows a similar pattern. During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly a third of U.S. adults reported depressive symptoms, and the people most affected were women, those aged 20 to 29, unmarried people, and those with low incomes. Frequent in-person social contact was associated with lower depression and loneliness, while remote contact did not carry the same benefit.9SpringerLink. Depression and loneliness during April 2020 COVID-19 restrictions in the United States, and their associations with frequency of social and sexual connections The pandemic accelerated trends that were already underway: more isolation, more screen time, fewer face-to-face encounters.
How Smartphones and Social Media Reshape Sexual Function
The relationship between heavy social media use and sexual problems is not just theoretical. A study examining problematic use of social networking sites found that in women, heavier social media use correlated with lower arousal, more difficulty reaching orgasm, less sexual satisfaction, and greater sexual distress. In men, it correlated with lower erectile function, reduced desire, and overall dissatisfaction with sex.10PubMed. Sexual Function and Problematic Use of Smartphones and Social Networking Sites When researchers separated the effects of general smartphone overuse from social media specifically, the social media component drove the stronger associations. Problematic smartphone use alone had weaker and often statistically insignificant links to sexual dysfunction once social media habits were accounted for.
This makes intuitive sense if you think about what compulsive scrolling actually displaces. It eats into time that could be spent with a partner, fragments attention during intimate moments, and creates a constant stream of social comparison that can erode body confidence and relationship satisfaction. The distress piece is worth noting: it is not just that heavy users have slightly less desire, but that they feel worse about their sexual lives overall.
Pornography and the Distortion of Expectations
Pornography consumption has surged alongside the decline in partnered sex, and the two phenomena are at least partly connected. Research on men’s pornography use has found that heavier consumers were more likely to use pornography during sex with a partner, more likely to request acts they had seen on screen, and more likely to deliberately conjure pornographic images during sex to stay aroused. Higher consumption was also linked to less enjoyment of sexually intimate behaviors with a partner, along with more anxiety about personal performance and body image.11PubMed. Pornography and the Male Sexual Script: An Analysis of Consumption and Sexual Relations
The concern here is not a moral one about pornography per se. It is that heavy pornography use may be training some people’s arousal systems to respond more to screens and less to another person in the room. When partnered sex feels less stimulating than the novelty-rich, on-demand, frictionless experience of online pornography, the motivation to pursue real-world sexual encounters can drop. The researchers described pornography as providing a powerful “heuristic model” for what sex should look like, and when real sex does not match that model, dissatisfaction follows.
Dating App Fatigue
Dating apps were supposed to make meeting people easier, and in some ways they have. But there is growing evidence that they also burn users out. A longitudinal study of dating app users found that emotional exhaustion and feelings of inefficacy increased over time. The researchers noted that dating apps may worsen existing difficulties with relationship initiation, particularly for people who are already vulnerable to burnout.12New Media & Society. Burnt out and still single: Susceptibility to dating app burnout over time
The experience many users describe is a cycle of swiping, matching, stilted conversation, ghosting, and starting over. Each failed interaction chips away at motivation. For people who lack strong social networks or easy access to in-person meeting spaces, dating apps are often the primary route to potential partners, which means that app burnout translates directly into fewer relationship opportunities and, by extension, less sex.
Biological Shifts That Rarely Make Headlines
The conversation about declining sexual activity tends to focus on behavior, technology, and economics, but there are biological undercurrents worth knowing about. One is the long-term decline in sperm concentration. A widely cited analysis found that sperm counts in Western men dropped by roughly 50 to 60 percent between 1973 and 2011.13Scientific Reports. The associations between exposure to mixed environmental endocrine disruptors and sex steroid hormones in men: a comparison of different statistical models Fertility rates globally have fallen to historically low levels, and while social and economic factors explain much of that decline, researchers have argued that rising biological infertility, reflected in more couples needing medical help to conceive, is also contributing.14Fertility and Sterility. Evidence that declining human fecundity contributes to the fertility crisis
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, substances found in plastics, pesticides, personal care products, and many other everyday materials, are one suspected culprit. Preliminary evidence suggests these chemicals can interfere with the hormonal processes that underlie sexual function in both sexes.15PubMed Central. Endocrine disrupting chemicals and female sexual health: An emerging research priority The research is still in early stages, and definitive causal claims are premature, but the direction of the evidence is concerning enough that some reproductive health researchers consider it a priority area.
Another overlooked biological factor is the widespread use of antidepressants. Sexual side effects from SSRIs are well known in adults, but one study found something more troubling: women who took SSRIs during childhood showed lower sexual desire and lower frequency of masturbation in adulthood, even after accounting for their current mental health and current medication use. The researchers raised the possibility that SSRI exposure during a critical developmental window could disrupt the formation of sexual reward systems.16PubMed Central. Antidepressant Use During Development May Impair Women’s Sexual Desire in Adulthood Given that antidepressant prescriptions for children and adolescents have risen substantially over the past two decades, this deserves more scrutiny.
Does Frequency Even Matter for Wellbeing
When people hear about a “sexuality crisis,” the implicit assumption is that less sex means worse lives. That assumption is partly right and partly misleading. Research on the link between sexual frequency and wellbeing has found that the association is real but has a ceiling. For people in relationships, sexual frequency is linked to greater happiness up to about once a week; beyond that point, more sex does not correspond to additional wellbeing.17Social Psychological and Personality Science. Sexual Frequency Predicts Greater Well-Being, But More is Not Always Better The relationship was mediated by relationship satisfaction, meaning sex seems to boost happiness largely because it improves how partners feel about their relationship.
A separate study of married couples found that when sexual frequency, sexual satisfaction, and overall interpersonal warmth were all considered together, it was satisfaction and warmth that predicted marital happiness, not frequency. In other words, how good the sex is and how well the couple gets along day to day mattered more than how often they had intercourse.18PubMed. Does Sex Really Matter? Examining the Connections Between Spouses’ Nonsexual Behaviors, Sexual Frequency, Sexual Satisfaction, and Marital Satisfaction The real harm of the sexuality crisis probably is not that people are having sex five times a month instead of eight. It is that the decline in sexual activity reflects a broader withdrawal from intimate connection, romantic pairing, and in-person social life that does have clear mental health consequences.
Japan as a Warning Signal
Japan is often held up as the extreme case of what happens when a society’s young people stop forming romantic relationships. Researchers studying Japanese mating trends have described a shift in which growing numbers of young adults are choosing singlehood over long-term commitment or starting families, contributing to what they characterize as demographic challenges.19Sexuality & Culture. Romantic Relationships in Japan: A Lens for Social Policy Recommendation Japan’s fertility rate has fallen well below the replacement level, and its population is shrinking. The phenomenon there involves intense work culture, high housing costs, rigid gender expectations, and a thriving solo-consumption economy that makes singlehood comfortable in material terms even as it leaves people relationally isolated.
Japan’s experience is relevant globally because the structural conditions feeding its trends are appearing in other countries. South Korea, parts of Southern Europe, and increasingly the United States and United Kingdom all show some combination of rising singlehood, delayed marriage, and below-replacement fertility. The sexuality crisis is not a uniquely American problem; it tracks with broader patterns of economic precarity, digital mediation of social life, and shifting cultural norms around relationships and gender.
What Helps When Desire or Connection Has Dropped
For individuals experiencing low sexual desire or distress around their sexual lives, evidence-based treatments exist. Mindfulness-based therapy has shown strong results for women with low sexual desire, significantly improving desire, arousal, lubrication, satisfaction, and overall sexual functioning. In that study, increases in mindfulness and reductions in depressive symptoms predicted the improvements in desire.20PubMed. Group mindfulness-based therapy significantly improves sexual desire in women
Online therapy formats have shown promise as well. A randomized trial comparing internet-delivered cognitive behavioral sex therapy and internet-delivered mindfulness-based sex therapy for women with low desire found that both approaches produced large improvements in sexual desire and reductions in sexual distress at three months and six months. At a one-year follow-up, roughly a third to two-fifths of participants showed reliable improvement in desire, with an additional 20 to 24 percent reaching clinically significant improvement. For sexual distress, the numbers were even better, with nearly half showing reliable change.21PubMed. Results of a randomized waitlist-controlled trial of online cognitive behavioral sex therapy and online mindfulness-based sex therapy for hypoactive sexual desire dysfunction in women The fact that these interventions work through online platforms makes them more accessible, which matters when stigma or geography might prevent someone from seeking in-person help.
At the population level, addressing the sexuality crisis likely requires changes that go beyond individual therapy. Housing affordability shapes whether young adults can live independently. Labor market conditions affect whether people feel financially stable enough to date and partner. Public spaces and social institutions provide opportunities for face-to-face interaction that screens cannot replace. The research pointing to in-person contact as uniquely beneficial for depression and loneliness, unlike remote contact, suggests that rebuilding physical social infrastructure is part of the answer.
AI Companions and the Question of Substitution
One emerging trend could either ease or deepen the crisis: romantic AI companions. A systematic review of research on AI chatbots designed for romantic interaction found that users of platforms like Replika frequently engage in erotic roleplay, sexting, and imagined physical intimacy. For some users, these interactions serve as a way to explore intimacy in a controlled environment, which can be valuable for people who feel restricted by social anxiety or past trauma.22Computers in Human Behavior Reports. Potential and pitfalls of romantic Artificial Intelligence (AI) companions: A systematic review
Whether AI companions ultimately help or hurt depends on how people use them. For someone recovering from trauma who needs a low-stakes way to re-engage with intimacy, an AI companion could be a stepping stone. For someone who is already withdrawing from human connection, an endlessly available, perfectly customizable AI partner could make the withdrawal permanent. The technology is still new enough that long-term effects are unknown, but the fact that it exists at all speaks to the depth of unmet needs the sexuality crisis has created. People are lonely enough, and frustrated enough with the existing pathways to intimacy, that they are willing to try forming emotional and sexual bonds with software.